Fiction
						
		An Indifferent Irishman Signs My Petition
		I ask if he can spare a minute and he says yes. This is about your ancestors and mine, I say how, forced off the land, they sailed west to Boston where, if they didn’t die on the way, they and their faith were scorned in the schools. He listens, a bit distracted I can […]
		I ask if he can spare a minute and he says yes.
 This is about your ancestors and mine, I say
 how, forced off the land, they sailed west
 to Boston where, if they didn’t die on the way,
 they and their faith were scorned in the schools.
He listens, a bit distracted I can see.
 He has work he’d rather do
 than listen to a lurid history
 told by a man too full of rue.
 He lumps me with the zealots and other fools
who have yet to learn that the fight is done;
 they won, but so did we, and a truce was called.
 We have the jobs they kept us from
 if we want them; why should history be recalled
 when there is now a fair if tenuous set of rules?
He hears me out and signs the sheet;
 it costs him nothing but a moment’s scribbling.
 He hands it back, I sense his need to be discreet
 with one who holds a grudge–there’s no use quibbling.
 What would his forefathers say, the fierce O’Tooles?