The faithful start this day sitting
on planked benches, watching  musicians
gather one at a time on the far stage
Irish Breakfast Tea steeps in our cups  
We hold soda bread wrapped in paper napkins
This is not Bewley’s on St. Stephens’s Green
At the thrum of the bodhran all lean forward
as one body giving a foot-stamping
hand-clapping welcome to the drum’s insistent beat
Uilleann pipes wail   Flutes trill
The concertina weaves familiar melodies
Morrison’s Jig and McCloud’s Reel
slips and horn-pipes wind around us 
enclosing players and listeners
in a whirl of song and sound
We all watch the fiddler, weaving
and swaying her way through tune
after tune and are not content until she stands
before us, body bent into her own music
bow stroking the strings  She creates for us
a quiet space     a hush for us to enter 
And takes us to the hills of Connemara,
the sweep of Dublin Bay and the harbor of Cobh,
beginnings and endings
evoking memories and stories of life
across the sea and our own time and place
Now it is my grandmother’s sweet tea with milk
that cools in a saucer before me
and Mother’s feet jigging in place as they did
when she grew too old to dance
I sit in an August sun softening into autumn 
The music caresses me
the song of the fiddle opening  my heart

© by Kathleen Phillips.
Used with the author’s permission.