There's No Place Like Home

Image borrowed from Bing


There's No Place Like Home


The man from County Mayo in Ireland sits in a pub
in London, a Saint Patrick's day badge pinned upside
down on his good shirt. It is reduced to tatters, the
shamrock nearly invisible to the eye.

The badge was attached to his shoulder bag when he
departed the ferry in the seventies. London town
loomed large in his mind like a carnival. Forty years

on and the innocence of a boy accustomed
to nodding hello to everyone on the road to the sea
he lived on, has been tarnished.

He sits in a pub with ceili music playing, mourning
an Ireland that only exists in the old boys' minds.
He drinks a pint to Ireland and hugs his drinking mates,
in a rare burst of emotion. The men look shyly at their
feet, the emotion embarrassing them.

Across town in glossy pubs and sushi bars, the young
Irish drink cocktails and wear designer labels.
They toast their country too, a country of new buildings
and cafes that rival Paris.

But when the ceili music comes on, they too mourn
their birthplace and pick up their cell phones
and phone home.

Ireland is a state of mind, a theme park,
a kind of Disneyland, for those who leave.

Only the emigrant can truly know the magic spell
it weaves.

They have all become a version of Dorothy
in the Wizard of Oz.

'There's no place like home'.

Brigid O'Connor

Posted over on her site Sort of Writing
Listed as #4 over on Magpie Tales 57