Story And History Poem by James Mills

The poignant smell of whin blossom
mixed with turf smoke and Atlantic ozone.
We picked our way down a bouldered lane
onto a crunching Mayo beach
glittering and gull-loud.
I gripped their small hands
for fear they'd hurt themselves.

'What bird is that? ' they asked.
Some seabird lay dead among the stones.
I made up a name. Then a story,
of endless ocean flight;
of storms no man ever saw,
not even brave sailorboys
breasting to America
away, away from the blighted island.

'What else? ' they asked.
Fiction drained like sand
and I had to tell of Mayo men and Galway men
whose last-of-Ireland sighs
breezed ashore so long ago,
over these fatal Western rocks.

We chose a pebble to remind us
but there was never any need.