Trad Night

We can’t seem to turn the jigs off.
One time in a pub in Dublin alone
I wept, not because I am Irish
or through solidarity with
oppressed peoples of the world
but because I am no one
in solidarity with nothing,
born of a long line of
melancholics undone
by medium-high intelligence
on the frozen edge of Canada. 
God save me from 
the St. Lawrence River,
flowing through a wormhole
straight from Bantry Bay,
sweeping up
the strangest scraps of French
I’ve ever heard, hurled
like river rocks
in angry Agnes’s hands
and smashing through a crucifix
somewhere far downstate,
at the closing of her life.
Once a Catholic, 
my father laughed,
you know the rest.
How did we get here,
two trad hours later,
in Sunnyside, Queens,
on a day as frozen as 
a North Country spring,
discussing DNA like
it means anything.