"How did our family get here, Grandmother?"
"I don't know; I think it was during the Potato Famine..."
In the darkness,
the sweet smoldering of the peat fire
mingles with shame.
The potatoes came from the ground whole and abundant,
with all the promise of a new born from the womb.
But somehow, unexplained,from the inside
the blight set in;
as putrid as poverty,
as despairing as a child in a coffin.
People who are unwanted guests in their own home,
beggars in Eden,
what are they to do?
Passage to America was 5 shillings a head;
on ships coming to Canada: 3 shillings.
Author notes
For: Cricket Challenge Round 2.
I chose for my prompt Celticmoon's poem "Mystic Ruins".
Her meditation on Ireland's melancholy beauty made me pause and think about my own raggedy ties to the Emerald Isle.
Mystic Ruins by Celticmoon at All poetry
photo:Blarney Castle - County Cork, Ireland http://nablopomo.ning.com/photo/photo/listTagged?tag=ireland
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Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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I feel like stalking your poetry a bit today. This is what I envy... this ability to write outside yourself and yet still make the reader connect with the piece. It makes me feel unnecessarily selfish with my own poetry, and like I need to go commune with nature and think outside myself for a while. lol.
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That is a real challenge in poetry...to expose my thoughts but still make the reader feel like they are part of the story. I'm never really sure if I find the middle ground.
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99
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Now...you're being awfully kind!
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I have some raggedy ties too.
I liked this alot, telling and a great representation of the picture. Well done. Loved the end, I didn't know that, hmmm
only 3, eh? tsk.
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That's what I heard on CBC radio on a program about the Irish who came to Quebec. I guess America loomed larger than life in the eyes of immigrants even back then!
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This is a powerful poetic look at the situation existing in Ireland in the 1840's, that sent people all over the world. There are more Irish living in the rest of the world than in Ireland now, and the rest of the world is better for it too, as this beautiful culture spreads despite the origins of the movement.
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Some have said that Blacks were the only people who came to America against their will;
but I'm not sure that the same thing couldn't be said about the Irish...
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