We weren’t Irish, but sadness sung me to sleep

at night. Molly Malone wheeled her barrow

 

into my dreams, dying of a fever each time.

 

My mother’s voice more mourning dove

than the high soprano she loved.

 

It was the sweet collision of sound

 

that carried me from one world to the next.

I could fly on the backs of consonants or

 

smooth- soar into vowels.

 

My father’s voice was a deep nest in the dark.

Some wingless thing trapped in there.

 

When he sang, it was as if the Erl King arrived

 

in my room, crow-like  to feed bits of shadow

to the doomed child in the poem.

 

I never made it to the end of the songs

or felt so close again.

 

Sometimes I dreamt of feathers.

Sometimes I did not dream at all.

 

 

 

           

 

 *note: the title is from the lyrics of the Irish song Molly Malone

**note: "Erl King " is from a translation of a  poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe