St. Patrick

At Tara Manor, a long way from the Emerald Isle,
bold deer emerge at night to nibble the Hosta
Lilies and desecrate lawn and flowerbeds. They
arrive all curious, ears twitching, tails raised,

a wonder for some, a plague for others, culled,
last year, to no effect, with mothers giving birth
this spring to triplets and twins. Dead in a ditch

they resemble the Irish Elk, raised from damp,
peat bogs, or long-dead moose, white rib-cages
air-filled, ghosts galloping down Ghost Road.

He didn’t establish aquaculture. Salmon,
bringers of Celtic wisdom, spirit beings not
to be confused with commercial products,
but repositories of knowledge, swimming

Wikipedias to be consulted like oracles and
relied upon in difficult times. Where now do
we go to trust the truth, CNN, Fox News, CBC,
The Daily Gleaner, The Telegraph-Journal?

Commentary:

Yesterday’s post  https://rogermoorepoet.com/2019/08/26/think-about-it/  started a dialog about whom do we trust for information and how and why do we trust them. Today’s poem continues the same theme, but in a different format and with very different words and intent. Traditional wisdom, and the time to think things out carefully, is lost, save among the indigenous. Our times demand speed, hurry, instant decisions, merciless schedules f do, do, do, and little time for think, think, think.

What is this life, if full of care, / we have no time to stand and stare?” The Newport / Cas Newydd (Wales) poet |W. H. Davies expressed this well in his poem Leisure, full version here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_(poem)  Stop the world, I want to get off. Many have made the request, few have managed it. Yet all of us feel, at one stage or another, the need to ‘get away from it all’. So, what are you going to do about it? Do you even have five minutes to sit down and think … answers to be written on rice paer, folded neatly, and floated out to sea in a pea green boat manned (if that’s the right word) by an owl and a pussy cat.