Cahir Castle

We approach, like Essex*, from the east.
Cross the Suir on Bridge Street,
bellies full of bread and tea.
The castle rises, blacktop parking lot
lapping at bedrock, stone growing
into cloud-dotted sky.
A clerk takes our money, saying
mind the stairs — no barriers
to the history underfoot.
Curtain walls contain a calm green
where steps jut from walls unadorned,
perfectly medieval.
We climb stairs barely shoulder-wide,
steep as Tibetan ladders.
Whitewashed walls with slits for crossbows,
the road and the river beyond
visible from this narrow vantage point.
Asian tourists on battlements below us
snap pictures, motion the way
through cramped round tower rooms
hardly taller than a longsword.
Dark stairs pull me down to a gate.
My flash illuminates water,
more impossible steps into blackness.
The distance of time more impenetrable than any geography.



*The Earl of Essex laid siege to Cahir Castle in 1599 during the Nine Years War, Elizabeth I’s campaign against Irish rebels.