Connemara

They crept up on us, circling the horizon steadily, broken-backed creatures lumbering towards us from the past. The clouds were kissing their tips so at first I didn't see it, but then he pointed-

Snow.

Snow like an eruption, spilling down the mountain crest, dappled snow the white of the cloud-wreathed sky. As we drive on the tops shift, moving, dancing, reshuffling themselves into a pack and then cleaving open down one smooth flank, a darkened scrubland slope cutting through the sunlit mountainside behind.

Don't tell me there is no god, because that day I felt it. I saw beauty, true beauty, fleeting and eternal.

Stop, I said. Can you stop? Here.

We pulled into the verge. And watched the slow play of light and shade, so slow you have to slow yourself too, come quietly and gently to a halt before you can see it, really see it... And then, and then, and then.

I cried in the face of god.