Wave after Wave

 Mother Nature threw a fit --

And then some -- 3 Kings’ Day 2014.

Her waves curled round the point

And on into North Harbour,

Rolled its length, exploded against

Century-old ever stalwart seawalls,

Tossing huge hunks of their rocky strength

Across the island road,

Wave after wave, wall section after wall section.

A knot of nearby white-haired locals

Sadly confirmed they’d never seen

Such oceanic destruction on Cape Clear before.

Wave after wave with the bejesus of bulldozers.

And then the flooding:  two seawalls

And a road back from the shore,

The Youth Hostel doors, front and back,

Smashed open. What once was a safe

Coast Guard Station became

A random recipient

Of Mother Nature’s high dudgeon.

Murky mucky mighty surges powered

Through the labyrinthine ground floor

While out at the wide mouth of South Harbour,

Wave after wave burst over the peak

Of Blannan, thick brilliantly white spray

High as half a dozen homes.

Back at North Harbour

Hurricane Christine didn’t consider letting up.

Duffy’s Pier, the main pier,

Built in the 1840s, for the first time ever

Developed  a threatening forty-meter- long crack

At its foot. Its hitherto sturdy raised thick wall

Sank slightly and subtly tipped serpentine style.

Wave after wave blasted into the sky

After crashing against that final wall

Of Tra Ciaran, and suddenly the swirling sea

Embraced the two portacabins

And shook them along the road,

Destroying nearly half within the maritime museum.

Dozens of sunny-day chairs and picnic tables

Pitched into pieces and  into ditches,

Slabs of pavement chucked up Cotter’s Hill,

An iron bollard with massive concrete base flat on its side.

All this, and more…and not one person injured.

But then, Mother Nature also knew by heart

 ’Twas Women’s Christmas, Nollaig na mBan,

Feast of the Epiphany, that is, something to descry.