Friday 31 July 2015

Blue Moon

Goodbye, goodbye to wet July,
you can't be gone too soon.
Hi and hi, please comply
with an August warm front new.
It's true, it's true, Blue Moon, Blue Moon
you hold a kind of magic.
You do, you do produce monsoon
but you also strike galactic.

Please cease your clime unravelling
I need the dry and warm.
Thank you for the time travelling
but not for July's storms.


(Explanation: Today, 31st July 2015, is, technically, the end of Summer in Ireland. We have had the wettest and darkest July that I've seen in years. Today is also the date of a blue moon, the second full moon in one calendar month. It happens when there is a discrepancy between lunar months and calendar months.)

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Five And Three Quarters

A bird spotter extraordinaire:
Oystercatchers here, tree sparrows there.
Starlings busy on the bank,
wagtail chicks with you to thank;
all that banging at the windows
saved those eggs from hungry crows.
Your bird book is dog-eared and worn,
taped up neatly where it got torn.
Some nights I pry it from you,
fast asleep envisioning curlews,
great tits and grebes, grey herons and rooks.
Winged creatures of gardens and woods,
farmland, upland, bogland, and waters.
Just the right dreams for five and three quarters.

(Explanation: This is an ode to my little 5.75-year-old, Sadie, who is fascinated by birds. She has her own bird spotter book but has now graduated to two books I have had for years. She knows every bird in those books and watches out like a hawk for birds wherever we are. On a recent trip to Dublin, I saw what I thought was a cormorant and pointed it out to Sadie, who replied, "no, that's a shag."
I recently wrote Four And A Half about my other daughter, Holly.)

Poetry In People

There is poetry in people:
As each anecdote is completed
no capture attempt succeeds.
Verses dance out of reach,
the flavour dawdles.
Memory's fists leach
the blood and paw the
night they lost Derek
and Karen fell asleep.

(Explanation: I wrote this in January 2002. I'd met my friend, Catherine, who recounted adventures of a night out in Cork City she had been on with other friends of ours. I remember thinking her descriptions -of the things she could actually remember- were like poetry.
Inspired by: Catherine Cogan)