Alive, Alive O

Alive, Alive, O

To look around the corner of a time, a hovering,
and know that there is more, a gathered mist
of portent stealing comfort, roiling waters
calmed amid the dust trails of a heritage
that didn't want to be disturbed—
there's incentive for another breath,
another setback for the march of death
along the pathway of a life
that only stopped to wonder
just a while ago.

It is Molly Malone who calls us
past the curtain of the years, imploring
with a voice heard only as an echo,
as a haunting fantasy, perhaps
encrusted sentiment that moment
in the Dublin fog where we thought
we saw her there again.
How curious the parallel
that we would long to bring her back,

for it is history in all its darkness
that congeals into a strange nostalgia,
speaks in distant cries that it is we
who vivify the murky ghosts—
who see ourselves alive in Molly's shade!

It is the gentle earth that feeds us.
Consuming and consumed we share
an immortality we do not understand;
we are gifted, rising from the sea
no more confined, and still we hear
across the ages, Molly's cry
assuring us we do not die,
her voice across the square we know,
"Cockles...and mussels alive, alive O..."
~