Readers You who have harvested, whose million words have rooted in the heart’s acre, now grown to a forest in the soul, who stand more upright, less alone, in whose words others keep faith, knowing the complexity of a leaf, the green diversity in veins, vessels, true to the precision of the father tree: can you not see how your books, your words, have made you god-like, grazing the heights of air, knelling in the underworld, knowing all adventures in between? You, who sought height and depth, whose chaptered dreams make you complicit, sensing alchemy even in the space between words, are stronger, your tongue refined by forests of words, where leaves twitch and bloom, then tumble to rest in autumn’s warm crevice, freeing you: ancient stories, repeated sumptuously, story on story un-leaving within that forest you alone planted and grew, where you thrived. And others crowd in from the open plane – generational, undimmed – less alone. March 2008, The Ennis Book Club Festival, Ennis, Co. Clare.