Aubade

“Children on the street,
still playing their games, smiles
on their faces have never changed –
I hope it’s all the same,
I didn’t leave in vain...”

The end of a long night
spent in silent vigil,
inside a downtown,
Dublin church...
and still they come.

Beneath lime-washed walls,
laths and beams absorb
his fleeting presence;
assure tomorrow’s dawn
he will always be remembered.

As first light breaks, through
ancient, Irish doors, his soul –
transported, mingles
with the mist and slowly rises,
on a sombrous, autumn morning.

So assembles the cortege;
horse-chestnut trees –
gold, bronze and orange,
lay down their leaves
in simple homage.

Mourners mourn a boy,
well travelled, but whose roots
were firmly planted in the fertile,
Gaelic soil. A boy with the voice
of an angel, borne on the wind,
steadily it drifts, way and beyond

the picket fence. Bound
for the other side
of a whitewashed moon
and its promise
of a silver revelation.