This work represents 2 years of documenting my local allotments in Friarstown, South County Dublin. Through the seasons the shape, smells, hues and skies undergo change. Nothing stays the same…for long. Within the allotments lies an elusive character that I’ve been trying to capture with my photographs. With the Dublin mountains setting the backdrop the images that follow shed light on themes that I almost accidently discovered; life and death, existence itself, the here and now. I rarely write about my photography and these images might speak for themselves however the following poem by Ted Hughes seems apt and a welcome entry into this project titled ‘Thy Guide’.

A Green Mother by Ted Hughes
Why are you afraid?
In the house of the dead are many cradles.
The earth is a busy hive of heavens.
This is one lottery that cannot be lost.

Here is the heaven of the tree:
Angels will come to collect you.
And here are the heavens of the flowers:
These are an ever-living bliss, a pulsing, a bliss in sleep.

And here is the heaven of the worm –
A forgiving God.
Little of you will be rejected –
Which the angels of the flowers will gladly collect.

And here is the heaven of insects.
From all these you may climb
To the heavens of the birds,
the heavens of the beasts, and of the fish.

These are only some heavens
Not all within your choice.
There are also the heavens
Of your persuasion.
Your candle prayers have congealed an angel, a star –
A city of religions
Like a city of hotels, a holiday city.
There too I am your guide.
In none of these is the aftertaste of death
Pronounced poor. This earth is the sweetness
Of all the heavens. It is Heaven’s mother.
The grave is her breast, her nipple in its dark aura.
Her milk is unending life.

You shall see
How tenderly she wipes her child’s face clean
Of the bitumen of blood and the smoke of tears.