blighted -- abandoned

abandoned house on the edge of the sea

county mayo

100216

                    "Blighted"

                    Your name came to you seaward

                    upon a ship returning home from Boston

                    where your mother never settled.

                    All those brownstone houses starving out the sky,

                    streets paved with streets, no gold

                    of whin, or corn at saving, or celandine.

                    Against the tide she bought a passage

                    on a ship still marked with famine, typhus

                    back to places that she hungered for,

                    kept hidden in her shawl your dead sister

                    until they docked in Cobh and buried her.

                    Before the year was out

                    her name was put to use again.

                    You carried the weight of that ship on your back

                    the cold backwash of her eyes,

                    the way the streets of Holyhoke

                    seeped into your tight mouth

                    the sea streeled out from your hair.

                    you heard the cry of her along the lazy beds

                    as you barrowed swill to the pigs

                    caught her on the wing of salt air, your body listing.

                    Kept hidden in your shawl 

                    a woman longing

                    to fall upon the wither of that name.

                    each letter blighted one by one

                    the sea to open up and swallow them

                    to stand at its edge and howl.

                    by Geraldine Mills

                    from "Toil the Dark Harvest"

                    copyright 2003

                   (with permission)