A lifetime, my Lifetime

A lifetime, my Lifetime

(English Accent and an Irish Name)

I am just one Immigrant child,

dressed from the trappings of poverty;

hand me down clothes clinging to me,

inherited from an inner-city dwelling.

A lifetime begins to utter its unique telling.

My parents sailed across an Irish sea,

to realise dreams of a new life

that motivated this trip from a familiar homeland,

to unfamiliar things, things as yet not seen,

where life was the craic, and everything was just grand!

One parent reached this soggy shore,

succumbing to his excessive drinking,

supposedly easing the challenge

of leaving behind on old lifetime,

slipping angrily towards despair, into sadness a deeper sinking.

I am happily playing

in the rubble of my decaying city streets,

these that fell down, to make way for new buildings,

for fresh enterprise, for promised security,

for that escape from a spiral of debilitating poverty.

Poverty that enwrapped me, and as some social historian might intone, trapped me.

I am a child,

I am oblivious to the stigma of that poverty,

not knowing any other lifetime but my own.

over the years though, oh how I have grown!

From twiggy, youthful limbs, to middle aged spread, then dieting from gluttony,

hurtling towards old age, while steading the trembling journey of my passing lifetime

I look back now,

turning my head from this middle-aged comfort,

a man forged in the cauldron of seeking an eternal experience,

though still engaged in this earthly lifetime, my lifetime,

where I have an Irish heart housed in an English frame, an English accent and an Irish name.

Fr Patrick Brennan December 2023 ©