Thomas James McGowan

Father died in Altnagelvin Hospital
in the year of nineteen seventy one
Ospidéal Alt na nGealbhan in Irish
It means High place of the birds
My father Thomas James McGowan
Born in eighteen eighty five he was
in the trenches of France in WW1
up to his knees in the muck of death
my beloved doubting Thomas taught me
to love peace he was like a blackbird
and when he died in that sparse room
my mother tried to join him desperate
willing
the very soul out of her body to go
with him then and there into the
valley of the shadow with no fear
into the void of blackness his
staff his comfort still my dear father
who taught me tongue twisters of mind
A creel of peat and creel of clod a
creel of heathery mountain sod...
Three grey geese in a green filed grazing
Grey were the geese and green was the
grazing...She sells sea shells by the sea
shore. He said the alphabet in Irish. He was
a man of answer only to my mother who
guilted and goaded him into loving her

His coffin rested on two chairs in the
good room the sitting room behind the
door his face pasty and his skin cold as
in the  living room recited the Lord's Prayer
and sang Abide with me fast falls the eventide
the darkness deepens Lord with me abide
Over a hundred people stood about in the yard
all men dressed in the funeral suits silently in 

grey light of the first day of nineteen seventy two
His coffin was taken out thru the sitting room window
and the men carried him shoulder high up the road
they walked him in procession about half a mile
loaded him into a black hearse bound for Mountcastle
My mother forbid me to show my face outside the door
to help the men carry him as he had carried me before
with humor and gentleness he said he paid his way to
heaven every Sunday at Donehady Presbyterian Church
as the gold plated red velvet collection plate was passed
he would place a coin he said would pay his fare to heaven
I am sure the blackbirds guided him upwards and onwards
Thomas James McGowan did I ever tell you just how much
you meant to me my father may father abuser father loved
a complexion of sorrow pity grief anger and heart for you
Thomas James McGowan up to his knees in the trenches