Liberty belle

The liberties came to me soon after I landed into the cold from the Promised Land

I learned a song about a girl called Daffy because she was born at the right time of the year

When yellow and proud flower beds are aplenty showing us the way into spring.

I sang that song loudly, as I always do, with more than a pinch of pride and fear in a voice I was trying to find and hear.

And then the laughter came and went around the hall echoing twice around its tick walls. I was mad then, breathing immediacy and confidence not to let their poxy laughter make me feel small

Is it me I said? or is it my poxy song?

It’s your poxy accent they said as they burst into song together you sound like a Dub ya little flower

And that is when I first my mermaid voice come out of my mouth, little Ariel on the Liffey

And for all the years that followed when I had a mother to hold my hand, we stepped on every stone of Thomas street into every single interesting or not shop, like a procession without Pomp nor circumstance.

We poured tea and more tea in Manning’s as we awaited our chariot home our fat cream buns reflected in the silver shining tea pot.

I have taken my Liberties over them, and I still dream of tiny brick houses where I could live, at the back of Saint Catherine’s. I dream with utopia and I listen to Bob’s everything is going to be alright with you old liberty belle as you push your trolley of treasures behind you, for you are still the archipelago of the free and the brave .

The shops are now less and we have more silver to cross elsewhere, they are bathed in light and nostalgia and so many times you shove your pain in powders while the power of your past lies hidden in the thick roots underneath all of our feet begging to be Lazarus

And now I go through you twice a day most days and I remember my mother, my mother young and walking with a jet of blue in the darkness of her hair and her flair, her beautiful upturned nose inhaling the smell of Hops in a new city.