Irish-Canadian Proud Poem by Francie Lynch

I'm looking at three pictures,
A collage of brothers and sisters;
And I'm in my mother's arms,
Days before leaving Ireland.

Six months later, in our new home,
On a couch in our front room,
We pose again.

There's a TV in the corner of that room,
As testament to our new found boon.

There's thousands of miles between those shots,
And loved ones left behind,
Never to be seen again:
That's how it was way back when.
No Face Time, What's App and few landlines,
A letter each year with a Christmas Card rhyme.

Brothers and sisters are missing,
Laying in the church yard,
And yet my mother smiles,
All the while.

Fast forward sixty years.
We six are posed again,
Sharing four hundred years of life,
Seven hundred left behind.
Famine, penal laws and hedge schools,
Vikings, invasions and Imperial rule.

We six stand, shoulders touching,
Between us family missing;
Here and gone before the shutter closed,
A partial story as pictures go.
But the family grew, and the family shrank,
And then full- blossomed more.

We're Irish proud,
Some of Canada's best:
Etch Irish-Canadian,
When we're laid to rest