Hearth Stone

I am Máire.
But here they call me Mary.
I've green blood flowing through me
But they laugh and tell me it's red,
They're liars, the lot,
For I come from a land of every green hue:
Beryl and Bice and Basil;
Sage and Seafoam and Sap;
I lived on that land,
And that land lives in me.
My blood is a roiling majesty of
Pear and Pine and Pea.
I was a princess of
Jade and Juniper and Mint and Moss.
But that dream was long ago.
Long before they turned our potatoes to black
Before they came in shipfulls and made us slaves.
I can scare remember Gaelic now, the language of our Fairy Lands.
Daily I practise speaking without my accent
So that I can make enough of their dollars in order to eat
In this strange and dark new land.
We thought we'd be free on the main lands,
Our children no longer starving to death.
But here I've learned a terrible truth,
One much more frightening than starvation in death,
A Judas betrayal, and not even for thirty coins
For when someone asks from where I hail, I say Canada as easily as a kiss.
I traded in my clan's hearth stone for a slow and painful death.