Awaken your Child

I took a walk the other day along the Wycombe hills. Watched the wind blow cross barley fields.

Watched crows line up in quarrelsome queues on sagging telegraph poles.

Watched busy Friday burrowing away.

Took the time to stop and stare

Feel the rain on my face.

Make shapes of clouds , 'that one's a horse'

Took the time a child has

To enjoy the moment

The time, the here, the now

And you know what, I 'd forgotten how to do it

Recollections of an Irish childhood

Thoughts from an Irish Childhood (early 1960’s)

Death of an Aunt

We came down the lane, stones spitting sideways
Past the pillars, white-washed and wishing us here
Squat stone-walled dykes cradling
Cattle and suspicious sheep

Where once was green and full of life,
And farmyard sounds and smells
now black became
All grief, all quiet, all thoughts of her
Who, auntie ?
Had no one thought to tell me?
Did no one think I needed to know?

Auntie who once caught us
Spitting in the ‘midden’
And said ‘where did you boys learn that?’

Auntie who dusted soda farls
With the wide wing of a long dead goose

Auntie who smoked and shook
walls when wracked with cough

Why didn’t anyone tell me?
I screamed “ not Auntie , no, not Auntie’
In the room where no one speaks

Who sat with the butcher, Hugh
we called him ‘Uncle’
In his clean white van, all cool and red and quiet
Like meat on the counter
Waiting to be bought,

Who sat by the fireside
and talked sleeping Sundays

We turned around
All blessings said, all goodbyes gone
Back down the lane
Past the pillars, past the sheep
Cows chewing cud

Thinking of tomorrow
and Latin tenses

Bellum bellum bellum
Belli belli bello

Recollections of an Irish Childhood

Thoughts from a hayfield in rural Ireland (late 1960s)

We laid our backs against the stack
And raised our hats to wipe the sweat
and hayseeds from our brow
Caps cocked to shield the sun
thirsts slain in the billy- can

We squinted at swallows in their drunken dives
With no rhyme nor reason nor route to roost

Our limbs tired and toiled those fields
till sun set where stacks , some small
gave birth to bigger ones

The day the baler came
With reverence we accepted
Its offspring into our blistered hands
And hauled the golden crop to the barn,
With many a shout ‘Watch out’
as one bale tumbled from the trailer
into the pressure cooker of the barn

And we built castles that night
Tight to the tin high heaven roof
Castles for cattle whose winter weary days
Were bunged up
in dunged up, silent byres

And they would chew the cud
And chew the cud and taste the summer dew
when winter froze the ground
And we were boys
in the spring of our lives

GETTING SOAKED

Michael my youngest son is saying

" Help , if we don't get in another £300
my brother is going to soak me. Yikes "

The truth is, with help from St Augustines RC Church, John Hampden and the Royal Grammar Schools, the Corner Shop, the regulars at the Wendover Arms, the Stag in Flackwell, the Shotokan Kaska Karate Club, JDs and many more, we 'll soon hit £2000 (not including Gift Aid).

谢谢你 xièxie nĭ - A big thank you to you all - you made this happen.

SAVE Michael from getting drenched, contribute NOW

Grief .........

......hangs in the air like dark storm clouds gathering, far and yet near.
It rumbles down the valley of our mind, gushing and gulfing us and, we grieve.

And, it passes, as the light rain fades, as the sun steps out of the shadow, and we turn towards the sun, to light, to life.

I penned the following lines below, thinking of my Dad, and if you have lost someone I'd like to share this with you.