Christina

 Christina McDonagh

Christina the baby, one of thirteen, 

Reared in the Dairy numbered twenty 

On old Castle Street, in dear Sligo town

Beside the bookmaker Kilmartin’s. 

Impossibly exotic to a fellow of five

Impressed by the hair up in a bouffant 

Shapely high heels and ruby red lipstick 

The height of high style in the black and white fifties. 

Playing golf in Strandhill, cycling to swim

Going on far cruises, she never stayed in

She escaped to the office to tot up the sums

She was ever full of devilment and fun. 

I remember the fifties when she worked round the corner

The Austin Princess for glamorous weddings 

When big cars were big and impossibly plush

In a decade severe and so simple. 

Josie and Teenie bought their house

High on the hill on the road to the Point

Alas Josie never managed the move

From quiet town Centre to wild ocean road. 

Christina carried on riding her bike

Cycling each day to the sea

A figure bent over the bars

A character that lasted the years. 

Active and free like the wind

Until old age reeled her in, 

But still a familiar sight

In a Sunday hotel in Bundoran. 

Her days in the nursing home busy

Reading the paper each morning. 

Never a complaint from her lips 

Everything ‘grand’ was her motto. 

The last to arrive, now the last to take leave 

The end of a story that began last century 

In police barracks back in Glenties

In the turbulent year of nineteen fifteen. 

The end of an era in Sligo

With descendants all over the land

We mourn for Christina the baby 

And for each of the McDonagh thirteen.