[with 3 poems by Brad Strahan]
Though faces fade as years fly past
I raise to you this parting glass.
What shall we keep when the house has shed its bustle and the clock makes known its ticking from the next room? Bright paper discarded, plates stacked, car doors slammed as farewells spiral out into the cold, biting, stark? What shall we keep when not presents but this present settles itself again into the chair beside us, all its remarks past uttering?
My hands in the suds, Linda passes me crockery and remarks, “I wonder what the next year will be like.” “Different from this one,” I say without thinking, but then I start the tally. What gloom do I hope will not be repeated and how shall I number the gathering portents that threaten? Whoa, there. Why does it slip in so easily, no effort at all, this brooding on past troubles and fretting about some foreboding future yet unseen?
Share in the closing refrain from the Irish folk song, “The Parting Glass”:
But since it has so ought to be
By a time to rise and a time to fall
Come fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all!
I have no resolutions; so little of this past year seems resolved. I have responsibilities and unfulfilled tasks and hovering demons aplenty, but let us pause a moment in this rare quietude to let the little mice of joy creep in from the corners. A young girl’s laughter, a little boy’s raised eyebrows, an afternoon walk with a teenager grown suddenly voluble, a recollection shared with a beloved companion – there is time enough to fall, time enough to mourn, but time as well for a smile if we but make it so. What we keep and what we carry – may they rest light upon our shoulders tomorrow.
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What Shall We Keep?
(a moment in Ireland, where the world ends)
And the answer that comes back
is the wind off the Irish sea.
Not to be, not to see,
beyond understanding.
This damaged flesh we hold,
a fortress against nothing,
like the ruined Viking towers;
exclamations left
after the words are erased.
Should we care what wind blows
our dust into tomorrow?
Could we feel the rain
that washes clean the green face
of this unsceptred isle?
Would we matter when
even our names are washed
clean as the stones in those
abandoned churchyards?
Somehow, blessed between green
and gray; sometime, bound between
the blaze of Fall and white Winter
I have loved you and maybe
that is answer enough.
Bradley R. Strahan
from A Parting Glass, BrickHouse Books, Baltimore, MD; © 2014 Bradley R. Strahan
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“A remembrance of Ireland” is how Brad Strahan describes A Parting Glass, his collection inspired by a year in Mallow, County Cork. His wife Shirley had “filled the long-vacant post of organist” and in addition to the congregation of St. James, Church of Ireland, they were welcomed into the community of poets. These fourteen poems are themselves a spare congregation, the lines spare, reverent, musing, and infused with the philosophy of rain-washed green island and mossed stones in ancient churchyards.
Fitting and more than fitting are these poems for the final few days of another roiling storm-tossed year. These are the days when we plant our feet and hope to feel what anchors us to the turf before the next year launches forth, uncertain, yes, but bright and hopeful for what it may discover. This is the reckoning, the nod of acquiescence when my grandson calls out to me, “Old man!”, the acceptance that a new year is no newer than any day which begins with taking another breath.
Read these poems in the warm companionship of ghosts that welcome your presence. Read and find company with the distant traveler and the warm hearth. With days of green and gray passed, passing, yet to pass. Raise your glass, all of us raise our glasses to the joy that may find each one.
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Hymn
Winter, solid to the bone,
melts in the music.
Colored light pearls
the faces in the wooden pews.
The news, good or bad,
has no foothold here.
The cold rain and snow
vanish in a flame of song.
Here we robe our tarnish
in vestments of harmony:
snow crystal bells
and a storm of organ-sound.
Here we are, not what we are
but what we would be,
notes on a purer staff,
leaning hard from brass to gold.
Bradley R. Strahan
from A Parting Glass, BrickHouse Books, Baltimore, MD; © 2014 Bradley R. Strahan
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A Book of Common Prayer
(St. James Church, Mallow)
Let me not for the flowers
by the altar placed.
Let me not for the windows
that gleam with grace.
Let me not for the music,
simple voices raised.
Let me still recall
the goodness that amazed
though nothing follows
being in this state of grace:
no more smiles, no more roses
and none there to embrace.
Bradley R. Strahan
from A Parting Glass, BrickHouse Books, Baltimore, MD; © 2014 Bradley R. Strahan
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NOTE: if you would like to purchase a copy of A Parting Glass from Bradley Strahan, please comment on this post or email me at comments@griffinpoetry.com.
++++++++++++++++++++++ Thanks! — Bill
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