The sweet lady who finally revealed the way
from New Melrose to Old Melrose had said
we’d brought the sun to her day in a garden
of blooming flowers and trees and the wall

We then went down along to follow a creek
past the medieval ruin of the priory burb-
lIng its way to the River Tweed off to our left
the Scottish border just out of sight & what

We’d followed for two hours on the bouncing
bus to get to walking distance of where once
the Irish Celtic monks had built in just wood
their monastery in the huge horseshoe bend

That when I saw it on a map it reminded me
of a Horseshoe Bend in North Virginia where
my mother’s paternal family lived 100 years
that is 4 generations and actually then where

My great-great grandfather had stood guard
across the Bull Run Creek from Massachusetts
regiment commanded by that General Hooker
whose statue I confront every time I go on up

To demonstrate at the state house on Beacon
Hill but now as we make our way up, up a big
long hill that turns out to be where the Romans
built a fort on their farthest north ever that

Is the Antonine demilitarized zone of their time
many miles above Hadrian’s Wall we can see the
place of the three mountains before and behind
us as we make our way up, up the high ground

As far as we can get without crossing a busy road
where we look out at what we can not quite reach.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.