Searching for Roots in County Mayo
Anna Egan Smucker
We were known as the Egans of the Holy Well
the friendly host of St. Mary’s Villa tells us:
by St. Patrick himself, that picked itself up,
traipsed down the hill, dropping its stones
along the way when a tinker made tea with its water.
And didn’t we notice those very stones across
from the house that might have been ours?
But it’s been years since that family grew old
and passed, leaving stacks of books and papers
to molder in their stone barn.
Wind bows the white heads of the cotton grass.
Croagh Patrick’s dark peak looms in the west.
In the twilight, as mist floats over the wet land,
Great Grandfather Patrick has cut enough turf for winter.
And down at the bottom of the holy well, treasure sleeps.
About the Author
Anna Egan Smucker is the author of nine books. No Star Nights
(Knopf) won the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award. Her newest, Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece, co-authored with Marc Harshman, was a Junior Library Guild Selection and an Amazon Book of the Month. Recipient of a West Virginia Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Award, her poems have been published in several anthologies and literary journals. Her chapbook, Rowing Home, was published by Finishing Line Press. A resident of Bridgeport, West Virginia, she is currently working on a full-length poetry collection.