Echoes Main

Biography

Sample Poems

Inspired Poems

Original Poems

Bibliography

My Aunt, my Uncle, Dave, Stacie, Julie

Luke and Diana all set off one Monday afternoon

During the summer to our favorite place

In the mini-van

Not to buy groceries or

to play at the Rec Center

But to celebrate Luke's birthday

At Canobie Lake Park

Roller coasters and swinging ships

Every ride you can imagine

My favorite: The Yankee Cannonball

With its twist and turns

5 people got whiplash on it 2 months earlier when it failed to break

But it just added to the excitement

And the hope maybe we can ride around again.

My father and mother, my brother and sister
and I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle,
had set out that Sunday afternoon in July
in his broken-down Ford

not to visit some graveyard—one died of shingles,
one of fever, another's knees turned to jelly—
but the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley,
the first in mid-Ulster.

Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials
had stopped him one night somewhere near Ballygawley
and smashed his bicycle

and made him sing the Sash and curse the Pope of Rome.
They held a pistol so hard against his forehead
there was still the mark of an O when he got home.
 

Now that's its over

I don't know what I'm going to do

We should still continue throughout the year

Because I don't think it should have really ended

Time fails all of us

We were reckless, but had fun

What else do you need?

Or want?

Now that we've come to the end
I've been trying to piece it together,
Not that distance makes anything clearer.
It began in the half-light
While we walked through the dawn chorus
After a party that lasted all night,
With the blackbird, the wood-pigeon,
The song-thrush taking a bludgeon
To a snail, our taking each other's hand
As if the whole world lay before us.