Offering to the Air
all day Irish trad followed me
each time I started the car
Spotify announced the day
and who I am
and what it means
but when Willie Clancy played
Air: An Páistín Fionn
I recognized myself:
ashes, flame, keening, awe
and, sometimes, harmony
I think how Alex would say
play this at my funeral
but that’ll be too late –
play it today
and I won’t need to make
another pen stroke tonight
endless knot
one year after his death
not much new has come to light
except a few photos
including one of my mother and him
tender, both in Irish sweaters,
as if it were all meant to be
as if things once fit
even as if one might trace
the complicated thread uniting
all our lives
follow along its convoluted loops
and one day see the whole thing
through the distance of time
to find an intricate Celtic knot
then believe/understand that it was all
part of the plan
that sculpted the landscape of now
tugged us into the beings we’ll be
wove us into shapes
that will someday make us able
to give what’s needed
without worrying why
This poem uses a format George Ella Lyon has invited others to borrow to tell the story of where they are from.
Where I’m From
I am from newsprint
from Deep Woods Off! and Coppertone
three Rust Belt houses
moving up and down the social ladder
(the smell of the neighbor’s
lily-of-the-valley in the spring)
I am from creek shale and grapevine
twined into forts and swings
I’m from homemade applesauce
and too much booze
from Thomas Francis Browns
and William Joseph Schaafs
I’m from the secret-keepers
and the never-satisfieds
from the optimism of Good morning, morning glory!
and the poverty of That’s from hunger
I’m from Lenten incense, shamrock Trinities
I’m from Erie and Éire
from lake perch and cinnakuka
from the shot-up tail
of the Luck of the Irish B-17
that spared by German grandfather
and humid summers at the Shore
when Grandy showed me Saturn’s rings
the long wood shelves above my dad’s childhood desk
held the spiral-bound scrapbooks
with my grandfather’s cases and speeches
yellowed and tearing
charisma my father would never match
I am from immigrant industry
all of us broken
and heartsick for land
