House of Spirits
Prose Poem
By Greg Patrick
“Away, come away: Empty your
heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl
round, Our cheeks are pale,
our hair is unbound.”- Willam
Butler Yeats, Riders of the Sidhe
All Hallows Eve cast its dark spell. How far he ventured astray into the rain and mist he
could no longer tell. How long had it been since he was home? Son of Traveler blood
cursed to roam. Across the horizon working the odd job just to earn a few bob.
So many familiar faces now gone once again standing on Erin's greenest shore the
prodigal son.
He just kept aimlessly walking haunted by the echoes of the past talking
past the caravans ignoring their wares and hawking. The road was now dirt.
The wind intensified and he felt out of his element in just a shirt,
returning to his native soil after years of foreign toil.
A gathering storm swallowed the sun. Too many memories here. No energy to run.
He lingered by a lonely pilgrim’s shrine remembering the girl to whom he would have
proposed in the Celtic twilight where proud Cuchulain strode and Samhain eve when
the Dullahan rode its great black stallion that galloped and snorted as the faer people
on the old standing stones cavorted. He remembered the stories by the peat fireside
confronting Samhain even when the Sidhe warrior don bright helms to ride seeking to
steal a mortal bride yet he knew true monsters bore a human face. Here in the remote
stretch of the Burren sought solitude from the urban race.
How long had it been since a drunk driver took his love losing faith in a God above?
He returned from Australia to his native soil weary from the loneliness of foreign of
work and toil.
He stood aloof and shunned at her wake, not touching a drop of drink or a crumb of
cake. He stepped into the night, exhaling a steaming sigh. Why of all people was it her
that had to die? He walked out to nowhere under a brooding angry Irish sky.
The punishingly chill wind swept his soul with a ghostly singer's voice
and caress as he envisioned his Maeve when he first saw her in a green dress.
He remembered when they last kissed as he was enveloped in a wave of mist.
He thought of their last night together dancing with her eyes outshining the stars as
she graced the floor in a feis dress. He closed he shivered at the mist's ghostly caress
where night falls even as legends rise. His breath steams as he sighs
feeling like a scribe with no tribe. The muse left with her curse to utter no song.
He did not compose lyrics in so long. The muse eluded him as he shivered in the
raven's shadow of mourning. Yet he dared love Maeve despite the gods all but
screaming a silent warning.
Dark clouds swallowed the moon. He tried to raise his spirits by singing the
rising of the moon yet thunder roared, drowning out his tune.
He shook in the rain memories slithering like electric eels through his brain.
As he was immersed in shockingly cold rain, he thought he could see her,
his Maeve calling to him. His life's delight and pain. She seemed hailed in shimmering
iridescence as he staggered towards that radiant presence. The dream cut as deep
as a sacrificial dagger. He clutched his heart and began to stagger.
“Maeve!” he called out in vain, his lost love in sight hailed in cold tears of rain.
He staggered blinded by the rain that roared like a passing train.
Then music reached his ears. Yes, it was. “The Rising of the Moon” he hears.
A village and a pub in this lonely windswept place where he thought to disappear
without a trace. A world away from the urban race.
He passed from the storm-swept night to one of the music, song and fire burning bright.
It felt eerily wrong as if he were a wayward mortal as if he crossed into the sidhe realm
through an Elvish portal.
He lingered at the threshold haggard shivering, and cold eyes haunted by stories
untold.
He tried to find a lonely place by the warmth of the hearth to brood offering a polite nod
to the patrons not wanting to be rude.
Yet he looked into eyes as green as meadows of dream not seen her like since losing
Maeve to the banshee's scream.
He stood up only to swept away into a dance, a reel closing his eyes into his partner’s
embrace. The music grew louder and more wild. He went from feeling as old as the
hills to giggling like a child.
He was drawn into the depths of her Celtic sea green eyes as if lost in a trance
on a night where old wounds ached in the cold feeling as empty as a man whose soul
was sold.
Red lips like reopened wounds as the stranger girl whispered a song in his ear as his
eyes shed a tear he felt the sensation of falling then flying.
“Am I alive then or dying?”
His dreams passed like a shadow in the night amid red leaves falling.
He awoke not in a lonely room but groggy and disorientated sheltering
under the slab of an ancient lord's tomb.
"I shall arise and go now is that not what you said Mr. Yeats?”
Time once more to stand and challenge the fates.
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