Poem Twelve: How Blow-ins Become Locals

How Blow-ins Become Locals

My senior infant makes out the message
on a Denny's rasher truck: HOME
IS WHERE YOU MAKE IT
And we pass them again,
they're filing out the Leitrim Road
bending into the rain like willows:
Kurds heading for Lis Cara
under a useless golf umbrella.
Hey! There's our Kurds!

Last night our swallows blew in
from Africa chirruping in a disused shed.
Our willie wagtail's local and mighty territorial.
Then there's the one heard at a gate
near Drumkeerin: My hippie's cuttin' hay–
what's your hippie at, so? So
it begins– the circuit of us.