Monica De Bhailís

Dower House
(for my mother)

Many ghosts live here
in your fine old house on the hill
in the rookery.

Some of them you know very well -
they haunt you tenderly from certain chairs
or in prescient pauses at half-open doors
reminding you how many feelings can fit in a life
that is momentary.

Others are more hostile – cobweb squires, dowagers
seething in shadows on high ceilings
brushing against you at the turn on the stairs.
They say you don’t belong here but the house knows
You Are Mistress.

You outlive all and grow old among them
as windows fill with primaeval trees
staring and pointing at the crowds within
but bowing to your pre-eminence.
You stare back beyond wavy glass, finding the oaks
magnificent also.

Sometimes you wake in the night
to hear ghosts conversing with crows
who’ve been troubled by nightmares.
Your heart gets up to comfort them
and you start to speak but then you drift back to
uneasy sleep.

Your surviving children come and go
and mingle with the dead ones
so you can hardly tell them apart.
Their voices ring with urgency
as years pass and they all become more childlike
calling “Mother, listen – “

Don’t you remember the terror
when I would dream the future
of the house ablaze on the hill
and the screams of the family burning
inside her?

Didn’t I tell you while you hushed me
that above the flames and the canopy
rose a murder of crows’
cacophony?

This is home for many ghosts
but soon they’ll scatter scorched and screeching
our grief unspeakable.

For you, the highest branches.

I was raised in a rookery in County Wexford and, having transitioned through a number of former lives, I'm now emerging as a poet. I won the Red Line Poetry Contest in 2020 and was anthologised in "Hold Open The Door" the Ireland Chair of Poetry commemorative anthology. I'm @bhailis_de