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CREATING THE WORLD

the sky was walking
around the world
the land trying to keep up

the weather can not
make its up its mind
what to be

"Whatever!"
the weather
thinks to itself

the sky was keeping
its clouds in order
whilst managing a sunset

the land was out of breath
becoming only a shadow
of its former self

the sky and the land
now the same dark
until the moon is turned on

*

Waking with my little one she suddenly came out with the fact that 'the sky was walking around the world' and so the rest of the words made themselves up on the spot. A poet should always carry his three year old for inspiration....she always seeing the world in her own image. Tilly creating the world.
TIME'S ARROW

so: once again
my time machine
fails to work

I curse
and now
my mobile is gone

missing
where ever
could it be

but unbeknownst to me
my mobile has been
transported

back into
the very distant
past

where Cleopatra
takes a selfie
and laughs

she even adopts
the selfie pout
loves her magic machine

takes pic after pic
does my nose look
too big in this

previous pics
depict her with
"Ceaser babeee!"

and here she is
on a date eating datesn
with that honey Anthony

the last
with an asp
as the battery dies

the mobile
now lost
in time

oh the things
my mobile has seen
you wouldn't believe

whilst here
I am
stuck in the present

failed scientist
crying into his beer
wondering where

It all went
wrong going over
his calculations yet again

and wondering
where oh where
can his mobile be

reading an article
about a sacred
Egyptian artefact

only recently
discovered
and well well

what do you know
if that isn't
my own i-phone...
POEM PLANTING

Words flow
in different coloured thoughts

from your tiny hand

page after page
submits to your mind

crayoned into being.

Then we tear them up
into separate entities

plant them in the rich black soil

between row after row
of crocus.

Planting words
you squeal with delight.

I tell you they will grow
into poems

by the morning
if you love them enough.

As you sleep
dreaming that it can be – such

I kidnap your words

shape them
so that when you awaken

a tiny crop of haiku

awaits
your happily believing eyes.

We read them
over soldiers and perfectly boiled eggs.
AN UNFAIRY STORY

whilst fretfully she sleeps
Frog Prince kisses the Princess
turning her into a beautiful frog

yes, and well...they lived
happy ever after as water
in the bottom of a deep deep well

what kind of fairy story
were you after....ahhhh
the grim human kind

frog prince & frog princess
hop happily about a bit
eating delicious(ribbit)flies

oh how our love has
spawned
tadpoles will be tadpoles I suppose

now it's time
for us to croak it
remembering our happy once upon a times
THE ONLY EDEN

Granny unable to
see

would build me
touch by touch

with her blind fingertips
search for the face

she would create.

Here my cheekbone
coming into being

there an eyebrow
newly born

here an eye
there a philtrum

sculpted from sunlight
hewn from nothing

here blind seeing
fashioning me anew

her fingertips
butterflies

forming this
living portrait

of the face
I own.

Her fingers feeling
for each nuance...each tone

the music of me
plucked from thin air

one moment I am not
then I am

all there.

I made all the more
real.

More realer
that I could ever be

emerging from
her fingertips

as if I were
God's Adam

and this her tiny garden
the only Eden.
". . .TO KISS THE SLUMBERING OWEN NA BUIDHE. . ."

the river wandered along
as if it was
in no particular hurry

it had forgotten time
and Time
took no mind

now it flows
through my memory
lazy in a heat haze

the sun thrown high
in a summer kissed sky
the day lasting longer than forever

"Howya!" I called
and the river answering
in its own language

now here
we are
I no longer a boy

both of us
both of us wearing
the same sunshine

we wore
some 60 years
or so ago

"Ya wouldn't have
an auld song in ya
would ya!" asks the river

"Indeed I have!"
I told the river and
it sparkled to be told so

I sang Carrigdhoun
catching the river
in the nets of the tune

"Ahhh sure that's
a grand song so it is!"
pleased to hear itself sung

and now dusk
was gathering
the countryside to itself

"Will ya come back
tomorrow and sing!"
I promised it I would

and every 60 years or so
I sing to the river
flowing through my mind

"and Dónall swore aye o'er &  o'er,
we'd part no more
a stór mo chroidhe"
"WHAT A WONDERFUL LITTLE BOY!"

The view
gazes at him.

The landscape gathers
itself about him

as if he were a piece of pigment
in a painting a blob or blur

of blue or green or
something in between.

"What a wonderful little boy!"
a passing cloud, pauses...muses

and says once more in case the hill
hadn't heard.

"What a wonderful little boy indeed!"
a tree agrees...winking...its leaves.

A river runs through him
alive in his senses.

The grass runs all over
the field tickling his naked toes.

Sunlight throws
itself at his feet

bows before him in all
its glory.

A breeze throws his hat high
up in the sky and

returns it to his hand
as if by command.

The clouds grazing now
upon a hill top

fascinated by his presence
how he has come to be.

"He makes us feel
so very much alive!"

One cloud nods
to another.

"Oh, there's a poet in him
to be sure to be sure!"

the river remarks
its voice clamouring over stones.

Time that sheep dog barks
but the clouds only laugh

"See how he lends us
his voice

in order that we may think
and speak.

Look I'm talking
in human words."

"Ballea...Ballea...Ballea!"
the farm shouts its name.

Again and again and again
the river exclaims

" Own na Buidhe... Own na Buidhe... Own na Buidhe"
sunlight dancing in its voice.

A bird stands stock still
upon the air

neither coming or going
just standing on nothing

as if it were a punctuation mark
typed upon the sky.

Time returns now
in policeman mood.

"Move along now...nothing to see here
move along now!"

And the landscape loses a voice
the sky its ability to see
the cloud has no words
the bird become a dot

only the sunset
whispers to an horizon

"What a wonderful
wonderful little boy!"


*


Still that one field in my childhood that I keep returning to and the song that contains both river and me in it. My Aunt Peggy the once little time I spent with her when she came over from America always called me the title!

Carrigdhoun
(Denny Lane)

The heath was green on Carrigdhoun.
Bright shone the sun o'er Ard-na-Lee
The dark green trees bent trembling down
To kiss the slumbering Own na Buidhe.
That happy day -- 'twas but last May --
'Tis like a dream to me,
When Donal swore, aye o'er and o'er,
We'd part no more a st�r mo chroidhe.
On Carrigdhoun the heath is brown.
The clouds are dark o'er Ard-na-Lee,
And many a stream comes rushing down
To swell the angry Owen na Buidhe.
The moaning blast is sweeping past
Through many a leafless tree,
And I'm alone, for he is gone,
My hawk has flown, ochone mo chroidhe.
Soft April showers and bright May flowers
Will bring the summer back again,
But will they bring me back the hours
I spent with my brave Donal then?
There's but a chance. he's gone to France
To wear the Fleur-de-Lis.
But I'll follow you, my Donal Dhu,
For still I'm true to you mo chroidhe.


The song was originally called "The Lament of the Irish Maiden" and was written by Denny Lane from Cork. It is a political song telling of the flight from Ireland of Sarsfield's "Wild Geese" in 1691. The air for Carrigdhoun was the inspiration for the music to the Percy French song "The Mountains of Mourne."
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