Megeen R. Mulholland

Folks Songeneration

At last I tried to make it last, the last some her I spent at Cailleach’s dim and dust he home with shingles and shutters. Lull gone by, I fell to sleep without leaping sheep but to song: Seesaw, Margery Draw sold her bed to lie in straw. Wasn’t she a naughty girl, to sell her bed to lie in straw? Do knot pit he her. Scornful, yes, sorrowful, yes, mournful, yes, but know pit he. See, I saw Margery Draw sell her bed as the last straw seized. Kneeling before an altar of stars, my twinkling mind threw the little night and the blank kit from my own pre a droll and scent bed.

It sticks, flickering high in the pane, does the little match girl shiver in Cailleach’s attic? Atick dickory dock the mousey one ran, struck down. Warm me with hickory. Cailleach sets the clock hours ahead to job Seanfhear out on time. He sings Itsy Bitsy Spied Her before he flies, wheezing a monstrous spider with his largely gnarled hands. The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the whatsabout. Down came the reign and cursed the spider doubt. Out came the son, overcome with shame as he always spied her turning back the clock again. Hee strides the drive, then sides the walk away around the spurner.

Wee sit in the striped lawncares of Cailleach’s yard hummming: Lazybones, sleeping in the sun, how you going to get your day’s work done? Lazy ones, to keep from being shunned, how you going to rouse that daze from him? We avoid the gaze of the garage as its menacing windows beckon, but his double doors swing closed as if he’s not there, Seanfhear. 

We ghost inside for an our as the world turns in the awe full dark pallor having our fill far after noon, soaping the drama clean. Sit on a cushion. As the whirled, turning dark, swoon in each other’s arms awfully all noon. Seaming fine so. Cailleach and me, cameo and ivory, television lathered in bubbling chatter. Heroic flakes snowing on our ours for hours, downy. You shall not wash dishes will you, all the days of our lives, nor feed the swine be mine?

You shall not wash dishes will you, my guiding light, nor feed the swine be mine? You shall not wash dishes will you, as I search for tomorrow, nor feed the swine be mine? God bless, grace in the cottage, strawberries in the hall, sugar upon cream, sup over us all.

After dIn here Seanfhear and his lady, birds, children one, crept and accepted lIttle vessels, theIr covers flung up lIke shImmerIng cymbals fly away, fly away, fly away home, all aglow, not yet gone in the lIght of jarrIng fIreflIes warming home brIght as wIld famIly fIre embers who wIll dIe before mournIng.


Megeen R. Mulholland has published widely in literary journals, and her books of poetry, Crossing the Divide and Orbit, feature ekphrastic poetry inspired by snapshot photography. Her work has been deemed “a fascinating arrangement of text and image.” Her work has appeared in Modern Language Studies, James Joyce Quarterly, and Journal of Poetry Therapy, among others.