The Yeats Trail by Tom Fynes

I climbed up the mountain. Along part of the Yeats Trail. Now out of breath but kept going. I had the flowers she liked. Roses, Lilies and some Tulips. Bought from the corner shop run by some Burmese refugee. Or maybe he was Sri Lankan. He was one of her sob story stray dogs, she collected along the way.

 All her life, a lifeboat to the flotsam of humanity. It was why I loved her. 

Our apartment was always full of fresh flowers and unhygienic people. “They’re only staying a night or a weekend,” was her usual throwaway line, when I objected to some homeless drifter sleeping on my sofa. 

I realised Gabriela was getting more desperate. More angry. Always raging against the machine. The invisible Deep State. 

I was just gathering momentum to get elected Mayor, in this one-horse conservative redneck town. 

“Can you dial it back, just a bit,” I said to her, on numerous occasions. But no, she just pumped up the volume. 

Gabriela was in the process of organizing a massive march of the homeless on City Hall. They would bus in protesters, trouble makers from out of state, to beef up her gang of drifter misfits. She just would not listen to reason.

I passed part of the Yeats poem this mountain trail was famous for.

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams;"

Gabriela loved the Yeats Trail. And that poem in particular touched her to the core.

I was tiring and thirsty when I came to the next part. So I drank some water and stopped to read.

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;"

The trail and the poem started much further down the mountain. I’d cheated just a bit and drove, so I joined it half way. Next up was the poems dramatic ending.

" Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"

It was a powerful conclusion to Yeats poem, and the Trail. As it lay just before the summit. 

I had read it out aloud to her, on that final walk, we had taken together. Yes, I was angry about the upcoming protest march. So angry I started to cry. 

Yes, it got heated.

Very heated. 

Having lost the plot, Gabriela was now shouting at me. I had betrayed her and her movement. All those wasted years, being with me. Shaking with anger She stood on the ledge. Then turned suddenly and slapped me across the face. I reacted as any man would and pushed back. Losing her balance Gabriela stumbled backwards, and must have tread on some lose pebbles and went over the side. It was deemed an unfortunate accident. 

Now every year I come and place the flowers she loved, at the foot of the climax to Yeats Poem. And every year I promise Gabriela, as Mayor, I would someday find the money to place some safety rails on the Yeats Trail.

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W.B. YEATS - He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

https://youtu.be/OGJ8KJ3wArk