My family is an inner Eden
but work casts me out.
I return home only after wife has exhausted her strength
and most of the children sleep, and myself can only eat
and collapse into a chair to spent most of the night there
unconscious.
Why do/How can I sleep or watch or surf or play when
Dishes cchildren money job church need me?
I dream of writing stories or poems and never do.
I dread my job, to find out today what I left undone yesterday,
To swallow another failure, put five on the to-do list and
take off two, to be reminded tomorrow that there are three more
I forgot or failed to do today.
I want to close my eyes and run away through cold, clean rain,
But that would starve my Eden, so I swallow bile and stay chained
to my desk.
But my mind flees in spite of me. The Web is an open window.
My butterfly mind flits through the screens and lights on
Jokes and politics and occasional Important Things in a vain
Show to justify its flight.
Yesterday I learned or the tragedy of Ireland, the land whose song
songs I love.
(Patrick Pearse, a teacher of Irish, led the Easter Uprising 1916
Was defeated and executed. Some say he was President of the
aborted Republic.
In 1919 the Irish rose again and won 3/4 of an island and a Free
State.
In 1923 Irishman fought Irishman because some thought that was
not enough.
Collins, De Valera, friends, enemies, patriots, terrorists.
I cannot judge, only weep and sigh.)
