You Must Go Back

Do not go back he said and for what. To a childhood time many moons ago in Ireland In a field of cocks of hay and a very hot summer day Being stung by two bees on the palm of my hand as I pressed against that hay I would love to run again crying to the house And that granny would be there with the witch hazel and a loving embrace To a time when my Aunt Nancy who cried when I would be leave for England Always producing clothes pegs of wood she had painted for me each visit To her house and the Ava Maria played from the ornamental statue of the Virgin Mary And her neighbours who were two young daughters Who fought with each other over a bucket to take me to the well Phil and T.C. I seem to recall were their names And their mother known as baby Brehoney made the best potato cakes ever I remember the pipe smoke and old granduncle Mark In their corrugated tin roofed three room house The black kettle and crook and the permeating turf smoke To wife Baa as she was known and her 'Not a bad word' would she say about anyone As children thay always called us Agra. Chocolate bars for us children that were fry's mint and whiskey for Dad To well I remember the two lonely first cousins of my father's who were bachelors And their stiff plastic table cloth that would rise above our heads in each corner when pushed from below the table The dinner table itself was pushed against the stair case Where the tea the sugar the salt and pepper were left on each yellow ascending step And the spit laden flagstone floor more concentrated around the ray burn But that ceased when visitors came calling Too fondly I remember the long mountain top drive from Arigna to Corn and our destination beside Dad's old collapsed homestead Along the way the augments with Mom as to who lived in each house Who married whom, how many children they had and what jobs did they do The remote church where we stopped to view the best view for 50 miles round And to pray at our Ladys grotto. And an occasion when there were so many inscets inside the car that they consumed half the interior volume of the car.