[A dialogue between Brigid and her boss, Hollis. Hollis has called Brigid into his office and gestured to close the door.]

Brigid: Hey, sorry. You know how hard it is getting him outta here when he's got a problem.

Hollis: I do, I do. Go ahead and pop a squat for a second, dear.

Brigid: So what's going on?

Hollis: Brigid, your fingers are always so ashy.

[Brigid wipes her hands on the darkest part of her faded slacks.]

Brigid: Oh, yeah, that's a bad habit that's getting worse. I was just in the bathroom, too. So I guess I should probably start washing my hands more often.

Hollis: No, hon, it's not about the ashes -- you're smoking **** in the office. More and more it seems like.

Brigid: Oh I mean, I've been smoking for a while.

Hollis: Not in the office.

Brigid: Well, now I do.

Hollis: You don't see anything wrong with that?

Brigid: I mean, you never really said anything about it when I brought it in the first time, so I just kinda kept on going. And that, that was like, at least two weeks ago, I think.

Hollis: I don't think it's been as long as you're thinking.

Brigid: I see what you're trying to do here. However long doesn't matter -- I know for a fact you've seen me before and didn't say anything.

Hollis: I'm saying something now.

Brigid: Yes you are.

Brigid: Oh.

Hollis: Look, hon. Could you just go use the balcony round back?

Brigid: Well sure, but I kinda have to be at the desk, you know? That's why I never leave on my breaks, either.

Hollis: Brigid, it looks bad.

Brigid: What, smoking ****?

Hollis: Yes, it looks real bad. It reflects the professionalism of the Human Services Office. Or the lackthereof.

Brigid: How?

Hollis: I believe it's popular opinion that being under the influence of any substance impairs your ability to dutifully perform your work, and perform work that sets the best possible standard.

Brigid: Actually, and I kid you not, it really, really helps me perform my work. See, without it, I believe, I would not be able to live up to your standards.

Hollis: You're acting like--

Brigid: Hollis, please, for the love of god. I'm such an awesome employee, right? Always upright. Always for the good of the people. Last night! Last night I went to Davis's place for some coffee.

Hollis: I thought you were going to stop doing that.

Brigid: You should have seen it. Oh god, the mess that went down. Unruly mercenary helping hands serving fists up to unappreciative patrons, *** workers slinging emselves over tables and the bar, sweat and all that other nasty body water mixing up next to all the food and alcohol.

Hollis: What--

Brigid: Hollis, I went out back for a cigarette and there were people milling around in the alley ******* each other. People are ******* ******* behind Davis's place, and you're worried about just, a little bit of the good stuff defacing the image our city.

Hollis: Jesus Christ, okay, alright. You're right, that's disgusting.

Brigid: Told ya.

Hollis: When you gotta smoke, just ask Helen to watch the front for you.

Brigid: What if I just put the pipe away when someone's at the counter?

Hollis: I'd really prefer outside.

Brigid: Okay, how about, if I go to the window. So that way there's no smoke inside?

Hollis: You're just about ******* impossible, little girl. Forget I said anything, forget the whole ****** thing. I ask you for one favor, and you can't even do that.

Brigid: I do all your other favors.

[Brigid gets up and walks to the door.]

Hollis: You're still giving me that discount on Cheese, right?

Brigid: Absolutely. I'm gonna take a break and go out back for a cigarette.

LÁ FHÉILE BRIDE - SAINT BRIGID'S DAY

( for Noreen )

even Brigid's statue
protects the little birds
nestling behind her

and as a little garsún
wasn't it to the birds
I would pray

believing that Brigid
was releasing them
to Spring skies

*

St. Brigid's Garrison Church in the Curragh Camp where I was born...this statue was woven into the fabric of my childhood. Birds used to nest behind her wooden cloak. Her cross is the only cross I can bear and was a staple of every Irish home when my childhood was in full bloom. Great story of her going to ask the King for a bit of land to build a convent on and he laughed and said you can have as much as your cloak can cover. So being the good saint she was....she spread her cloak and it covered miles and miles. Never mess with a saint!

Of course it is also the beginning of Imbolc (pronounced 'im'olk')that good old Pagan festival if you are that way inclined.

An Irish word that was originally thought to mean 'in the belly' although many people translate it as 'ewe's milk' (oi-melc)all associated with the pregnancy of ewe and the giving of milk. The Curragh Plains are of course festooned with many many sheep so that made it all the more real for us.

It is a festival based on seasonal changes associated with the onset of lambing and the blooming of the Blackthorn.

She is the Goddess of among other things....those curious creatures we call....poets.

Indeed wasn't auld Jemmy de Joist born the very next day in the wake of her feast day and the days beginning to lengthend.

An old proverb from Scotland tells us....
Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir.

The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.

Spring has indeed been sprung from the depths of winter.

The Statue of St. Brigid & Children can be seen over the main entrance. The statue is eight feet in height and was carved in teak by the late Oisin Kelly who is best known for his The Children of Lir (1964) in the Garden of Remembrance,, Jim Larkin (1977) O'Connell Street and his Chariot of Life (1982) at the Irish Life Center.

