The Eye Of Faith Poem by Richard George

Bidston Hill, in Birkenhead:
sandstone broken by conifers
like the balding scalp of a geographer
gazing north and west.
Its views were renowned.
After a pint of Guinness,
my Taid would tell the pub he'd seen
Snowdonia from Bidston,
and he had, since I had too.
Then, over a second, he'd vow
he'd seen the Lake District:
and he could have done, in exceptional
atmospheric conditions.
But then, with G & Ts, he'd add
the Isle of Man to his conquests;
and finally, after a whiskey or two,
the mountains of Wicklow
over the sea to Ireland.
I laughed at him, of course,
with the obtuseness of affection;
affection still, but realizing
how his soul grew warm,
expanding with alcohol
out beyond the Mersey
and mud-flats of the Dee,
the Celts in a great sweep
from Scotland down to Brittany...
a diaspora returning.