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?