Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Organic Centre

The Observer’s SPARK Writer in residence Monica Corish celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Organic Centre in Rossinver.
Alchemists in Wellingtons
Taste of dill
on the tongue, wild garlic.
Song of a blackbird’s yellow beak.
A coppice of luminous willow
the colour of longing.
Beneath Sheenun
of the watchful fairies,
a silence.
Between birdsong
and plash of frog,
a silence
heavy with riches,
where Leitrim’s leaden clay
transmutes, in the crucible
of compost heap and wormery,
into apple trees, fennel,
brassica, runner beans.
A silence
tended
by alchemists in wellingtons,
men and women
who long to sow
their secret knowledge
wide and far:
faith in spring’s return;
hope for a wiser world,
a steadfast, allseason refusal
to despair; love
for this singular earth.
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