At the Breakfast Table with W. B. Yeats

The morning news descends upon us, A heavy veil of sorrow. The floods, fires, forever wars. Refugees struggling for footing somewhere else.

When suddenly, bowing over her breakfast plate, My sister says, “I want to be the stolen child.” Lines memorized so long ago, so much forgotten, Still, the refrain remains, in her heart, now on her tongue.

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

And these silver words pull us From our weeping, from our grief, deeper than we could have imagined, To the poet’s wild and watery world. Faery in hand, we close our eyes and linger, pure and happy.

But only for the moment,

Because we understand.