NEW YEAR'S GIFTS from Ardboe to the Bucket

The last day of 2018 brought a couple of unexpected gifts and I want to celebrate them here.

The first gift came via the internet and was a request from someone  I did not know to publish a poem that my mother had published  many years ago in "The POET'S Corner" of the Pawtucket Times.  This woman whom I did not know was asking  me as the poet's daughter and the supposed holder of copyright to  give permission  to publish it in Ireland on the COUNTY TYRONE Heritage site.

This request  would have pleased my mother and I felt her spirit hovering over us and bringing these things to pass. 

 I was so  glad to think that people in Ireland would be once again reading my mother's tribute to her first cousin.
We discovered Johnny Devlin--his mother and my mother's father Joe Coleman were brother and sister -- there when we went looking for what we feared were lost family connections in Ardboe in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. They opened their homes to us. My mother had loved watching and being included in the hereditary fisherman's life that they were still continuing on the Banks of Lough Neagh--the largest  lake in the British Isles. Lough Neagh is the place where eels returned every season and where  fishermen  for centuries since the time of  Saint Colmain and millennia before harvested on those shores.

Here is the poem _

An Ardboe Fisherman

Fisherman, loyal son of Ardboe

Reared by the shores of Lough Neagh

Poverty – ever your constant foe

Long ago caused you to stray.

Homesick – you returned to the old town

Walked to the diamond once more

Stood by the old cross of world renown

Vowed – never to leave this shore.

Out on the boat at the break of day

To haul in lines and the catch

Many a time you worked without pay

Bringing home a scanty batch.

Riding from Cookstown you’d fall asleep

Get soaked with the late night rain

Your old horse trudging hills low and steep

Till he brought you home again.

In your twilight years you sit and dream

Of those days when you were young

How you weathered the gales of life’s stream

And all your songs have been sung.

Daily you watch the sun rise and set

On the lough you love so dear

Able yet – to untangle life’s net

As you start another year.

Margaret Jenckes, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA

I love the fact that it is a perfect poem for New Years.  The poet imagines the fisherman untangling life's net  to prepare for the new year. 

When we had  visited and found our family on the lough shores, we did witness the daily routine of setting out vast nets with lines and baited hooks.Then when the catch was  drawn in the fishermen also  spent long hours sitting and untangling the lines and getting them ready to put out again.

In her poem Margaret imagines it as a metaphor for what we all do on a New Year's Eve-- reviewing the past and making the resolves and setting the goals for the coming year.
Of course, I sent  back an affirmative and the  person then   said that she thought that we were related.  I think she is right, and  again my mother has  brought the family that was lost to each other back together through her poetry. I hope that in the New Year I get to meet and speak to Mary Jarvis. 

 I was charmed when I first understood that the Irish I met in Ardboe used the word friend to mean family.

Never too late  in life to meet and  cherish a new FRIEND.