People of the Bog

Back there the days are darker

and the nights are longer

in the Old Country where the North

won’t freeze you

but your bones are aches

and numb hands drop things

on the chill tiled floor

•

and I remember once lighting

the last lantern-candle

we walked round the neighbours’

begging a basket of coal or twigs

but every house was cold and

blank as ours

~~~

Just last month Mam wrote me

“look son, they are pulling

the ancestors up from the bog”

•

well, I knew then I’d have

to go over and see it done right

•

As I stood by and watched

a leathery grandfather

was brought up out of the peat

the third that day

they lay

in a row on the stiff heather

•

they in their tattered skin

and thongs, shackled by rings

to their rusted broken dirks

•

“Rubbish” said Rob with

the horses did the pulling

and he unhitched Dolly and Ramon

a pair of pretty greys

“the chain’s heavy” he said

“this is the end of the day”

•

and, you know, he’d expected

some treasure like torcs or

gold bangles

or brooches with dark carnelians

•

or a great beaten-silver drowning bowl