In loving memory of Nora Lynch, Moveen West, Co. Clare, who died 27 March 1992 in her 90th year. RIP
by Thomas Lynch
“All winter we watch the fire,” Nora said.
“All summer we watch the sea.” Then she would sit
for hours, hunched over, elbows to knees,…
warming the palms of her hands to the fire,
smoking the cigarettes from the duty-free
shop in Kennedy I would always bring her.
Then rising up amid her wonderments
she’d look out westwards past the windowpane,
past Sean Maloney’s house gone derelict
in half a dozen winters of disuse
over hedgerow after hedgerow until her gaze
would fix on Newtown and P.J. Roche’s lights
where the lap of land rose upwards to the sea.
“I wonder if there’s anything at all.
I wonder if He hears us when we pray.”
This poem is an excerpt from a much longer poem by Thomas Lynch which appears in his poetry collection “Still Life in Milford.” Lynch is a poet, essayist, short story writer and an undertaker in Milford Michigan