Mikey Kaminski is an Irish-American poet and dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, with ancestral ties to Galway through his maternal family. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, he represented the university at the Greater Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Festival in 2001 and was an invited speaker at the New England Poetry Conference in 2006.
His poetry has appeared in The Offering and Dead River Review. An educator for twenty-five years, Kaminski draws inspiration from family history, Irish mythology, and cultural inheritance. His greatest inspiration remains his son, Logan Michael Kaminski.
Bean Sí
the banshee who follows my Irish bloodlines: Ó Ruairc and Mag Uidhir—even across the Atlantic
Can I throw her off my trail?
Follow she does! The O’s and Mc’s.
So am I incognito—
a ski away
down Sugarloaf?
She could just glide and slide down
to the snowy finish line.
Drifting through mizzle,
thoughts of my own mortality.
Knows she does—
the Masque of the Red Death’s
hour hand;
the black ebony clock’s heavy
CLANG!
Jealous of my Muse,
the other woman
who follows,
but save her shrill—still she must
wait until the Lord’s Judgment
Day.
Echoing off the Cliffs of Moher,
Moher …
more …
more …
that trumpet blast,
that day will surely scatter
puffins.
A dog snarls at the Devil.
See him before us
he does.
Will she wail then
when the Reaper’s scythe
is nigh
to harvest
my last wisp
of hay—
ven?
Air of Distinction
In New England, autumn musk is an old scent
that my DNA catches a whiff of,
as a bloodhound encountering
a familiar spirit on the trail.
The veil is thin here in October,
seen like condensation on morning glass.
The breath of Éire’s ghosts.
When the Irish arrived centuries ago,
some brought the Old Sod
to Boston wharves
in steamer trunks—rings of the past,
like the trunks of hawthorn fairy trees.
And on these steamships,
the Druids embarked.
A Banded Shadow of Gold
for my grandfather, Stanley M. Kaminski, whose ring carries his stone and name through the generations, and my Irish grandfather, James McGuire
The cursed Hope Diamond—
the blues is all it knows.
The green of a king’s emerald,
Louis IX, in a poem
by Robert Lowell.
Who knows how much fire
my grandfather’s two-carat diamond
ring really holds?
Like my father and his father before him,
this lifelong companion—a banded shadow of gold.
The lights of many years
reflect from its table;
its crown wears the many colors
of a country patchwork quilt,
patched by family memories,
as the eye of heaven shines.
This faceted stone has seen an array—
without blinking.
Like my father and his father before him,
this lifelong companion—a banded shadow of gold.
Green and its forty shades
for my mother from Ireland—
like a chameleon, it mimics
the lush fields of Galway Bay.
Like my father and his father before him,
this lifelong companion—a banded shadow of gold.
Red is for me, Michael—
their firstborn of three sons.
A video replay of 1991:
the band was there
when the Tewksbury Redmen played
for the state championship—
the memory ever vivid
as the safety yellow of a field goal post.
Blue is for James,
named after his maternal grandfather,
the sparkle of his eyes,
the blue of the Merrimack River,
the stream imprinted on the day of his birth.
Beneath baby blue skies,
at Livingston Street Park,
with his father’s ring on hand,
Dad would watch James
play baseball—
fly balls in the air as an oriole flew.
Blazing orange is for Stephen,
an Orangeman of Syracuse.
The day he graduated from the university—
cap and gown—
the diamond widened
when the camera lens flashed.
Like my father and his father before him,
this lifelong companion—a banded shadow of gold.
As our family grows,
each grandchild, each new member,
intensifies the abundant spectra.
Like my father and his father before him,
this lifelong companion—a banded shadow of gold.
Only four—
it is Sammy’s heirloom now.
When he grows
to be a Kaminski man,
what chromatic glints
will burst
on his ring
finger?
This golden shadow…
he has been given for life.
Every family should have such a knowing jewel.
Like my father and his father before him,
this lifelong companion—a banded shadow of gold.