The Tattie Howkers
A nod to the great famine in Ireland
Prose poem
A nod to the great famine in Ireland
Dough-faced women with black shawls,
a wrinkle on their beeswax brow,
re-tuning time-turned words
to meld each weathered song.
They trudge the long grey tapes of road
that bind villages and fields in casual marriage.
Centuries of fear and homage to the famine god
toughens the muscles behind their humbled knees.
Voices, weathered by the storms of life
sow seeds of hope
amidst the furrows of despair.
Footprints in the dust
mark the silent dance of generations,
in homage to the hunger deity
who casts his formidable shadow
upon this weary land,
and these bedraggled harvesters of sustenance.
The fields, once green with promise,
now bear the scars of deprivation.
The harvest, meager yet profound,
is a sacrament of survival,
a communion
shared among those
who have weathered
the storms of scarcity.
The Tattie Howkers trudge on,
flames that refuse to be extinguished.
A nod to the echoes
of ancestral determination
that still burn
in the darkest nights of adversity,
lighting the way
for generations yet to come.
(Tattie Howkers — Potato Pickers in Scots and Irish vernacular)
