The Irish American Knitter

 

This summer I facilitated a writing circle
at the local library. We chatted before group.
Talk turned to heritage... "I'm Irish," I claimed." My
people came from County Clare, the poorest
of the poor."

"And what was your mother's name?"
Agnes asked.

"Lynch," I said.

"My mother was a Lynch," she said,
with pride.

"Was she?" said the woman to my
left. "My mother was a Lynch."

The synchronicity of it all, well,
it took the breadth away.

I came home and dug out
multiple skeins of Bernat's
Killarney and started knitting
the vest pictured above.

And then I looked for my
copy of _The Irish-American
Women Poets._
I found the poem I needed.
It is titled: For Mary Lynch
by Mary Swander.

And the picture of your father, his fields
dried up, the potatoes shriveled to the size
of your fingers, then curled back into the earth,

everyone else gone...

It seems that the Lynch women have created
another more loosely knit family, Mary.
I thought it might be important to the old ones
to know about our meeting... perhaps
they would grieve less.