I hear you,
meadow-wind…
the whistled call,
the chill on my skin.
I will find home again.
An ancestral hope,
buried in my bones,
risen from the moors,
pressed into the stones,
is sunken,
so deep within.
My old cottage,
crumbled and gone
knew me so well,
even way back then.
The thatched roof rustled.
I miss me mother’s kiss,
I hear the magistrate
and his King’s English.
I miss all of the things
taken from me,
by ye’ olde prison ship.
Only Old Bailey knows
the fully measured sins
of my hungry elders,
dead and forgotten,
but Richard stole
that iron axe
and made me
who I am,
with the same certainty
as the old smith’s hope,
hammered into Richard’s axe
until it was cold…
For the price
of an iron tool,
from home and meadow,
I am only
six generations gone.
Perhaps,
my meadow’s wind
will reach
this distant shore,
where Richard’s bones
are buried in
his Irish grave,
where all I have
is red in my beard
and the merest grasp
of some piecemeal
Irish lore.
©️ 2019.
