The news was expected,
Still, she died today;
She's the last of our parents,
Our children will cry,
So will you,
So might I.
Her great grands didn't know her one bit.
The oldest being just six,
While Gram was sick, long out of touch,
For most of the years of those kids.
The fact is she's passed,
And so it is.
But give it some time,
And we'll witness the line,
In those kids.

"I know an agent, who knows your man, who has a machine to do the job in no time."

… I'll book a flight then

This time,
I’ll sail on a freighter cabin,
Back,
Have a B&B waiting
In a familiar town,
In County Cavan.

I’ll visit with my Uncle,
Drink ***-boiled water
From tea-ringed mugs.
I’ll pour out questions,
Wear an extra layer
To stay the chill,
With my muddy wellies
On his cement floor,
In his soot-walled room,
Behind the  sky-blue, wood rot door;
With the road encroaching,
As never before.
A light dangles from the end of a cord,
The tap is just outside the door,
A four burner propane stove
Provides heat to boil and cook.
The Immaculate Heart
Is missing from where it once was,
In the nook, on the wall.

The thistle encrusted lane
Leads up a hill, from behind,
To a natural well,
Where animals watered and grazed.
Beyond, hedgerows of bramble,
With walls of stone,
Delineate the fields;
Seven in all, they called their own.
But seven can’t stay home.
The youngest,
The unchosen one,
Lives there now on his own.

There' s no cold ash
In the open hearth,
Where generations
Died and birthed.
Despite the depth of the walls,
The rusted roof and lifeless stalls,
The whitewash too
Will bleed to earth,
Onto the tumulus of dirt.

... then, I will book a flight

Life is terminal:
It's one Stop
On the eternal journey.

When I finally found the fly-swatter,
I couldn't find the fly.
Such was my excuse,
Why I didn't swat the fly.

I saw a satyr in the woods,
A centaur in the meadow;
Travelling on, I remarked on a fawn
Hallowing out reeds for a pipe.
The world around me was green,
The water ran clear, cold and fresh,
The air I breathed was historic.
Crosses were in the future.
No Mecca to visit,
No Temple to rebuild.

I am a beach ***, a sun-worshipper, a tree hugger.
I will worship the dove, not the sacrifice.
I will homage the god of the kingdom that is here,
Before she rejects her offspring.

The broken heart cries,
Alone...
But leaves visible scars.

To me, this sounded so final and trite,
But his wife, she said, left him,
Cause she couldn't be a wife.

There's a fine epitaph to carve,
On the stone above his life:

My wife, they say, left me,
Cause she couldn't be a wife;
That's all she ever wanted,
To be this dead man's wife.

A couple passing by the script,
Might read an enigmatic drift.

What kind of wife, the woman asked,
I wonder what he meant by that.

One who'd drink and drink some more,
Smoke and eat and grow so fat
On Caesar's Salad and chocolate.

Could she nurse through any sickness;
See it for what it is;
For what it was;
Work with the outcome,
Not the cause.

And yet, it's true, all along,
He wasn't in control.
Not abuse, or waywardness,
But the drink that dries the soul.

What could that wife do
In the fight.

They each promised,
Each meant each life;
Does she get to choose the sickness?
What kind of wife gets to pick it?

I know he didn't give objection,
As many husbands do,
When she raised ablutions
To false gods she eschewed;
They promised on the temple pinnacle
That all is theirs, if she submits,
To the pyramids that promise riches.

Till death do us part.

Now that's a lark,
In a song of lament.
She could have been any wife
She'd deem to choose in her life;
She chose,
For a limited time,
On a definition
He declined.