An Exile’s Dream 2003

April’s breeze begins to blow
Through every nook and cranny
Young lads look for love
An exile is melancholy

He sees the Treaty Stone
The ghost of Drunken Thady
Crosses Thomond Bridge
Salutes the Bishop’s Lady

Enters King John’s Castle
An ugly slum of yore
Now a museum, a paean to
Limerick’s ancient lore

Rambles into the Cathedral
Forbidden in his boyhood
Frowns at a Leper’s Squint
Delights in the Misericords

Along O’Callaghan Strand
The River Shannon smiles
Behind a low stone wall from
Where he leapt as a child

On a day golden in memory
He swam back and forth at full tide
A rite of passage from little boy to
Boy. Boy to man denied

He surveys the lofty Barracks
Custom House with Hunt installs
Spans the new Abbey, charming
Sister to Humpback Baal’s

Strolling around Arthur’s Quay
At the end of a mystical Irish dusk
No better spot is the whisper
On the water, in the air, a hush

On an evening such as this
His ashes will float upon the foam
Above the invisible Curraghour Falls
And, he will be home.

*

Biography

Frances Browner was born in Cork; grew up in Dublin; spent twenty years in America, and now resides in Wicklow. Her short fiction & memoir pieces have appeared in magazines and short story anthologies, been short-listed for competitions and broadcast on radio. Poems have been published in the Examiner, the Ogham Stone, Poems on the Edge, the Limerick Poetry Trail and Skylight 47.