The Emigrant's Suitcase

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Object No. 95 Emigrant's suitcase, 1950s

National Museum of Ireland - Country Life

As I stand on the pier, icy air. 

Salt spray, sleet, stings my face. 

I look to the sea and there, 

My future is ahead of me.

–

Battling the tendrils of the abyss 

HMS Valkyrie 

Surging through the icy darkness 

To port. To me.

–

I brace, water surging all around 

Mighty waves clash with steel. 

As my heart races, 

I glimpse sunlight 

And know we have arrived.

–

But to no land or safe harbour 

It is the sea we came for, 

Or what lies beneath 

This heaving swell.

–

We ready the sub, anticipation. 

Plunging the depths, excitement turns to terror 

There! A behemoth, the unsinkable. 

Titanic.

–

Beauty, magnificence, sorrow. 

A briny grave, a place of screams 

Listen. See. 

See there, something calling softly.

–

No Davy Jones locker, but a humble suitcase 

Carrying dark secrets, treasure? 

A robotic arm explores, gently, gently 

No! I cry, as it dissolves into wet ash.

–

Not treasure revealed but ghosts… 

Floating towards me, a photograph. 

A young man cradling a baby girl 

And a young woman, smiling.

–

Delicate like the suitcase, fragile, 

Soluble. Wait! A fragment gently rests 

On glass, words materialise through gloom 

The dead do speak.

–

My sweetest Annabelle, I am truly sorry 

To have missed your first birthday. 

Daddy is nearly home, only a little while longer 

Yours forever, Finn O’Hara, your loving father.

–

For months I have been searching, 

Coming up to a year. Yet, here I stand 

In front of this small cottage door, 

What to say, how to act?

–

An auburn-haired boy shouts for his mum 

What can I do for you? Silence fills me 

I stutter with fear 

Is Annabelle here?

–

Her sadness fills the misty air 

Come through. A shrivelled old lady 

In a bed of cotton, 

Familiar soft blue eyes.

–

Silence takes me. Annabelle 

Looks straight through me 

I’ve something for you 

A scribbled note.

–

She stares, reads, tears on soft cheeks. 

Am I in heaven?  Are you an angel? 

I’m a messenger 

And he loved you.