Crosbhóthar na gCuimhní

About Crosbhóthar na gCuimhní:

Some places hold more than roads – they hold lives. This poem began not in a book, nor in a story told by one person, but in the quiet heart of a crossroads in North County Cork – where four roads meet, where four parishes touch,where once a little house and a shop stood at the meeting of the ways. Time moved on, the broad road came, the land was reclaimed, the stones were smoothed away – but the crossroads never forgot.

This is the crossroads speaking – not as a monument, not as a memory, but as a living thing that stands and watches and keeps. It has no voice but wind, no language but rain – yet it holds them all: the souls that walked here, the lives that warmed it, the days that passed and never truly died.

Walk slowly enough, and the land will tell you what it remembers.

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Glossary

Crosbhóthar na gCuimhí / kross-woh-har na gwiv-nee / Crossroads of Memories

Siopa / sho-pa / shop

an bóthar geal / un woh-har gyal / the bright – clear road

duine / din-yeh / person, soul, one

Mo chroí istigh / moh chree ish-tee / my heart within.

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Crosbhóthar na gCuimhní





I stand where four roads meet, my ditches high and deep,
where once small lives were lived and quiet secrets sleep - 
a little house, a siopa, warm voices in the air,
before the broad road came and wound on through.



Tyres roll over where hearth stones used to lie,
an bóthar geal cuts across my history - 
they pass too fast to ever see, they never stop to ask
 that I am still the same old heart where every soul belonged.



The farmer took my little plot, smoothed down the grass and clay,
closed up the gate and swept away the marks of yesterday - 
but I hold each footstep, laugh,and sigh,
every duine, every soul beneath my sky.



The seasons turn above me, rain falls, sunlight glows - 
nothing is ever lost where the old road knows.
I hold them safe and close, though years may fade and fly - 
mo chroí istigh, they never truly die.



I do not speak out loud, my voice is only wind,
my language is the rain where old lives once began - 
I hold them deep within my breast, rooted in my ground, 
and those who listen close enough will feel them all around.





Copyright © 2026 Pat Fitzgerald 
All Rights Reserved 

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Walk slowly enough, and the land will tell you what it remembers.

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Thank you for joining me on this journey of writing and discovery. Poetry, for me, is a continuous learning process. A way of finding my own voice and writing style and exploring the beauty of words.

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