Sixteen-hundred years buried in the peat,
buried in the past, watching silently
over Ireland since the Iron Age. A
featureless face; worn down by the acid
anaerobic water? Or given an
intentionally vague visage, rightly
acknowledging the facade, pretending
ancient nature gods standing eight feet tall
would choose a human form? Druids did not
spill blood and scatter bone around the nest
of the Curlew, or offer up their prayers to
Sphagnum Moss. Their rituals never asked
the tree gods, or the river gods, or the
gods beneath the soil for help. They carved their
human gods from split oak trunks and lent them
strength through worship, to conquer the nature
gods in the web of a bog spider, in
the whisper of bog-cotton on the breeze.
R.J. Breathnach is a Wexford-born journalist and writer based in Dublin. He was chosen by the Irish Writers Centre to be a Young Writer Delegate for the 2021 West Cork Literary Festival and his work has been published previously in The Honest Ulsterman, as well as in Púca Magazine, Beir Bua Journal, and others. His debut poetry chapbook, I Grew Tired of Being a Zombie, is available from Alien Buddha Press.
More work by R.J Breathnach
Tel: 028 7126 6946
Email: hueditor@theverbal.co
Verbal, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry/Londonderry, BT48 6PU
companyCopyright © 2026 Honest Ulsterman