Catherine                                          5
      ~Corinne Bailey

Käthe Kollwitz (German 1867-1945)
Head of a Peasant Woman, 1905
Soft-ground etching (photo: Phil)

She tread upon these same mossy mounds,
on Mizen Head in County Cork,
a verdant jewel encased by silver sands.

She watched golden bays shimmering,
roamed these rolling rock hills,
ducked into thatched roof dwellings
smoky in the waning hours of dusk.

She shared famine’s feast of grief and shame,
before she sailed from this still unnamed bay,
and pondered the ancient stone circles,
mourned for her mother’s stillborn babes.

She pressed lips to headstones of her heritage,
and beheld this monolithic Celtic cross,
where only Catholics were laid to rest.

She walked upon these shores in the morn,
and perhaps never met another soul.
She left at sixteen to find the golden streets
rumored to pave the New City.

But instead of gold, all was grayed by
towering creations, filth and crowds.
There were no green hills vanishing
in the mists that rose from those gutters.

But still, the wild grasslands call,
whispering winds of a bejeweled isle,
"Who among you can dance?" it asks,
"We dance the dance of lovers," we cry.