Fireside by Seamus Heaney

Always there would be stories of lights

hovering among bushes or at the foot

of a meadow; maybe a goat with cold horns

pluming into the moon; a tingle of chains

on the midnight road. And then maybe

word would come round of that watery

art, the lamping of fishes, and I'd be

mooning my flashlamp on the licked black pelt

of the stream, my left arm splayed to take

a heavy pour and run of the current

occluding the net. Was that the beam

buckling over an eddy or a gleam

of the fabulous? Steady the light

and come to your senses, they're saying good-night.