Free Verse--Take One Teaspoon of Tincture of Ireland--National Poetry Month

Sheepdog trials--Bah, ram, ewe!

I have to be up at 4am to take my son to work. "What in tarnation are you doing up this late writing poetry then?" you ask. Well I'll tell you. I intend to come back and go straight back to bed. Because if it's anything like last night, the sonorous snoring of the Hubs will keep me awake much longer than it should. Thus tonight. And thus I'm on my own again. Plus I have lately been inspired by better poetry than I normally write. Plus Poetry month is winding down. That said, here goeth my efforts to define Ireland:

TAKE ONE TSP OF TINCTURE OF IRELAND

"Come with me, girls," Mum said.

"I need my daughters around me, 

And an adventure to fill me up."

A bus-ride full of old ladies 

Knocking about Ireland,

Buying shamrock key chains and 

Erin go Bragh shirts? Bah! 

Mum--guess where she's from--but isn't she cute?

How would I fit

What I really wished to take

From Eire's shores

Into that infinitesimal time and space? 

A mere ten days, an instant 

To be paid for in careful 

Herding of pennies. 

I hardly thought about it--

Something so un-graspable.

The letter languished 

While I scoffed.

To find oneself suddenly transplanted 

Into a place one has so long

Dreamed of

Though could never make real.

Mum kept at it.

In very fact, she worked to make 

Phantasm a reality.

She must have had her own list

Of necessary souvenirs--

Mainly smiles and wind-swept hair.

Oldest and youngest at Blarney

And suddenly, without a means

Of catching breath

I found myself on Eire's shores

Whisked there as if by fey magics

One minute breathing stale,

Everyday, 

I'll-be-here-'til-I-dessicate air 

And the next day?

Blessedly Other.

A two lane road with gorse hedges coming right up to it--everywhere

My soul filled with emerald richness

The scent of sea never far away

I wanted to own it, 

That first breath of cloud laden air, 

That lilt of Gaeltacht,

Lamb stew, and music.

I craved the right to pull it

Into my soul and keep it there,

Burnishing the memory 

Until it shone like polished brass.

An underlying drumbeat,

Heartbeat of aged place.

A day at Muckross Abbey

Not for my soul so much the 

Shopping and choosing and 

Counting of Euros, taxes and customs,

The boarding of a careening bus

At the behest of others 

Exhausted and tense with 

Jockeying questions

Of who am I with them, and why?

From the bus, Murt driving, thankfully

I took hardly a chance to pull it all

Inside and make it my own,

To fill reservoirs with green traceries

On peat bogged pebble.

But had I only known, 

Each encounter added a stone 

To the walls which hedge

My memories of that place.

I would have inhaled

The yeasty laughter,

The creak of aged oaks,

And the pattering of rain.

I had a really hard time getting a pic of a house with the keeper boards on the ends, but they were everywhere. The boards keep the shingles from flying away in the wind.

I now see I must return!

Like a necessary drug, 

I must breathe it in once more.

Perhaps to share, 

But maybe not.

To be dragged hither and to? No.

How can I say 

What things are necessary now

So they'll understand? 

I must seek again the sound of a 

Lonely whistle as painted sheep graze

On far-flung green hills.

Cliffs of Moher--me not jumping

I must savor the age of the stones

In my bones, 

Fill the air with my own drumbeat

And the haunting notes of an old new song.

Find that place to be 

Which hasn't felt the weight 

Of a million other hurrying feet.

Layer upon layer of aching History

Lives cherished and lost to the 

Brazen new world. 

I must tie my own rag

To the whitethorn tree.

Tying one on at a whitethorn tree

I ache for kinship with those who stayed

Who dragged a life 

From the stony soil or the angry sea.

Those who watered that soil 

With their blood

In order to breathe free.

Need to feel, not an interloper, 

But a daughter, long lost

Now returned.

Harder than it looks. The wind blows your breath straight back into you.

My soul must find roots and 

Sing them to life.

I must be in the music. Akin. 

Ancient me at Bunratty (or Mouth of the Raite) Castle

I am your seed, Eire. 

Lap me up and we two

May spread wing together

Take flight o'er peat bog and heath

To be the stones and the light

To be the flowers 

Gripping tightly to cliff-sides,

A safe haven for those without.

Let me help. Let me breathe.

Let me own.

Bid me return, not out of necessity

But from kinship.

The standing stones at Blarney castle

© 2017 by H. Linn Murphy