Joanne Mathers

In the green fields of Donagheady
far from the cold streets of Derry
A man walks behind a herd of cows
Fat swollen belly full of milk cows
Milking time happens every day here
Great lumbering silent cows waddle
to the barn happy to be milked now
the heat rising of their fat backs
eyes gentle large brown define them

In the distant city a woman is dead
Shot at point blank range callously
Blood vibrant red spills on stone
A brilliant loving mother is dead
While her farmer husband works
She is breathing her last moments
Her thoughts reach for her son
That little boy with blond hair
Almost two years old now her Shane

Grandfather Ronnie is on the tractor
Ploughing up the earth for planting
He does not know his daughter is dead
Till the police arrive in the afternoon
He goes with them to the city to identify
His beautiful daughter in law her hair
Matted with such indifference still
Her green eyes closed for this lifetime
His heart breaks apart a year later
The memory of her sweetest lingers

My dear sweet happy smiling face Lowry
How could this happen to you ever
Your life your wedding your son
The farm the cattle the contentment
Taken away in the single bullet wound
I reached out across the miles to you
To your young baby and you now alone
My sweet dear friend what a sorrow
For you to carry and now thirty years
Later you can finally speak it all

They have dug up the memory of Joanne
To find the hooded man with the gun
In war there is only insanity of death
Your Joanne was collecting the census
Did she not hear the warnings did she
think that death was only what happened
to others in distance places not here
not here on this cold empty stone doorstep
but this is where she died alone a single
bullet into her heavenly brain forever
She was our Princess Diana Joanne Mathers