I recently took a create date in County Wexford, the corner of Ireland where I was born and raised, and the place that I find more creatively inspiring than anywhere else in the world. It gave me this poem about emigration.
It was one of those poems that told me something about myself (and about emigration) that I didn’t know.
The psychologists tell us that it is what we don’t know that so often leads us astray.
I feel better for knowing what this poem came to tell me.
Emigration Song
Moonlight over Slade Harbour,
in the county of my childhood
the annual trip back
to where I can no longer live.
A low tide, a high moon, sea
smelted in silver. On the beach
four stranded boats
awaiting the waves' return.
Something in their marooning
draws a gasp from me,
unaccountably.
Then tears,
as if from nowhere,
come. Memory unlocked.
The pull of home.
The pity of it all.
We had to go, I know, I know.
The grounded boats agree.
Under their consoling gaze
and the regarding moon
I cry for what went unmourned.
And then for what's been
revealed in the illuminated sea.
We were not forsaken. No.
Only dry-docked awhile,
in our sorrow forgetting
the tides’ inevitable return.
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If you already do support, then a deep bow.
Thank you. Sonas mór leat. Namaste.