I’ve written about them here before, those “thin places” of the world, the miraculous landscapes that take the soul to someplace remarkable, spiritual, heavenly. As I write this on St. Patrick’s Day, I think about standing on the cliffs at Howth, Ireland north of Dublin—the treeless hills tumbling into the Irish Sea, the view of—if there’s no fog—Ireland’s Eye, the small, long-uninhabitable island north of the harbor. The slap of waves against the cliffs, gulls singing, the wind forever whistling.
Part of my heritage is Irish. No green beer for me on this day. Just a memory of Howth, the boyhood home of W. B. Yeats found along the path to the cliff walk, the silver sky over the cadmium green high ground.
I wrote this when I was there with my wife a couple of years ago. It will be part of my poetry collection—Garden Tools, coming out in pre-sale from Finishing Line Press in early summer. But on this St. Patrick’s Day, I was compelled to recall the two of us standing on the hills above the sea, believing we could stand there forever.
David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning fiction and memoir. His latest, Daylight Saving Time: The power of growing older is available now. His debut poetry collection, Garden Tools is due out in October 2025 from Finishing Line Press. His novella, American Moon will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2026.
Ooof, this one hurts on this St. Patrick's Day, in such a good way. I too am drawn to such thin places, and have a stash of them saved in my soul. I am carried away to them so often, without warning, without permission, and find it so hard to come back from them once I go. Either in reality, or in the aching glance out the window at some place that is not that place, but costs me wishes that it was.
. . . but a happy st. patrick's to you on this day! A perfect poem for the day.