An Irish Christening

 

Thomas said

you can’t go home again

but I did for my sister

and the christening of her first.

Everyone, on folding chairs, against

the whitewashed basement walls, was there

for ham and beef and beer, the better

bourbons, music, argument and talk.

Maura came; she hadn’t married. 

Paddy, fist around a beer, declared

I owed my family the sight

of me more often.

Hannah, thickset now,

gray and apronless,

rose beside the furnace,

wolverined me to the coal bin door

and asked me in the face,

with sibilance and spittle,  

who or what it was

that kept me anywhere,

everywhere, but there.

 

 

Donal Mahoney