The Turn

by Deborah Moffatt

Half a life, I’ve left behind,
an old pair of shoes in Bundoran,
a skirt in Glenties, journeys lengthened,
roads travelled twice, a ferry nearly missed
as back and forth we raced between Cavan
and Larne to collect my flute forgotten
in Cootehill, my passport in Donegal
returned by mail, my wedding ring
nearly lost forever.

Everything else I kept safe,
every tune I ever heard or played
in public houses the length of the land,
night after night from Baltimore in Cork
to Ballycastle in the north, pints drooling,
jigs and reels streaming, the smiles and tears
of Erin in every liquid eye, peaty smoke clinging  
to my hair, my skin, my clothes, every note
lingering in my lungs, my heart, my blood,

and by day, remembering
the forgotten, retracing our steps
through lonesome Glenade in a mist
of amber and grey, the last of summer
fading, on the radio Seamus Heaney purring
as if to reward me for my carelessness, returning
again and again a necessity, like the turn of a tune,
a beginning and an ending. an answer
to a question understood.