Published: March 13, 2008 03:33 pm         

POETRY: Mary's Place

So, you're Mary's kin, are ye lad.

Ah, a saintly woman, she was,

Some folks here still talk about her

Even after all these years.



She with the dimples and golden hair

And bluest eyes you ever seen.

Smile as warm as a cup of tea,

Wearin’ the gracious clothes of her own doing.



Married that Jimmy Coyne fellow

From over County Kerry way.

A bit of a rounder, he was,

Full of the divil, they used to say.



A hard worker with a wild streak.

Never thought of him and Mary as a pair.

But, there they were, the two of them,

Blending their lives and hearts together.



Living in that wee cottage o'er the Glen.

The heaped up sod against the stone wall.

She always cleaning and sweeping

The hearth and the floor and pathway.



He always working for pay or trade,

Raising cattle, sheep and goats.

Planting, harvesting the grain, feed and hay,

With potato fields for all to share.



Well, 'twas the year of the bitter cold winter

And with Mary expecting the first young'un.

That great famine brought the purgatorial pain

Of no work, no food, no life.



The crops were ruined, the cattle died;

Lands scarcely fed the sheep and goats.

The anguish of the poor surrounding them

And shawled women saying the beads for all.



No Rulers help, but only their scorn,

Divided loyalties tearing the island.

No longer could they stay in that land

Of living death and barren waste.



So they went to America, they did.

To a New World, a new life, a new chance.

Leaving the favored homeland of their birthright,

For the vision of freedom's land.



America answered their quest of dreams.

For him, steady work; for her, the living;

The newborn child in food and warmth.

If ever a perfect dream, that should have been heaven.



Yet, often she would think of the Gaelic ways,

With unfailing memories of the faraway land.

The land of her father and his kin.

Would she ever again touch that place.



She missed the sound of the Banshee's wail,

The lonely cry at the rising of the moon.

The spirited summer dance of the wee folk,

The wondrous enchantment and spells.



She could see the green hillside and lush valley,

The sheltered village of thatched cottages.

The ragged Hawthorne with garland hedgerows,

And rock stone fences as claim to land.



The sparkling blue lakes, the rolling hills,

Sunlight on the mountainside.

The mist rolling in through the fields,

And the wind stirring through the woods.



She could feel the long grass wave in cooling breeze,

Touch the green vines and wild flower,

Smell the flowers in patchwork maze

And taste the berries of blue and red.



Her mind wandered back to old folkways,

The sharing of song whatever the time,

The chanting echoes of Christian Monks,

And the tolling bells, a call to prayer.



The new land could never replace

Her old sod, her people, her ways.

She grew weary and quiet at times

As though the soul had left the body.



Lost in mem'ry, lost in thought,

Reaching out in nightdreams and daydreams

As though grasping for Gaelic roots, soil;

To touch and hold that ancestral time.



The body now weakened by the years

Of dreaming, wanting, waiting.

All those dreams she held alive,

Yet, was stayed alive by those self-same dreams.



That's when he promised to bring her home,

For the hope of life and spirit.

Back to this earthly paradise,

Back to her Irish soil.



And bring her home, he did,

When life seemed all too still.

For the long years had taken their toll,

Never to awaken the failed spirit.



No last look at the real heaven.

For faded dreams are no reprieve at death's command.

She was buried in the same worn soil,

The resting place of her ancestry.



So, you're Mary's kin, are ye.

Well, lad; be quick about ye now

Take this cart and horse

And go down that narrow cobblestone lane,



Past the white stone cottages,

The rock and glen and heather,

Past the wee cottage where once she lived,

Past the ancestral stone fences.



You'll find a graveyard near the old wooden church,

Filled with names of all who lived here.

In the far corner there's the old marker,

Worn and gray, but clean as a pin.



So be off with ye lad, be gone.

Pick the wild flowers along the way.

Get ready a song and a little verse.

Hurry lad, she'll be a'waitin' for ye.