The Banshee

Once, inside o' an Irish family's Derrygoolin farmhouse in the 1940s, A boy named Anthony heard the woman whose word is death, himself, foreseen. When the reaper's cloak appears to those who choke, And his cowl upon ye' prowls, She who's bound to the royal lassies and blokes, Will warn her kin within a howl. For once upon a time there lived a group of regal Celtic kings, Whose love was made to those who ring in the zephyr as they sing. Aligned were the crowns of man and fey, Together tied by what they bore, Whose birth brought forth the foremost day, Whence the walls between their worlds tore. And so the children of those five Irish kings and their fair-haired fairy maids, Live on today with the mind of man and intuition of those who which they laid. So that night when the teenaged Anthony was working in the family barn, He heard the vengeance of the wind and a woman screaming from afar. He ran back to his house where his family had been, To see if they were alright, For he knew what he heard before and when, The wind blew by the banshee's might. "We're alright, Tony," his twelve siblings and parents had said confused, As their brother and son looked at each of them with a smile, yet unamused. Later that evening Tony could not sleep, And tossed and turned in fright, For in his head he could not help but keep, The thought of the banshee he had heard tonight. So the same insomnia had invaded upon poor Tony the following end of day, As a fear inside him grew and growled, which he failed to tame and keep at bay. The next day, horror struck the family: Tony's two year-old brother Victor had passed away, Of what, the doctor could not see, And the smiles of his family had no more to say. This story is a true familial anecdote about my now-passed Uncle Tony, Who died two days after I was in my yard and heard in the wind a cry of the banshee.