“On The Mountain of Forth” is Irish poet Ronán P. Berry’s anthem of the natural and wild world and what could even be considered enlightenment. There’s nothing quite like the awareness and revelation inherent with reaching the summit of a mountain and looking out over the landscape, and these nearly indescribable feelings are written in delicious detail in the couplets of Ronán’s poem. His words detail the dissolution of self so common in the ancient grandeur of the world’s wild places. Ronán told The Dewdrop, “Forth Mountain, or as the older generations in south Wexford call it, The Mountain of Forth, is a place to escape to when I need that nature and spiritual top up!”
On The Mountain of Forth
You could lose yourself up here
or just as easily find yourself.
You could see yourself
traverse five counties all at once,
repeat the same phrase five different ways,
its meaning caught between lilt and lull.
Play Chinese Whispers with the west wind
hear the quareness of a phrase return just as fair.
You could again win over a lost lover; Mother Nature,
comb hands through her hair of winter heather –
listen as she inveigles you to gestate
inside her pine womb, to marvel how,
even in darkness, all will find a way.
You could easily find yourself up here
or lose yourself, if that so be your wish.
*Quare – meaning strange or unusual. From a colloquial dialect called ‘Yola’ spoken in south County Wexford, Ireland for centuries. While common until the late 19th/early 20th century, the dialect has mostly died out with a few words or phrases still in use. Forth Mountain is situated in south County Wexford.
Ronán P. Berry
Ronán P. Berry is a teacher, poet and traditional Irish ballad singer from County Wexford, Ireland. Growing up in rural south Wexford has instilled in him the importance of place, personal and collective history and narrative and the written word.