Let go

It was almost five in the morning and the sun was fairly reluctantly lifting the clouds up at the edge. I was awake because their night was my day really so I was walking on the back roads up the back of Shrah in the dark before the birds woke up.
Happy out with my very own long missed flora and my much dreamed about fauna that resonate in my bones even when I'm far away. Actually smelling and feeling it. Here.
Lovely old lonely Sycamore trees hiding tall up quite country lanes. Standing untouched for my lifetime and before.
They always say the same things to me. Like when they're chatting like.
"Joe, don't worry son. Look, I've been here in this same spot for eighty years and no harm has ever befallen me. We'll all be fine.You'll be fine. We'll figure it out together. Im here for you. Tell me your dreams. Relax. Breathe."
I passed field after field of sheep and newborn lambs and some were calm and some thought I was the devil himself. Run!
A Blackbird kicked it off. Then all in. Passionate Wrens shouting at colourful Bull Finches roaring at Robins. Being very clear and specific about who's tree or bush was who's. Swearing grim death on any intruders. Big Bumblebees checking oil levels and starting their engines.
Streams were absolutely oblivious to how important I thought I was as they tumbled down hill day and night and evening and morning and afternoon. Never stopping always different.
Someone once said that people are like a stream. You can stand with a person in the same place that you stood before but they are never the same person never the same stream. Always every molecule is moving and changing.
It is the beginning of spring in Roscommon. The most important spring on earth. By far.
The surge of energy that makes everything want to grow and reach and become more, say more, make passionate love up a tree or fade away finally exhausted and die.
I was passing a farm with a haybarn on it near the road. I heard a lamb in distress. All animals make the same sound when in distress I think. Shout long and loud and high. This was that.
I couldn't see him but I knew he needed help.
I looked around for a house thinking if I climb over this farmer's gate there might be trouble. Some people are grumpy about that sort of thing. Especially around the lambing period. Most aren't.
No light on, no one up. Still asleep. I'll chance it. They mightn't get here for a few hours and this lamb might die of shock in the meantime.
Over I go and I walk up to and into the barn. Sure enough a little lamb had its leg caught in some wire. The mother and the flock had left him on his own abandoned, not long born, terrified.
He ran scared a few steps at first but the leg stretched out behind and held fast. So I picked him up and he relaxed.
I had him on my lap and he sat in the warmth of me while I untangled the wire and then I put him standing. No damage on the leg.
Then as soon as he realised I wasn't going to eat him he runs up the hill screaming blue murder at his mum who in fairness did abandon him.
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!
I felt deeply glad. Useful. My people have farmed sheep for thousands of years. It felt like maybe that's why I have these huge farmer hands.
For throwing sods of turf, milking cows, shaving chickens and shearing sheep.
My father had passed away a few days ago into whatever the earth decides to do with his energy. We all get dispersed.
The Peat bogs are ancient forests. The soil is made up of everything that ever lived. Atoms and molecules breaking apart. Until we're one with everything and maybe one molecule goes here to a worm or even a human but not as a whole being. Simple.
Drop the facade. The truth is simple. Nothing leaves the earth. Anybody that ever lived is still here in the soil and in the ether. At one with everything.
If you believe in some magical heaven type place where everything is perfectly fab wings harps and it's going to be so much better than here then why don't you head over early? No, this is heaven or he'll depending on what you do with it.
I hope he felt relief as he ran off up the fields to his Mammy that died when he was three. The youngest child.
Here on this jet at 35,000 feet. I let him go now.
I tear out the blank page I had left for him with the heading 'Maybe One Day'. That chapter ends. I feel no sadness and shed no tears for him but loved the absolute poetic organicness of his passing in April in the springing of the year as I helped to lower him into the hole in the Cemetery in Kiltrustan with the sun shining.
People really loved him. My brother Mark was his loyal companion to the end. A true warrior.
Down, slowly down into the exact same grave his darling mother was lowered all those years ago. Down into where his father went as soon as he'd finished breaking him unfixable. The last of his family into the family grave.

I hide my face from my fellow passengers and
I cry softly for my Sycamores. I'm an eejit. A big soft Roscommon eejit.
Won't be long until I'm recycled myself. Breathe. Be kind. Breathe. Be the Spring. Breathe. Roar it all into the abyss. Breathe. Let