Place of The Irish

tell me a tale, an old irish tale or two,

one of a dirt floor southern saloon.

“how’d  you ever get to that river rat town,

top o’ the levee on the dirty mississip?”

there before the pinch of potato famine,

before ellis island and the irony of port savannah,

old word of mouth folk legend in panorama,

of a great celtic voyage across the atlantic.

tell me an irish tale of leaving the young maiden,

of the place of the irish beside the natives,

here long before columbus before colonist.

heard over slurring slainte mhath irish lilting true,

bottles and bottles of water of life clink, faraway

nightscream of the great mound on tullamore dew.

great grandfathers spoke of the duhare,

tall painted and tattooed kinfolk,

reared on the milk of the deer.

the lost people of one fire peacefully living

alongside the indians of the waccamaw river.

tell me a tale, an old irish folktale,

the people of one fire barely remembered.

another night at o'neill's saloon filled with fighting irish

weaving the tale over whiskeys, jokes, and coddle.

fair skinned, red haired, chasing the same rainbows,

landing on the southeastern shores before spanish.

welcoming siouan by the gem blue verdant lake,

immigrants built a new place of the irish.

the story half told when in blows tinwhistle.

tell me a tale, an old wives tale before battle,

carried dear and far in the heart of irish montana.

spread across from corinth to butte,

fighting words that took root

at o'neill's saloon, when memphis went yellow.

riverboat gambling, rent debt rambling, he could take

-but tinwhistle crossed the line and o'neill shot the fellow,

all for laughing at the story of the duhare.

tell me a tale of how it gets mottled,

how a british slave became an irish patriarch

shamrocks, snakes, and celtic triskele.

of how for one day only

everyone wants the luck of the irish.

keep your dirt floor saloon, says the judge,

but for defending yourself against your brother in law,

you lose all your land to the victorians.

the land you father passed on the trail of tears,

duhare walking with the indians.

top o the bluff from river to green pasture,

taken all lost to the power of one hand.

he brought down the gavel on the man that came early,

settling a city before founders thunder names turley.  

always a fairy tale of little people, the place of the irish,

the greatest story ever lost was of the giant duhare,

proven on petroglyphs of the rhinehardt boulder.