Limerick and home

October 17, 2008

Flew from Shannon beside a man who grew up in Garrettesville and Newbury. We talked of Geagua County and the eagles of LaDue. It was a remarkable thing. New England and Upstate NY were a riot of fall color from the air, like the cover of a magazine. When we came down over Asheville, and I was as weary of travel as I’ve ever been, the mountains peeked out from the clouds as if it were a prehistoric landscape, green and wild and strange, and I was happy that it was this home to which I was coming. One anticipates the worst at all times, but when I walked into my yard I saw that the roof was finished, and Ken and John’s work on the windows and doors was almost finished, and the latter made me gasp, and I heard me say aloud, "It is my house." With the green trim and the green doors, it looks like the little house on Goodview Avenue where I was happy as a kid. My house. The house where I was singularly at home. Have I been planning this all the time? My roses were blooming, and the orange canna, and the red dahlia, and the sky-blue morninglory, and the sky-spearing golden mullein, and I stood in my yard feeling at home as I have not felt in thirty years. My throat still tightens a little with it. Ireland was blessed, but coming home was blessed too. Did anyone expect to hear me say this? My house. My green door. My flowers. My laundry spinning in the machine in the farther room. My cats strewn across the desk as I type.


Shannon Farewell


Oh, I’m bound across the steel gray sea,
shut from the blokey bars and all.
a snow of gulls at Shannon’s mouth:
last chance for a piss against the wall.

For Paddy was prettier than Sean,
and Francis twice the size of Paul.
I say goodbye with a tear in my eye:
last chance for a piss against the wall.

The orca I guess has the churning sea;
the black bear irrigates the tree,
but here they let you piss like a man
against a wide wall of porcelain.

Thy green is jade, thy green is a gem,
thy songs are diamonds great and small.
And I am Young Aengus with legs spread wide:
last chance for a piss against the wall.

So lift a glass by the smoky door
and pledge to friendship evermore.
I depart, remaining Ireland’s thrall:
last chance for a piss against the wall.