Two Abreast

"Get in," he shouted, "two abreast," the man in the dicky bow.
We giggled as he stressed but we did as we were told.
He marshalled with precision, we heeded and obeyed,
there was no intermission in his grand parade.

Then others joined the line and it swelled across the path
and he nearly lost his mind when 'breast' set off a laugh.
The queue most often reached from outside the cineplex
to Oliver Plunkett Street at two to four abreast.
We wore backpacks to the 'filums' because those were the times
when it was forbidden to consume food from outside.
So, we queued, in rain or shine, loaded up with Tayto,                             
penny sweets, Wham and Dime and Cadet red lemonade, oh,  
it was a production for sure (and that was before even                                 
you got indoors to the sticky floors for the movie screening).                          
No messages about turning off your mobile phones.                                 
Questions about dates of birth, smokers in the rows                                
and speakers that faithfully gave up their ghosts.
The chain barrier was manned and when unhooked
racing feet and clawing hands dashed and shoved and pushed.

A treat of treats to go to the Capitol
and you might eat in Mandy's afterwards.
In a slatted paper hat, recount the show
and take off the man in the dicky bow.

(Explanation: Cork's Capitol Cineplex was the cinema of my childhood. It closed in 2005 and there are now plans to redevelop the site. I really wish I knew the name of the man in the dicky bow, he was such a character. He used to also shout "no loitering" to people who tried to wait in the cinema porch rather than in his line out on the footpath. He didn't discriminate either, he shouted at my dad to get in line just as he shouted at us children.)



This poem featured in the 2015 edition
of Cork's Christmas magazine,
Holly Bough.
Find the Holly Bough
on Facebook & Twitter.

Noising

"Oh, I love your wooden floors." "Yes, I love them too,
but I would so love carpet more for just a year or two."

"I like the ceramic tiles." "Yes, they're great, I know,
but give me cork or lino until the children grow."

It's the noise that drives me spare, shoes and toys that startle,
that dragging din of chairs and a bag of wayward marbles.
The tumbling as the Lego box is emptied down the hall,
the dumping of a box of pens and bouncing tennis balls.
The sound of dice, giant wooden ones, (I bought them the damn game),
bashes through my brain like drums until I feel insane.
At just the right sky-diving height my piano is the ledge
where Elsa and her friends unite and jump the keyboard edge.
Then heads and arms and dresses, hard plastic, but of course,
crash down to ground level with eardrum-bursting force.
The ponies, all those ponies, it's like they can't stay still,
canter at highest decibels as if they have free will.
Books are made of paper so you'd think that they'd be silent
but knock them from a four foot height for a bang that's violent.

It would be futile, really, unless, as well as floors,
I pad the walls and ceilings, the windows and the doors.
And, lets be fair, the children are behaving as they should
I'm the one who despairs that the floors are made of wood.
There is another way I think, it might just change my luck
to get some underlay and block my ear canals right up.
Could I get a quote for insulation, how much would it be
to kit me out with soundproofing on my two auditories.

But, wait, what's that? Could it be? I'm starting to feel scared.
Now my nerves are really shot, there's quiet in the air.

(Explanation: I'm sure this needs no explanation. However, I do want to point out that my children are great! And, that we can't have rugs or carpets, etc. because Holly, our four-year-old, has a severe allergy to dustmite so we try to keep soft furnishings to an absolute minimum. This summer in Ireland is miserable and that doesn't help: Normally, we spend our Summers outside all day. 
I really like how West Cork people (my husband is a West Corkonian) make verbs out of nouns, 'noising' is something Martin says for 'making noise'. When he asks the children, "what is all that noising about?" they fall around the place laughing at him.)

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.)

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)

Four And A Half

How do clouds stay up? Will my teeth ever fall out?
Is there butter in this buttercup? Can we go round the roundabout?
Why is yellow yellow? Why don't vests have sleeves?
Can I play with the umbrella? Can I have this five- cent piece?
What's the number to call the guards? Do worms bite?
Can I sleep out in the yard? Why isn't there day at night?
Why don't we live in Africa? Can I have another yoghurt?
Who threw out the harmonica? Can I wear the purple-bow skirt?
Is China far away? Why does he have a plaster?
When is my next birthday? Can my bike go faster?
Why do plants have roots? Is 'f' for fun?
What's wrong with muddy boots? Where did I come from?
Why is she putting lipstick on? Can I sleep with my eyes open?
Who can I play this trick on? Why do toys get broken?
Will Daddy let me have a yoghurt? Why is water wet?
Do trees get blood if they are hurt? Are we there yet?
Where does the wind sleep? Can I have this box?
Do cats do pee? Can I plant a rock?
Is twelve more than thirty? How do you make cheese?
Is my face all dirty? Can I have a yoghurt please?
Do fairies know how to write? Who makes all the money?
Are yolks ever white? Do you find my jokes funny?
Do bees hatch from eggs? Where's the rainbow gone?
Can I have those clothes pegs? Will you draw a whooper swan?
Can I be a cowgirl? Who lives in that house?
Why don't I have curls? Would a dog eat a woodlouse?
Will I get more fingers? What age will I be grown?
Can I help make dinner? What's a loading zone?

