Frances McCue

Feral Went the Fodder

Sheep, those brazen 
grazers, took to fields 
and ate all but stones 

while peat burned dense 
and sweet in homes, 
leaving sluices through 

the bogs. We hiked 
along once-feral 
places gone to 

fodder— pastures 
mulched in drench and
slurry pitched in water; 

ravines and streams, 
once shaded, now 
balking in the light.

We mourned this land
from the peninsula’s 
crest: shorn fields 

as we faced the sea.
The view came down
to us: we took no 

solace in the patches
of land dying under sheep,
wasted in the taming. 

On our spin home, 
we made divots 
in the boreen and came 

upon Ireland’s remaining 
wilds: hedgerows along
road-sides. How lovely

those last, covered-over 
stones—old borders
softer in the lapses

of moss and grass
as we clatter past
silage rolled and stacked. 

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