NeuroDivine

The rope in stone is not just rope—
It hums beneath the breeze;
A braided whisper of the worlds
Where heaven moves with ease.

Who touched its strands? A pilgrim host:
Grey monks with ash‑marked brows;
Bare‑footed souls from Slí Mór’s path,
And saints the wind still vows.

Their hands were lanterns in the dusk,
Their breath a holy thread;
They traced the rope as if it bound
The living to the dead.

And now we stand, pilgrim and guest—
Yet stone makes no such claim;
It knows that ancient travellers too
Were seekers of the flame.

For every age is foreign first,
Each footfall new on clay;
The monks were tourists of God’s world,
We pilgrims of today.

Our fingers meet the weathered twist
Where centuries have pressed;
The rope receives us without speech,
A quiet, moss‑soft blessed.

For in its braid the river hums,
And Brigid’s fire is caught;
Columba’s shadow stirs the grain
With echoes of his thought.

So when we touch its woven line,
We join the timeless thread—
A living cord of mortal hands
That binds the quick and dead.

The poem was inspired by this photograph taken at Clonmacnoise on Sunday 19 July 2026.