Membership Drive

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Cache

There are still things I won’t move
Because he put them where they are.

It’s been three years.  He isn’t coming back.
But a small backpack still waits for him
In a half-neglected closet,
With gloves and goggles in it,
In case he rises from the dead
With a sudden urge to go cross-country skiing –
Which, to be fair, does sound a bit like him.
 
But honestly, it’s hard to see him caring
What happened to his stuff, if he came back.
He’d want to hold us very tightly, and
Find out what we’ve been up to, and we’d want
To know if he’d seen God or the end of the universe,
And he’d have interesting things to say about all that.
Eventually, sure, he’d get around to skiing,
But we could always buy him new goggles and gloves;
We’d make a whole excursion of it, happy just
To spend time in his presence, doing anything.
 
He won’t come back, though.  We can wait and wait,
Along with that small backpack, all we like;
We’ll just keep growing older, and someday,
Someone will move the backpack, and one more
Quiet evidence that he ever existed
Will then be gone forever, like he is.

Encounter

 

Once I met a human being.

It was a man or a woman, as I recall.

It was black or white or possibly Chinese,

Or Indian or the other kind of Indian,

And it had an age and a color of hair.

But mostly, it was just a human being,

As full of doubt and courage as myself,

And when it spoke it was not age or gender,

Nor hair-color, faith, or citizenship that spoke;

It was, instead, the human being speaking,

In the words it could find at that particular moment,

And I listened with all the attention and empathy

That I could muster up at that particular time.

We parted, then, and I went back to my

Momentary and eternal concerns,

And so did he or she, and we mostly forgot,

But never forgot completely, the words that we had said

As one human being talking with another –

Wearing our skins, but speaking from inside.

A New Year

Of course, every day is the start of a new year
That ends the next time that day rolls around
There’s nothing special about January 1st.
It’s not even a solstice.  Just a day.

Still, as I teeter up to the far edge of December
And peer down at the white new calendar page,
I do feel a little of the acrobat’s fear –
The fear that turns to exultation
 

When you jump.

The Invincibles

Plundered, conquered, colonized,

Their language outlawed, culture flayed;

Their own land rented back to them

At back-and-spirit-breaking rates;

Made to endure war, hunger, Protestants;

Driven into the rocky West;

Failed by the one crop they needed;

Scattered to the four winds,

The Irish have persisted – even smiled –

As if acknowledging a handsome joke 

They can't believe you haven't twigged to yet.

Nor have they only smiled. Listen, now.

If you hear fiddle music on the wind,

As mournful as a wolf, or merry as May,

The odds are good you have some Irishman,

Long dead or gaily living on, to thank.

The Irish and the Sea

God, how the sea pounds in upon the West!

It comes in roaring, like a beast unchained,

To bash itself to pieces on the rocks,

Again, again, again, and then again.

The whole Atlantic in its fury breaks

Its teeth against the battlements of Clare

And wears deep gouges in her fabled cliffs,

As if it meant to dig the island up

And carry her across to Germany,

Or Poland, or the marches of the East,

Depositing the Irish in some strange,

Undreamed-of land, where they, no doubt, would shrug,

And go about their business, as they do.

It takes more than an elemental god

To shake the Celtic temper; after all,

They’ve had the ocean pounding on their door

For more than six millennia, and they

Still haven’t stirred from field and fireside

To let the poor damn soggy bastard in.

A Blessing After Rain

When the sun comes out on Ireland,

It's God's own Grace at play;

When the sun comes out on Ireland,

All weariness melts away;

There's twittering in the boughs then,

And fragrance on the breeze,

And glistening in the hedges,

And music among the trees;

You may even see a rainbow 

As the old rain scatters light;

You may hear a fairy singing;

You may see a dream take flight.

Be wise, and seize the moment,

And join in the general song;

When the sun comes out on Ireland,

It's never for very long.