And again I found myself,

Of a morning- that morning,

On a winding road, once more,

Meandering like a stream,

Before it opened up to unveil

A vast expanse of stillness

Where brook and lake entwined,

Rugged roads wandered into wilder woods

And the light- that sat

Upon mossy mountain-

Reflected the break of another

Boorishly boisterous day

In a landscape where Yeats-

Having left the Mauds of his world

To fight the battle without him-

Had climbed nightly

The Thoor Ballylee

To find rest and I reveled

In what it meant to be connected

To these often harsh,

Sometimes barren

But seldom anything less

Than breathtaking lands.

 

Immense clouds hanging on the horizon,

Fertile lands out front

Awash with the 40 shades

And a silence amid so much

Awe-inspiring nature

That the Emerald in her name

Seemed so justified.

 

And yet, as if forever ingrained and known

But for a moment forgotten,

From somewhere deep inside

Resurfaced the notion

That it was not these lands

That I missed but

The memory of laughter

That blew above these lands

On the breeze that crossed

Fields of verdant greens,

That skirted over grass

Waiting to be grazed on

And found rest in trees

That longed for lovers to kiss beneath.

 

And then, as normal as the nodding of the cap

To the passing stranger along the roadside,

I was taken back to those lucidly liquid days

Shining from my youth

When the patriotic spirit

Of a nation-

So small but spirited,

More laughed with

Than laughed at-

Doused itself in shamrocks

And drowned itself merrily

In spirits of an altogether other nature,

A time when neighbors knew each other like family

And a new face in town was merely a friend we did not yet know…

 

And there I stood- home again,

Spun on that same laughing breeze

Into the past and I saw before me

The Me of today reflected

In my childhood form of yesterday

With teddy in one hand and Tayto’s in the other

Smiling amid laughter I had heard

But was far too young to understand

In a land that I’ve fled so far from-

Swept up and away

On other breezes-

And yet, however high I fly

Or however  much I roam

I never seem to feel too far

From that Fair Green Isle called home.