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.

Recollections of an Irish childhood

Thoughts from a Peat Moss in rural Ireland (late 1960s)

I slid my hand up the brown shiny banister,
It smelt of pine and dreams as I left the peat filled living room
" Good night Uncle Bill, Good night Uncle Joe - are we going to the mountain tomorrow?"
' Aye Son ' and I dreamt .

And I dreamt my uncle sat on a sack
At the back of the tractor
his brother the driver
And I squeezed in, somehow
my feet on a chain that held something
And some sway
As our exhaust wheezed up the hill

The sea, the cliffs
the farmhouse and the livestock shrank
and shrank as we left farm and fireside far below.

The keepers of the mountain
with their tangled horns
and spot-red fleece
cross eyed us as we entered
they scattered and spilled
with syrupy sure-footedness
across their rock carpet domain

Cruel crows caught by their beaked curiosity
Hung lazily from posts
Their dried feathers flapping
Their spirits flown
Where sky and moor and harshness close in

What gold we found beneath the earth
Was cut and chopped and carved
And cured for warm dreams
Of Sunday afternoons sleeping uncles

Guarded by the soldierly tick-tock, tick-tock
Of the grandfather clock
as time itself stood still
in that sun spilled, living room

and the dying buzz-buzz of a bluebottle
as it strained to escape
its laced-curtain prison
back to the mountain

Recollections of an Irish Childhood

Click on above link to hear recording

Thoughts from a potato field in rural Ireland (late 1960s)

We ate that day with grubby hands
Silken- floured farls straight from the griddle
The earth our table, the sky our roof

The farmer’s wife rough-red and rude
Poured us liquid from a billy can
Golden tea fired our bellies and strengthened our spines

As we stooped and skimmed and shook the soil from
Those golden nuggets
Raped in the virgin furrow

At close of day we bumped along
Tired on the tail end of the tractor trailer
And broke our bums as we grasped our crumpled, brown, ten-shilling note

And raced home with field laid bare
And not a backward glance
For we were kings for many a day.