Irish Elk Poem by Catherine Phil MacCarthy

Giant antlers shine at night
diamond, sapphire, branch

in a neighbour's garden,
light up the moonless dark

for children going to bed,
as if the Great Irish Elk,

extinct seven thousand years,
turned in his grave

beneath the lake at Lough Gur,
and bellowing rose

from the bog, trailing peat
from his hinds, to roam

the hills and woods of Ireland,
at this time of snow

falling all across the land,
on our road, ghost at

large, and twice as tall as Man
come back to haunt us.