September 5, 2020

I met with our solicitor here in Ireland as we are buying out Jack’s half share in the cottage and signing the papers is a major reason for my being here. I was guided to the conference room to sit at one end of a long table. As the solicitor came in, settling at the other end of the table and organizing his papers, he gave me the standard spiel about their distancing and cleaning procedures including the fact that the pen they would give me to sign the papers would go home with me. However no masks were required at this point.

Then he stopped, leaned toward me across the table, and said, “I weary of the long sorrow.”

“Now, do you like poetry?” he asked. And with my nod he was off. He shared the source and history of what he had quoted and then launched into two other poems about the nearby coast line. “Do you know the Flaggy Shore?” he asked. I do. “I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. Now there’s that one and another which you must yourself take down to the Flaggy Shore and recite while looking across Galway Bay.” I wrote down the information about the poems and poets and then we turned back to the business at hand.

I smiled to myself. Only in Ireland. Only in Ireland.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com