Three calves and a half dozen lambs today’s tally from my daily fix of fresh air past a straggle of houses on the short length of narrow limestone that ambles past headstones as they contemplate the clouds smell the sea in their cradle of hazy Kerry hills.

each time i walk the halli re-position the rugso its angles alignto the floorboards

Parental Care Burying-beetle bride and groom to-be pair up near a dying rodent or bird, dig a grave and let the animal sink into the soil.

Green with envyyet soft underneathwelike the plantjagged edges

Sometimes, a storycalls me to go deepinto the forest of my psyche. I prevaricate, procrastinate;skirt around the bordersof those dark, enchanted woods do anything but stirthe monstrous shadowsfrom their slumber. For if I wake them,I must write them –ugliness and shame and pain and all. I dare not expose them. Myself.(Though the best kind of writing…

Wracklines: Taming the Tides (of Grief) ‘Grief is a country that has no definite borderlines and that recognises no single trajectory. It is a space that did not exist before your loss, and that will never disappear from your map, no matter how hard you rub at the charcoal lines. You are changed utterly, and your personal geography becomes yours and yours only’.

The Last WalkIn memoriam Tadhg Mac Suibhne I walk through the forestcarrying the sadness of your leaving.

Landscape of Home childhood slips, childhood slips fiddles jig; and ceilidh, ceilidh;meadows flourish; and longhouses, longhouses

i lost my childhood;left by boat on the cold wide sea

The landscape sleepwalks, then stumbles awake as a white wall looms to blind my window. Orange, purple, the sleepy sky dresses in the dark.

This post is something quite special: two songs by singer-songwriter Leïla Six! 'River' was only released just over a week ago on 7 March, so you're getting some brand new music at Mugwort today. Enjoy! - Kate

Three weeks of social-distancing, self-isolationand talking up our spirit of endurance;Shackleton’s Endurance sailed for forty-five daysbefore coming a cropper in Antarctic ice.

Grief is the mother of voyages. There are cities of grief, There are cities of joy, There are deserts filled with wandering bones, - Cities by Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun Bilaad, tell me how your hips burntwearing the belly belt of a lasciviousdancer, as her gold coins sang a tuneto elude your sensibilities; tell me ofthe tribe throne you capitulated for her.