Dublin

You wild old man —

heart aflame with a pocket full of copper,

stout splashed lips

thumbing through a tattered book of Yeats.

 

Tonight your streets are slick with rain,

cobblestone dark underneath the soles

of my feet.

I do not know where I am going,

but you carry me home.

 

Any store, blue stained and smelling of magic;

any corner, dark and damp;

any pub, loud and anxious;

I am home.

 

I hear the Liffey murmuring her ancient song;

your lover

though you are not her only.

“You are alive,”

she whispers.

 

I turn the key in the lock,

stumble into bed,

laughing all the while

because my heart is green

forty different shades of it.

 

O, Emerald Isle, I am yours.