Ciara Healy – eight
On the outskirts of every agony, there is always scope for healing. Watching the rhythmic work of a Welsh mountain shepherd directs us to that which is beyond and outside of our own predicament. Being a witness to the daily conversations that can take place on a piece of land: a cock crowing on a gate; a foal galloping around a field, the tide rising and falling, the jobs to do on certain days of the week. Each beat sends out a ripple of wellbeing, helping us to mark out time as a linear and logical story, so that even when something of us has been lost we can creep out from under the arch of hawthorn leaves, out into a wider world, to begin again. I watched him reach the edge of the field, his little white shape suddenly brighter than ever against the shadowy grass. But this field had no hedge- trimmed boundary, no line of trees, just a dark horizon, beyond which was a wide angled night sky. He was still running into the blackness when I called to him again, without looking back, he became a yipping, yapping white circle, a small square, a tiny white star.