HIGHTOWN, CORALSTOWN, MULLINGAR, CO. WESTMEATH, IRELAND
For John Ennis
My first day in Hightown we called on the fields
Where your people seeded and reseeded the grass
For centuries: the forge field where your boy
Hopes to build a new home, where horse teams
Were hayed and re-shod on the highway between
Dublin and Galway; the hurling field or field
For dancing where the long-bearded pipers played
In the evening with the fiddler down the boreen;
And the Lone Bush field where you’ve asked
Your children to leave your remains with the un-
Named babies beneath the thorn — the stillborns,
Aborts, unbaptized — where your man from Aran
Blessed the unmarked graves, where your father
Staggered one night and returned, unable to speak.
____________________________________________________________________
MATT RADER is the author of three books of poems, most recently, A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno (House of Anansi 2011). He lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island on Canada’s Pacific coast.
____________________________________________________________________
Read more by Matt Rader:
Poem in The Toronto Review of Books
Poem in Forget Magazine
Story in The Rusty Toque