In The Family
(Verse 1 of 3) from United States of Mind CD
written and read by Anne Fitzgerald

You lay Aunt Hannah’s tablecloth out, sent some eight decades or so
smooth ivory creases from Chicago linen like a district mapped
Carrickmacross lace in a Lakeshore stitch, crosses imagined gridlines.
Her fine sightedness guides the crooked need of smaller loops through
their rounder selves threading holes into pattern as a tongue that’s lost
its dialect, cadences arranged and rearranged spreading a twang across
air mails and Christmas cards, hung-looping from your chimney breast.
Bone handled knives and forks, the last of the wedding gifts, are put out
with military precision, glinting in sunlight all facing the right way. Start
on the outside and work in said a first cousin once removed, like Yanks
joining forces with the British in the middle east …Her eyes they shone
like diamonds you’d think she was Queen of the land…blades face inward
haw on stainless steel rubs fingerprints out. Burgundy reddens Hannah’s
cloth, darkening your valley below Keeper Hill… and her hair flung over
her shoulder rapped up in a black velvet band… Over roast beef and turnip
we’ll cross the Atlantic like laces in Jim’s boots climbing the Matherclay
to herd Friesians like Black and Tans, as the Land Commission carves notions.
Into parsnips you commend buttered parsley, earthed by a drop of Jameson
makes shadows not seen beyond the haggard as you hang your smalls out:
Jim arcs from hawthorn, heather purples his mind, violet pales indigo.
Shades shade the life from him as one who had a turn. Dusk sets sail —