Summer brought me to southern Ireland walking through the scenes of We Once Had Wings. My splattered shoes slick from a mixture of rainwater, mud and sheep manure. Surrounded in a green, so intense and abundant, it descends straight from the clouds dripping over every rock and tree. The mist-laced wind tickles the wispy hairs on the back of your neck and you forget what it feels like to be home.
Parts of the south are so rural and rugged; electricity is new within the last few decades. In my mind’s eye, I saw Sean Keegan’s father’s thatched cottage. The woodsy smell of peat turf smoldering in the hearth and the drying wool like a whisper under my nose.
“…he dug out his First Communion rosary and nailed it to his cottage’s mud wall. Then he barred the door and walked outside to bargain with the Devil, whose breath rolled in on the fog each morning…”