NeuroDivine

There’s something beautifully Irish about the way morning begins.

Before traffic. Before emails. Before the news.

Just the thin grey light over hedges and fields—and the blackbird breaking the silence.

When I wrote this dawn chorus poem, I was thinking about that ancient rhythm: robin on the post, wrens in the ivy, curlew calling over bogland. The same birds that sang long before us. The same light that once fell across stone crosses, quiet wells, and monks bent over illuminated pages.

That’s why the image became a Celtic roundel—knotwork holding the dawn, gold and green interlacing like hedge and field. In Celtic art, everything connects. No straight lines. No sharp endings. Just pattern, breath, and belonging.

And yet step inside a café in modern Ireland and you’ll find another ritual unfolding.

Steam rising from the machine. The warmth of a cup in your hands. A first quiet sip before conversation begins. Morning coffee has become its own gathering bell. Not monastic silence now, but community. Not a stone cell, but a corner table by the window.

Pairing ancient Celtic imagery with a mid-century coffee poster made me smile—bold sunburst, rising optimism, “a fresh start to the day.” It feels playful, nostalgic. But underneath it is something steady and older.

The birds still sing over estates and motorways.

The bog still holds the dawn.

The knotwork still reminds us that nothing stands alone.

And coffee—whether brewed at home or poured by a barista—becomes the pause that lets us hear it.

Because every morning is still a whispered gift.

Dawn Chorus

The small hours hold their breath in peace,
No footfall stirs the dark;
Till blackbird sends his golden notes
Through lanes of Evin’s Park.

The robin on the garden post
Keeps watch for coming light;
And chaffinch lifts a cheery call
To chase away the night.

Great tits ring out their two-note cry,
Blue tits their tumbling trill;
While coal tits pipe from shadowed boughs
Along the rising hill.

A goldcrest in the spruce-top sings,
So fine it seems a prayer;
And wrens burst forth in bubbling praise
From ivy everywhere.

Along the bog where dawn lies low,
The curlew’s call rings clear;
And snipe rise up on trembling wings
To stitch the waking air.

When summer warms the quiet roads,
Swift shadows skim and glide;
For swallows sweep the morning air
Above each hedged-back side.

So dawn breaks soft on home and lane,
Its chorus clear and true;
A whispered gift the waking world
Still offers, fresh and new.

Written February 2026. Copyright.