Eamon Patrick’s Poem
Kicking your mother
from inside the liquid
universe of the womb
I feel so crippled
and broken
when considering
and only the remaining
lifetime to do so.
It is hopeless, really,
except these two gems
that came down from a long, long,
line of men and women who survived
centuries of Viking invasions
whose barbarity was only surpassed
by the neighbor invader
who considered genocide
by the rule of law
such a jolly good adventure
and stole all the food
in the very middle
of the famine of all famines.
Through it all,
your ancestors survived
tenaciously creative
and green as moss
on the back of a stone
on the gentle Shannon River
and these two gems skip across
that great river to the Delaware
where once, when wondering
of ancestral roots I asked my father,
“Dad, what is it to be American?”
“Work.” “What?” I asked.
“Work.” he repeated.
“Your grandfather worked.
I worked. You’ll work.”
“That’s all?” “That’s all.” he answered.
“Then what is it to be Irish?”
“Hilarity.” He didn’t miss a beat again.
“Hilarity. You gotta make ‘em laugh.”
So, there it is Eamon Patrick.
If God takes me
before I get to teach you
all you need to know,
let these two words suffice:
work and hilarity.
Work and hilarity
saved your people
over centuries of warfare, pestilence,
invasion, slavery, defeat, and famine
and eventually defeated
the greatest power on earth
so that I could write you this poem.
Work and hilarity
can carry you to the universe
and to the other planets
and when you find
a particularly hard planet,
name it “Work,”
and when you find
an especially funny planet,
name it “Hilarity.”
No matter what the planet or year,
work and hilarity are in your genes
as am I, and all my dreams.
Germantown, MD
February 10, 1996
Christ in every ear that hears you.
