WILD GEESE

by Frances Browner


We all used to gather in the Wild Geese,
our home away from home.
Had we grown wings and flown?
Or were some of us forced to take flight?

Many were rooted to the bar, on the same seat
every night, looking out onto Broadway.
There were no theatres here, no neon lights,
only a wide road and a park on the opposite side,
red brick apartment blocks to the left and right.

We were a family of sorts, our homeland binding us
together - laughter, craic, banter. There was despair
too in some eyes, little spoken of, unless at four o’clock
in the morning, when the bar was quiet, one or two left.

That’s when the stories came spinning,
when loneliness set in
and relationships slung together, with hope.

We got married young, an older Irish lady
told me, because we wanted to make a home,
away from home.

* * * * *

Frances Browner, creative writing tutor, lives in Greystones, County Wicklow, where she curated Poets Wall 2020 and Poetry Trail 2021. Her fiction and memoirs have appeared in magazines and were broadcast on Irish radio. Poems have been published in Ogham Stone, Boyne Berries, Bray Arts Journal, Skylight 47, Ink Sweat & Tears, Tales from the Forest, Ulster Voice, Cold Coffee Stand, Poems on the Edge, Poetry24, East Hampton Star, Montauk Sun, South Wales Evening Post, and Live Encounters. A haiku won Local Voices, 2020, and collection, Roots & Wings, was launched by Revival Press, 2019.