Europa

We got hitched in Brussels,

Our friends gave us away.

Honeymooned in Germany,

I wished that I could stay.

We bought a home in Paris

Where the streets are paved with gold

And summered up in Iceland

Where the ice is never cold.

Found careers in Italy,

Put lira in a shoe

To save and go to Sicily.

What else were we to do?

Had our kids in Kosovo

Among the grass and flower growth

But schooled them up in Oslo, though

To start them off anew.

The years upend

Our roots and then

We’re shipping to the Netherlands

Then Luxembourg

Then France again

To dine in Saint Tropez.

Galway Girls and Celtic wars,

Those Isles, thick with metaphors,

They do well to remind us that our hair has turned to gray.

The Baltic states and Bucharest

Our bodies faded into dust

Put us out to sea to rest

No nation has our graves.

With land explored and love unlost,

No nation has our graves.