For the 6 November we have a poem from January when I was really caught up in researching my family tree. And my thoughts and feelings were immersed in all things Irish, which probably explains the genesis of my current fiction project and the family stories from which it emerged.
photo credit: Thiophene_Guy (animated stereo) The May Queen, 1886 via photopin(license)
Grey eyes, all grey-eyed,
The will-o’-the-wisp
Inhabitants of the sepia past.
Yet these phantom,
Long-forgotten footnotes in history,
Are the foundation stones
Of how I have come to be.
The desertions, the petty cruelties,
That gold coin flung afar
To sink forever within the mire.
All just threads and plots passed on
To become mythology.
Like the tortures
Of inferno, and Iron Lung –
All have played their part
In my neuroses and minor crimes.
And yet my hopes, my dreams…
Or call it what you will
My native gift, my elemental spark –
Something
Recognises as the source
That same grey-eyed river,
Which I can glimpse,
Through maelstrom mist sometime
Out of the corner of my eye,
Like reflections in the mirror.
© 2018 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
