On the Irish side...

These poems were previously published by Sheldon Lee Compton in Revolution John magazine. Someday they will be in a new book of poems about people and places I've discovered while researching my family's ancestors. I do believe we are all cousins and that we might as well get along, eh?

"On a Lee Shore"  Winslow Homer 1900

Ancestry.com

The Liverpool census in 1851 lists him:

“Thirteen years old, Irish. Occupation: beggar.”

Only that. I will do more for him.

I will see him in torn jacket and too-short pants

singing all day of the sea, the cliffs, the rivers

Shannon and Liffey, the lass who died too soon.

I will give him a pure tenor and a brother clicking bones,

keeping time while he’s tuned to the doings in the street,

his freezing feet, his big brother’s sweet, hungry voice.

Two stevedore’s march past, heading for work on the docks.

Their clothes gray and their caps grimy, they’re tired, silent

men who have no time, money, or even a listen to give them.

Here is a man coming through in a well-cut coat,

and his hat is a gentleman’s hat. The boys eye him

slow down and stop. Sure, but he’s English

thinks the singer and the rhythm of the bones

never falter though the player is thinking of boots.

They finish their tune, stand, stare, and wait.

“I’m a music teacher and I thank you for your music.”

He smiles, opens his purse, and hands them coins.

“Get some food, go home, rest your fingers, rest your voice.”

The Englishman walks on and the beggars are done for the day.

The census taker’s fine script hurled itself at me; his facts smashed something too soft in me, but I’ve caught these boys,

given them music and food. Tomorrow I’ll give them warmth.

Strength & Luck

There was no food in Ireland for young Patrick Kennedy who'd known nothing of blooming. So he crossed the wintry sea in a bucking, groaning boat to Liverpool. Once the damn ship docked in sloppy, exhausted triumph, Patrick was shoved and hurried to join the mass of his countryman lost in the dirty alleys snaking from the docks. English churchwomen met them with bread and jugs of weak ale. There was more food if he worked and he would not go without food again so Patrick, who'd been a farmer, became a stevedore, all the while hating coal-smothered Liverpool, and hated by the English working alongside him. When he'd had enough of the place and the place had had enough of him he boarded The City of Manchester, a ship bound to New York, or so he'd heard. The voyage was 49 days of hell, the only good being the end of it. Patrick's skinny self stayed free of the typhus that forced quarantine on those it didn't kill. When he stumbled down the gangplank the recruiting man grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him onto a cart belonging to the Union Army and he survived the Civil War, too.  Because Patrick Kennedy went through all that and lived to have a family with Catherine McCarthy I am here to write these things down about my great-great grandfather, born in Cork, Ireland in 1836, dead in New York in 1877.

Nonnie Wafts

Nonnie Wafts

waft |wäft, waft|

verb

pass or cause to pass easily or gently through or as if through the air

I’ve been too busy wafting to write lately. (Well, I also blew my wad on that last poem I posted.  I had to wait for a refill from Whoever distributes that kind of thing.  Writers of lesser works get fill-ups, too, you know. Maybe half a tank or maybe a trickle-I never know what to expect-and I damn sure don’t know when to expect it.) Anyways, back to wafting. One hot afternoon I up and started tracing my ancestry. As I’m pretty sure you know, it’s an easy thing to do these days, thanks to people like poor Steve Jobs-pancreatic cancer, jeez louise! 

genealogy |ˌjēnēˈäləjē, -ˈal-|

noun ( pl. genealogies )

a line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor: combing through the birth records and genealogies.

• the study and tracing of lines of descent or development.

• a plant's or animal's line of evolutionary development from earlier forms. 

DERIVATIVES

genealogist |-jist|noun,

genealogize |-ˌjīz|verb

ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French and late Latin from Greek genealogia, from genea ‘race, generation’ + -logia (see -logy) .

That’s what I’m doing, combing through, only I never suspected I’d find it to be such a warm, romantic, emotional experience. Take Joseph Kennedy, our Joseph Kennedy, who was born in 1840, in Athlone, Westmeath, Ireland, five years before the potato famine, “an Gortá Mór”, the “Great Hunger,” began. Then I learned that he moved to Liverpool and in 1860, or so, he married an English girl, Elizabeth Campbell.   In1882 his wife and two of his daughters took a ship to the US. I imagine Joseph died in Liverpool sometime before his wife got on the boat.  He was an iron turner and Elizabeth was a cotton weaver. The two Kennedy sisters married two Blum brothers five years after getting to New York.  My guess is those girls were pretty, with dimples like my Nana. 1840 is as far back as I’ve gotten with Joseph’s line-record keeping might not have been a priority for the likes of Irish iron-turners or English cotton-weavers in those days.

Now the French! They were serious about keeping track of people. I’ve gotten as far as 1600 with that bunch. I’m going to read about Samuel de Champlain’s settlement in Quebec City, because some of my ancestors were there. Pioneers! Tracing my mother’s father’s family had me wafting in France-Paris, even-and Canada for days.

For some time now it’s felt to me like my family’s been shrinking-I suppose a lot of people in my generation feel that way- what with their mom and dad, aunts and uncles gone, or in their old age. We know our “folk” are all over, some kindred spirits, some not so much, but still, there’s an emptiness above us we have to adjust to.

I feel bigger now.  After the little bit of looking back I’ve done, I’m beginning to sense how huge our family, hell, all our families are. I could be related to every single person that reads my maunderings.  (Yes, I know. “Maunder” is a verb, but if the talking heads can pounce on a perfectly good noun, “incentive,” use its awkward verb form and “incentivize” everything, I can make a noun out of “maunder.”. Well I think I can….er, obviously.) After I die and get to do some quality, bodiless, wafting, I want to meet these men, women, and oh! so many infants and children, about whose births, marriages,  deaths, and immigration records I’ve been dreamily reading. I want to have a good talk with the wood carver from Bavaria, the lady music teacher in Old New York, the French knight, the English farmer. I want to play with all those babies, (so carefully, beautifully named!) and listen to the stories the children have to tell. 

The Florida heat, too much talk by and about Republicans, the general wonkiness of my health and my fed-up-it-ness with feeling guilty that it isn’t better, were getting to me-I was coming down with crankiness and dare I say it out loud? feeling sorry for myself. But I don’t have time for all that nonsense now.  I want to see what I can find out about the Augustines from Trieste, and bring my brothers up to speed about Joseph and Elizabeth from Liverpool.