And didn't auld Seamus give him a mention in his second "Glanmore Sonnet."

"'These things are not secrets but mysteries',
Oisin Kelly told me years ago
In Belfast, hankering after stone
That connived with the chisel, as if the grain
Remembered what the mallet tapped to know."

So from the wee buachaill I once was I could join the dots from statue to statue and all the way into a Heaney sonnet Brigid lore of yore.

So many, many moons ago
The gang from St. Brigid's would go
Every single chance we could
Off to local farms to sow spuds.

Each one covered in burning lime
(No health and safety at the time)
Each sown under a foot apart;
If not, you went back to the start.

All for only ten pence a line
(Though 'twas a fortune at the time)
Working mostly long ten hour days;
Kids would not do it nowadays!

Picnic lunches in all weathers,
Sitting in the fields together,
Lemonade bottles for the tea,
Eating with hands filthy *****.

It was work that would break your back
But sure we all had mighty craic,
Laughing and joking all day through,
Slagging each other as kids do!

St. Brigid's gang were number one,
Farmers knew the work would be done.
At harvest time back we would drag
To pick spuds for ten pence a bag!

It did none of us any harm
Working such long hours on the farm.
Although the work was onerous
'Twas the making of all of us!

I know whose toes
Peek out below:
Beneath their nose,
Under lips,
Lower than their waist and hips;
Past their knees and their shins-
Toes they’ll use to count to ten.
Better yet,
With our twins,
They’ll count to twenty to begin,
Then move to forty without linger,
Counting on each other’s fingers.
Toes and fingers, fingers and toes,
Twenty wigglers they’ve come to know,
With twenty fingers to catch and throw.
For now we’ll rhyme toes off to market,
And play Pat-a-Cake
With Ophelia and Brigid.

Brigid was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.

Little's known of Nellie's early years;
Da died before she knew grieving tears,
They'd turn her eyes in later years.

She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her look is distant,
Her face is blurred,
But recognizable
In an instant.

She was schooled six years
To last a life,
Some math, the Irish,
To read and write.

Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God and Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.

At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie,
Relieved their worry.

War flared, men were few,
There was work in Coventry.
Ireland's thistles were left to bloom.

Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin followed,
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
And brought the mill to life again.

The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself
A generator,
Providing power
To lights and wheel.

Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Daddy's angel.
Is this what turns
A father strange?

Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no borders
For brothers and sisters.

We left for Canada.

Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland.

Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.

Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.

Got on my Celtic socks
I could use a little luck
Brigid, dearest Brigid
I rode the Dublin bus

When my dad dies
What will become of us?

She said her name is Brigid
I gave her my password
Have a good weekend
Thank you, U2

Father Greeley in Chicago
Riding the Tucson Train
Bishop Blackie Ryan
I will wait with you

Bounce passes to Alex
And to America's Jesuits
Rebellion in Germany
Horton Hears a Who

Metempsychosis
Ballad of Hollis Brown
Als Ick Kan
To do the best that I can do

                    31712

Everybody loves the twins, you will too.
Everybody loves the things they’ll say and do;
Their eyes smile when they see you coming,
You smile back because they’re so loving.
Everybody loves the twins, you will too,
The girls surely love you two.

Brigid likes to crawl along the wall now that she can stand,
Ophelia does the same but the girls have to use their hands;
It won’t be long now until they’re walking,
Wait another month and they won’t stop talking.
Everybody loves the twins, you will too
The girls surely love you two.

They don’t know how to say they're in love with you,
But that's okay you can see that its plainly true;
They light up when they see you coming,
The arms start flailing and their legs start pumping.
Everybody loves the twins, you will too,
The girls surely love you two.

Dreaming of your loves in the comfort they’re in love with you,
Dreaming of your loves in the comfort that you love them too.
Dreaming of my loves in the comfort I'm in love with you.

Gray gathering  
Signs fell on the musty register.  Two pallid  
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,  
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in  
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings  
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.

We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you  
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day.  Our love was castaway  
Our love was time bomb.  Crossing stars, we trembled  
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some  
Lost ocean’s horizon.  
  
                          When first we met,  
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest  
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on  
The paper as it now burns in my mind  
Like Brigid’s fire.  At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.  
Anointed under the votive stars violently  
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart  

A rail.  Our love was charmed, our love was time,  
Balm.  To what end this new beginning?

Gray gathering  
Signs fell on the musty register.  Two pallid  
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,  
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in  
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings  
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.

We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you  
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day.  Our love was castaway  
Our love was time bomb.  Crossing stars, we trembled  
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some  
Lost ocean’s horizon.  
  
                          When first we met,  
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest  
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on  
The paper as it now burns in my mind  
Like Brigid’s fire.  At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.  
Anointed under the votive stars violently  
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart  

A rail.  Our love was charmed, our love was time,  
Balm.  To what end this new beginning?