(Explanation: This is an ode to my little 4.5-year-old, Holly, who must surely hold the record for the amount of questions asked every day, she is unstoppable!! The poem had the potential to be never-ending. I asked Holly, nervously, why she wanted to have the phone number for the guards, and she replied that she wanted to ring them and ask them to send her a Garda play set so she could dress up as a guard.
I wrote Five And Three Quarters about my other daughter, Sadie.)

Citizen Proud

Rest easy, O'Leary, they came home on planes
so that romantic Ireland could rise from the grave.
Car pools and foot passengers on ferry boats,
they joined in to exercise their right to vote.
As you, I'm against religion and state
being married together to govern our fate.
But today, oh today, I'm a citizen proud:
No straight or gay marriage, we're one civil crowd.
I'm so grateful this nation, for my children, affirms
sexual orientation as an irrelevant term.
Mind you, I believe it should never have been
that an election was needed to make people free.

(Meanwhile, in Palmyra, a rampage ensues
death and destruction all freedom removes,
erasure of origins, autonomy, humans.
No polls or ballots or civil rights movements.)

Let's not forget Fairview Park and its like
and let's celebrate long into this night.
Love is the law now, no longer unwritten.
This is a country for all men and women.

(Explanation: Yesterday, 22nd May 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to vote for marriage equality by popular vote. I think it is sad that we had to vote on it at all because marriage rights should have always been for all. I also think this is such a great day, not just for all the people I know who will be directly and immediately positively affected by this but also for my children and their children. The "O'Leary" in my poem is John O'Leary, referred to repeatedly in W.B. Yeats' poem September 1913. The last line references Yeats' poem Sailing To Byzantium

When I wrote Wave The Thistle in October last year I remember how struck I was by the wonderful display of democracy and dialogue in the run up to the Scottish vote on independence in the middle of the violence and devastation occurring in other parts of the world. The Scots were such a good example of how civil society should work and I feel Ireland shone in the same way yesterday. However, I think it is so devastatingly sad that while we were exercising our right to vote people who share our world were, and still are, being murdered for being in their homeplace.)

Bealtaine Blaze

The cattle stomp the yellow out,
grazing, razing blazing kale,
flames of seed heads wave about,
metaphoric fire on this May Day.

Belanus with no bright to drench
allows the grey, the hail, the rain.
Or maybe he just wants to quench
the ritual literal Bealtaine blaze.

(Explanation: Today is the 1st of May and, traditionally, the first day of Summer. Here, in "the sunny South East" it is a miserable, overcast, wet day with no signs of abating for the week ahead.)

Easter Confession

Dear Easter, I'm so glad to see you, I can't eat much more.
My feasters must be discontinued or I won't get out the door.
My marriage just can't take the strain, my husband's threat was shocking:
If I can't practice some restraint he's going to do the shopping.

He says he's now afraid to peek in any press or drawer
because of the CSI-type scenes of severed body parts:
Behind the Calpol he observed a hen's head with bitten beak
and in the filing cabinet a lamb's tail under NCT.

I add Easter eggs to my trolley while others abstain for Lent:
Concealing unofficial spoils is how the time is spent.
I polish off packs of little chicks and bunnies on hind legs
and then proceed to scoff a range of filled and hollow eggs.

Shuffling boxes, tearing foil, illicit chocolate snapping,
replacing those I've enjoyed then ripping the stand-ins' wrappings.
There it is, my whole confession, I've kept you for a month.
Easter Sunday won't be special but I've had a great Easter egg hunt.

(Explanation: Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. I'm not too excited about all the Easter eggs that we'll have because I've been eating them secretly for weeks!)

April Fools

My father gave us leeks.
He tried to give us more
but there's only so many we can eat
regardless of his store.
These alliums are in his way now,
new drills must be prepared.
He has his patch planned out
and the leeks may not be spared.
He'll try his best to palm them off
with offers made to every guest.
Despite his effort to grow enough
each year there's something in excess.

We've had our fill of soup,
these days we like them fried
with a pinch of salt or two,
mayonnaise on the side.
Reluctantly inside with bowls,
kids in jumpers like April fools
as they sniffle through Spring colds
from wearing t-shirts far too soon.
Today they did a ring-around,
phone calls to all for Fools' Day.
"Nana, your knickers are falling down",
the same theme for each trick played.

A sudden thought of  Plato
as I walk my daily mission,
admiring ridges of potatoes
laid out with precision.
My husband's artistry,
the start of many pieces
from here to pods of peas
if this rain ever ceases.
This month, for my age set,
is the last one of Spring.
Gary salutes, "it's very fresh"
on his all-weather dog-walking.