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A Capitol Offense
No matter how much I zoom in, I barely recognize the woman in the blue suit standing in front of the nation’s Capitol. Who is she? Who was she? It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I…
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When the Ancients Speak to Us
Dawn light began stealingThrough the cold universe to County Meath, Over weirs where the Boyne water, fulgent, darkling,Turns its thick axle, over rick-sized stonesMillennia deep in their own unmoving And unmoved alignment. (from A Dream of Solstice by Seamus Heaney) From the Latin, solstitium, the apparent standing still of the sun, the Winter Solstice is the turning point I look…
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Aging, An Ulster Twilight, Castledawson, Christmas, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father Daughter Relationships, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood
My Father’s Ulster Twilight
The bare bulb, a scatter of nails, Shelved timber, glinting chisels: In a shed of corrugated iron Eric Dawson stoops to his plane At five o’clock on a Christmas Eve. Carpenter’s pencil next, the spoke-shave, Fretsaw, auger, rasp and awl, A rub with a rag of linseed oil … It is Christmas morning, 1967, in a modest house on Antrim’s…
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When all that’s left is love: the healing has begun
Epitaph By Merrit Malloy When I dieGive what’s left of me awayTo childrenAnd old men that wait to die. And if you need to cry,Cry for your brotherWalking the street beside you.And when you need me,Put your armsAround anyoneAnd give themWhat you need to give to me. I want to leave you something,Something betterThan wordsOr sounds. Look for meIn the…
