I cannot claim this land is in my blood
(although my marrow was an almost-match
for someone in Belfast) but I’ve swallowed
the place down; its water and its crops:
its isotopes sequestered in my teeth;
its basalt columns layered through my bones;
all the rocks and trees and streams that fill
the fields between the Lagan and the Bann.
 
Geology that spilled out in my voice
when I told you that the water there is blue.
In England, the opinion was that I
should get back where you came from, Irish git.
Faint memories: but perhaps this ground,
the Mourne mountains and the Antrim glens,
that left me not quite Anglo-Saxon,
might recognise its mineral print in me.