THE OLD GUIDE

(for my cousin, Frank Connors)

 

 

                        Some things never changed,

                        my tourists working hard

                        for their two weeks a year

                        out of the private yard.

 

                        A mountain in a green sea,

                        an island in a blue:

                        it was there for them

                        where the roads don’t go.

 

                        I could show them hope,

                        the journey into self

                        from lives too great to bear,

                        from lives too strait to wear.

 

                        With places never went

                        and people never knew,

                        they found themselves familiar

                        as if had been there ever.

 

                        The way we warm to towns

                        with one of everything

                        and all in harmony,

                        seasoned and unspoiled,

 

                        or how we give our all

                        and serve the least of Man

                        so what is fundamental

                        in our nature wins,

 

                        we find what’s truly needed

                        when the junk is gone.

                        All is there that matters:

fire, water, stone.