Joe Coulter, a 2023-2024 Fulbright Scholar and Queen's University Belfast alumnus, has written the poem "The Picture Was Always There" to mark 60 years of President John F. Kennedy's visit to Ireland.
Coulter shared his emotive poem with IrishCentral as Ireland and America remember Kennedy's 1963 Irish visit, the first-ever by a sitting US President.
President Kennedy visited Dublin, Galway, Cork, Limerick, and his ancestral home of Co Wexford between June 26 and June 29, 1963, later calling the experience "the best four days of my life."
As evidenced in Coulter's newly-written poem, the impact of Kennedy's visit has spanned generations and continues to impact today.
June 28, 1963: President John F. Kennedy greets a group of nurses through an open window of a building in Cork, Ireland. (Public Domain / Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)
"The Picture Was Always There" by Joe Coulter
On a Wednesday night
In early summer,
The front door open
Of a little white house
Nestled at the top of a hill;
A new born,
Gently resting in a cot,
My father, six weeks old,
His eyes closed.
As the clock ticked past eight,
In Dublin,
The colossal Air Force One
Touched down;
6000 miles,
115 years,
Three generations,
Jack was home.
The next morningAir thick and warm,
From the garden,
My grandmother
Picked blackcurrants for her jam,
Sets the table,
Tea, sugar and cake.
On the distant radio
She hears;
In Wexford,
Jack and his kinfolk
Share the same.
The onward journeyBeyond his home place,
One hundred thousand welcomes,
Bestowed keys to Irish cities,
Ancient traditions,
Honoured his name,
His lineage avowed.
The motorcade traverses Dublin streets,
A newspaper picture
From this time and place;
An image iconic and frozen,
Cut out and framed
On my grandmother's wall,
The enduring memory
Deified over the mantle,
A history never to be repeated.
She too had a history,Preserved in memory by faded pictures,
Sixty years from those June days,
My father’s face now etched from a life lived;
Tempus fugit
And the picture was always there.
In Virginia the eternal flame burns bright,The glow lights the coast
Of Massachusetts,
Crossing the Atlantic
To front rooms,
Where we light our own fires
With ‘the warmest memories of you.’
Above the mantle,
The picture rests there still;
As it was, is and will be
Always.
*Joe Coulter is an alumnus of Queen’s University Belfast and a 2023-2024 Fulbright Ireland-USA TechImpact Scholar. He is an advocate for the arts and the founder of the 691 Initiative, an organization dedicated to inspiring individuals to fulfill their creative potential.
** Originally published in June 2023, updated in Nov 2023.
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