A LOVE LETTER TO IRELAND BY CLAIREBAN

This poem was written by one my best friends and soul sister Claireban with the red hair like fire, like a caribbean sunset, a beech tree in autumn. She's an active volcano.... a ginger unicorn or a selkie if they exist at all... thats what she is, just in human form.

This poem is what being irish is all about. It's the essence of it that gets you when you're away from home. The can't quite put your finger on it-ness of something that holds you suspended in a memory of a person, place or a time and the eternal association of inanimate things with those we love, have loved and those we have lost.

There is a line in Carol Ann Duffy's poem Mrs Midas when she is talking of her husband who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold and it crushes me like a snail underfoot after the rain whenever i read it...'I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead.'

My favourite part of Claireban's poem is 'I miss your men, God i miss your men, i miss your tracksuits, your Nike air max, your women, your mackerel'. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010

A love letter to Ireland

IRELAND

IRELAND

GOD

I MISS YOU

i miss you

I miss you

I miss you blowing in my hair

whispering in my ear

confusing me

I miss lying in your fields

swimming in your seas

smelling you

smelling of you

i want to inhale your gorse

Kneel in your churches

Perv on your knackers

I miss your men

God i miss your men

I miss your tracksuits

your nike airmax

your women

your mackerel

your humor

you camouflaged me

you illuminated me

you gave me this skin

Ireland your in me

your my name

your my great strong roots

the blaze in my hair

my voice

my accent

my prayers

my curses

my wilderness

my WILDNESS

your my conscience

my family

my freckles

my fire

You Mothered me

Fathered me

Your the most beautiful land I've ever seen

I dream of you

I love you

I love you

I love you

see you soon

Claireban