Finding ways to describe you
Each of you
Different, yet similar in your quest
No matter what side, who’s side, which side
One step in front of the other
on my journey, sending letters
ringing you up from tiny
youth hostels, dredging thru rain
sunless skies and cloudy afternoons
winding buses
lots of walking all to
find you each of you, on different sides
of town, on one side of the wall and then
on the other.
Up at the Quaker meeting house
they told me the IRA used to cap
fellows knees on the green hillside
along the road leading up to the house.
At the Quaker house, women met in
secrecy, protestant and catholic young
mothers, seeking services for themselves
and for their children. I rode in the white
van with the women as they traveled
back to their neighborhoods in Belfast.
May Blood, union rep:
We drove by the factory
where she spent 30 years of
her life, working her way up
from factory girl to shop steward.
In the 1980s, the old factory closed
down for good after nearly a century
Soon after, May Blood opened
The Early Years, a daycare
center for low-income Belfast babies.
Then she went on to city council and finally
to the House of Lords.
Mairead MaGuire’s young niece and nephew
were killed by an IRA man driving a car while
running from the police.
Mairead’s sister later committed suicide.
Mairead co-founded Peace People in 1975,
a national peace organization in Northern Ireland.
She later went on to receive the Nobel Peace
Prize.
