"Old hatred drifted in", Long Island Poem for Martin Luther King Sunday

"This is a story handed down in my family, I heard it from my Mother." - Locust Valley poet Ray Simons.

The Legend of John Casey's Stand
Locust Valley, Long Island 1920's
For Mom
Ray Simons

Rural times, depression
& dirt poor.
Another immigrant wave,
from the 1840's never stopping,
the boats of Irishmen came.
Here on the North Shore,
the soon to be Gold Coast,
the Irish, the Italians
worked Big houses & farms
a cycle unchanged,
as the new comers
do now.........
and an old hatred drifted in.....
maybe from the South
maybe from the soul.....
& the cross of terror
burned again.
This time the Irish,
"We'll teach that
Damn Mick!"
His wife saw it first,
the flickering glow
& the figures in darkness
surrounding that cross
like the Banshee's of old.
"Don't go, Johnnie" she begged
but she knew it was useless,
his kind of anger burned
hotter than
coal.
He stood on his porch
and cursed them for cowards,
then strode to the field
to confront them by name.
"Take off your sheets, you yellow
streaked bastards" then
he called them by name
but stepped forth not a one.
With one great kick he
toppled the fire
and spat his contempt
on the cross and
was done.
He turned back to
his house
& he left his
good neighbors.......
He shut his porch light
and the crowd
did abate.......
Now they'd have to
find..........
someone safer to hate.

The Legend of John Casey's Stand,  Locust Valley, Long Island 1920's by Ray Simons.
Published with author's permission.

Ray retired from FDNY-EMS and writes as part of poetry therapy. 

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Previous Long Island Poem for Sunday - A Clear Midnight, Long Island Poem for Sunday

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