Not the Irish woman with hair as fierce as her soul.
Not the Scottish lass, tough and quick of wit.
Not the Welsh mam with a heart big enough to feed a village.
Just a lonely little English girl.
Straight brown hair, the colour of ash or oak or some old tree.
There's no lore or magic in me.
No wildness to be reborn.
My ancestors are silent and still, like a Sunday in June.
Unknown pirate treasures, lost. No map. No x.
They worked the land, and maybe the sea.
I know that hand —
rough, worn, never still.
Their stories travelled shorter distances than their feet
walked those heavily ploughed fields.
Too tired to sing. Too tired to tell.
There's no gypsy child, magic child.
Just a little working girl,
tired from hundreds of harvests grown.
The warm soil between my toes
feels like a hug from so long ago.
The birds, the wind, the sound of the sea —
I listen for the stories,
for the memory of something I've never been.
They all left before she learned how to listen.