Prayer for an Irish Father
On a damp June Saturday, as colorless
As cellar stone, the working classes from
Dun Laoghaire spread their picnic blankets, tins,
And soda bread along the coastal cliffs.
Two hundred feet below, the ocean knocks
Debris and timber on the rock, and near
The precipice, I watch a father swing
His daughter out, as though to loose her on
That long descent, past rookeries of gulls
As intricate as mosques, through casual
Alliances of mist and fog, and toward
The cowlicked Irish Sea, as fathomless
And bitter as their history. With each
Return, the young girl cries out her delight,
Then girds once more against the peril there:
As though she knows no child is desired wholly;
That there is not a mother, dreading birth,
Who does not sometime curse her recklessness,
Nor father, yoked to press or forklift truck,
Who has not brooded on the chance of some
Untimely accident. Pray God that such
Black thoughts do not now reach like beggar’s mitts
Into his mind, or better pray that he
Has vowed, despite them all, not to permit
His difficult and gnarled grip to give.
Copyright Credit: “Prayer for an Irish Father” from One Unblinking Eye by Norman Williams. Published in 2003 by Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens Ohio (www.ohioswallow.com).
Source: One Blinking Eye (Ohio University Press, 2003)