Across The Channel: Whenever, Wherever Poem by Dennis Ryan

--for my sons Shawn and Devin Ryan and my friends David Herd, English poet, literary critic and professor of English at the University of Kent, and Isobel Nash, a graduate of Vassar College

Saturday, January 30, 2010; Saturday, July 16, 2022; Monday morning, March 27, 2023

'Past the bluff. That's the way to go... The tide is coming.
You must go... Think of me from time to time... I want to know
there's more to this life, and I can't know that if they kill you. Please. Go.'
--Isolde speaking to Tristan in TRISTAN AND ISEULT, a medieval chivalric romance

Ireland-Wales--that battle-torn history after the fall of Rome.
The return home of the warrior thought to have died in battle—
'So you aren't dead? '—'No, I am delivered.' 'To bring you
back a wife without spilling one drop of blood? ' 'Even so.'
Just so. That—to join two kingdoms, unite two strengths,
strength for strength, arm for arm, eye for eye, hand
for hand so that they are, we are, you are, I am, whenever,
wherever.