by Jeanette Sayers
On the 16 bus in Southie,
energetic Irish brogues
nourish my straggling,
curious roots.
These boys bring home work
on paint-covered jeans. I wish I could relate
Papa’s tales of Ireland to these young,
dusty men. I have nothing to offer these boys
in condolence or celebration.
What comparable adventures
could the grandchild of an immigrant have?
I need his anecdotes to quench conversation.
Papa had to leave his Irish
everything to prepare
for the arrival of his first, only little girl
who would die on a ship
from Ireland to America
before he could kiss her.
Maybe he found his little lost girl
in puddles, his wife, in pints
a few years later, when he could decide
for himself that these events
were no occasion for temperance,
when grief had stockpiled.
Maybe when Papa attempted rest,
he dreamed pink and Irish, and not blue
and American. Eventually, he might have been
too weary from seven more boys
to care about the lost one, or maybe each of the seven
was an attempt to resurrect her.
I should have absorbed more.
I was young and didn’t care to discover
what he knew versus what I did.
