A Song Poem by Matt Mooney

'Be singing a song', my father said.
They were often his parting words
whenever it seemed it might suit -
like when I'd be leaving for Kerry
and facing the long trip before me.
I knew every time that he meant it
for if he wasn't sad he was singing:
from his hospital bed in the finish,
it looked like his heart was broken
yet he sang for me a song he loved:
'The Rose of Mooncoin' with spirit.

Sitting on the side of the mountain
and I only a young lad less than ten
when it was the hay making season,
both of us looking across the land -
our own Galway Bay in the distance,
he sang 'The Valley of Knockanure'.
His soulful singing in that wild place
sprung a wellspring of peace forever.

True to form the last time we parted
before he was to die in the Regional,
he asked me to go across the street
to buy him a small drop of whiskey
he'd drink with this dear old couple
who had just dropped in to see him.
'Be singing a song', he said as I left
to drive back home to the Kingdom.
They were drinking the Baby Power
that I had just smuggled in to them.
Yes, I know it was small but I recall
he wasn't allowed strong drink at all.
But he always wanted to be sociable.