Goddess of the Woods

 

For my grandmother Fredacy Pray

 

She kissed the woods with her

Celtic goddess ways a lady slipper

Hiding in the deep opened itself to

Her hungry knowing eyes past the

Dust of the dirt road past the dirt

Of her life screwed up with divorces

Harshness beyond belief her prayer

Was Erin’s isle before St. Patrick

Came and placed the whole country

In religious exile she carried the blood

Of women born with Bridget bones

Here after the potato famine

Here nothing but insane poverty of the

American depression landscape starvation

Induced immigration did not save

Her from harshness that

So many years of war had built into

The skin of her Irish DNA I loved

My grandmother, though she could

Not help but die of a brain tumor before I was two.

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