the woman, crying.
When grandfather died,
all week long it went on.
We got used to it.
All around his bed,
the birds, singing, singing.
Old Donaugh Sullivan Beir,
he was the last of the clan
before the English came.
No date, no clue other than it was written in my fancy day planner, with notes about Bob Hass’s 20th century pleasures. Which doesn’t help because it was published in 1997, and I didn’t write that essay until 1998. Most of these poems in this journal are from 1979 to 1983. I was devastated when I lost that planner, it was one of those tasty refillable ones with small binder clips so you could move stuff around.
