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Those Reels
skip from Billy’s accordion
skim the polished floorboards ’til
they land up under your heels
then swell into a pulse
that tips the scales of reticence
holding you fast.
Into a circle of arms
now twining, now reaching by,
the notes come skittering
alive in the glistening of flushed
faces, arched along flexed
calf muscles, legs
that spring against the gravity
of measured days. So out of place
in the city, these tunes
when they spill out
over the urgent bass
of sidewalk rap, above
the din of tin cans
and scrap in a pushcart, from the window
of a smoky bar—a stream
of flute, soft and absurd
as sheep would be, grazing in Bayview Park.
Yet there’s more beneath
this breath. Under
the taut-stringed fiddle’s a fire: grief
pressed to oil, to wine
to a dance
on the exile’s grave.
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Kathleen O’Toole is the author of four poetry collections, most recently This Far (Paraclete Press, 2019). Her poems have received numerous honors and prizes, and have appeared in such publications as America, Christian Century, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Spiritus. The former Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, O’Toole is a longtime community organizer who finds joy in birding, biking, sailing the Chesapeake, and in Irish music and dancing.
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Tomas O’Maoldomhnaigh, Fleadh Ceili Ennis, 2018.
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