Some Poems - (Quareness Series 59th "Lecture").

A Chairde,

Since entering this mortal realm on 26th October 1948 I've been a part of Ireland which some say is as much a concept as a place. Trusting in life I seek to go with the flow. Delving deeply into this diverse and wonderful world I have found and still find myself regularly opening up to the new and living on the multi-layered and ambiguous edge, like at the level of real poetry.

I've been trying to write poetry now for many years, which for me has been a

somewhat surprising adventure with what I take to be implicate underlying reality revealing itself to me at random. Here's some examples of my relatively recent efforts which hopefully may reward revisiting by yourselves from time to time - 

When Love Takes A Hand.

Many morning days are fretful

Spilling words to mask deceit

Many faces not always truthful 

And Signor Vivace too often a cheat

Awaiting Signor Largo

Dancing to a different beat.

Too loudly speaks the vacant mind

So keen to compete and strive

Stretching out the first few lines

In the blooming phase of life 

And driving on until that time 

When deeper thoughts arrive.

Then when love takes a hand

Opening eyes too long closed

With a vision of far off things

And the silences they hold

We hear the call of new beginnings

Awakening our young souls.

Now knowing more than I did before

Though fewer my words may be

These silences I gladly bestow 

On those who are much to me

Birthing worlds beyond our voices

Dawning fresh on a quietened sea.

Footnote: The frantic pace of our youth tends to slow down over time to a more steady calm and hopefully wiser rhythm?

A Good Question.

It's what we call a beautiful night

With a vast canopy of seemingly endless twinkling diamonds

Marvellously decorating a blue black velvet canvass

And me and mini me out for a ramble.

Our strolling conversation wanders here and there

Familiar flitting movements through the eyes of a child

When out of the blue I am asked

If I believe in ghosts.

It's one of those moments in life

With the unexpectedness of a question

Calling out strongly for some thoughtful response

Keeping faith with truth for both mini me and me.

To begin my reply I drop to my knees

Levelling the playing pitch between us,

And directing the little one's gaze skywards

I say yes, I do believe in ghosts.

See the light from each of the stars up there

Takes some of our time to reach to us here

What we see is only what's within our own range

And that where the light came from is already changed.

For those further away from our earthly home

It takes more and more years for their starlight to show 

And greater is the change in those shiners themselves

By the time we get to see them glow.

And there are some stars so far away from us here

They are in fact no longer there

Though the light they shed is still painting our skies

Long long after such ghosts have died.

Footnote: A verse triggered by some thinking about time and distance, with a nod to the astronomers William & John Herschel (father & son), doyens of those time machines - the telescope and the camera.

Dingle Bay.

See the wise-headed mountains looking out for Dingle Bay

Watching fluffy white floaters waltz across the day

Sprinkling shadow and spotlight on a green quilted set

Like a scene in some dream we won't forget.

See the gathered groups of people waiting on the pier

Wearing faces so well suited to the tranquil atmosphere

With the bloomy flush of life's painted pictures everywhere

And the quietened wind humming all around the salty air. 

Now they're off to see the dolphin living in the Bay

The small ones all are wondering if he's coming out to play

No charge the boatmen say if Fungi doesn't show

And if he does we won't forget and let everybody know.

In the sound between the islands there's a breezy melody

With white-fringed foaming fingers plucking notes up off the sea

Flowing out upon the wind from the cusp of running waves

Harping back to that Blasket life of many bygone days.

See the serried set of shapes jut out against the ledge

As you pass around Dun Chaoin on magnificent Slea Head

This enchanting edge of Europe along the Wild Atlantic Way

Sheer magic on any good day out in Dingle Bay.

Footnote: Spawned during a visit to this "gem of Ireland" back in May 2014. 

A Poet's Eye.

I look long and hard

Going deep and deeper

For where the surface ends

Meanings begin,

Just as the ripple might start

With the last word

When God gives the first line

And the rest I must find myself.

I look long and hard

Going deep and deeper still

Peeling off the layers

With a heart on fire and a brain on ice

I see our living without passion

As but a feeble form of dying,

And looking back over shadows cast

I saw death cut down to size.

Footnote: When you get into the habit of seeing this way, it's difficult not to look beneath the surface/trivial.

Leaving Home.

Home...where the least of us

Is a legend in the neighbours' lives,

Though there's a pile of nothing now 

Where that bright bush used to be

Before our absence killed it.

Of late the parents' needs flatter in their questions 

Defining us in our acknowledgement

Though the names and dates mean nothing now, 

And whenever or wherever this is true 

The deepest bonds lie broken.

Yet still they remain there, committed,

Watching the parting waves as we go,

And barely visible in the watery sheen

Enveloped in the arms of a setting sun

Reflecting the far distance grown between us.

Footnote: I'm concerned here with the somewhat inevitable emigration of the mind.

Once When I Was A Child.

Once when I was a child

Installed in the oft-frequented womb of my imagination

The main man's dog he just up and died

Up there on that projected screen of my fascination

And his keening master cried.

And then some matching minds longed for tears of their own

And reticently reaching for the gift of weeping

Came to share in the cocoon of his sorrow

While others refused to receive for fear of feeling

And for fear of sheer abandonment.

But that weeping man required nothing of us

And when he had finished with mourning 

He simply wiped away the tears

Washing away between us, believers and non-believers,

With the dignity of one who has lost and moved on.

Footnote: An early life lesson from an unlikely setting during my childhood.

Two Small Dogs & A Very Small Baby.

Here I sit guiltless in indolence

Drinking in imagined flattery

Feasting on illusion's bounty

And the twin canines quietly reposing

Seem to be saying....here look here 

If you would truly see yourself.

And there too sits the baby

Comfortably adrift in her reclining chair

With her reasons ranged all about her

And I get to thinking of how

We're never too old to love

And always too young to die.

The twinned pair now saluting the air with their muzzles

Call to mind a horse with high hopes upon his back

And after-work beers and cues for habitual reliefs

Such as can seem born of Paradise and draw near

In our sitting comfortably with small dogs

And basking in sheer mutual acceptance.

For sure the four of us sit content in our certainty

There's a high safety around heaven

Despite our boasted about alternating vowels of movement

And when one very small human yawn sees the dogs yawn too

All of us know we're all of the one tribe

Sharing a truly precious affinity.

Footnote: Empathy is a great gift at any time.

Old Sailors.

I've known some old sailors in my time

Who retired from heady and heavy seas

And took to simulated sailing on our street

In land-locked brick-built barges.

They hoarded many ocean mementos at home

Like treasured old letters tied up in little bundles

And boarded seasoned books rigged with well-worn leather

Regularly en route from shelf to briny shelf.

Such vivid voyages featured fierce and furious men

Framed and enflamed in weather-worn faces

Bred on the bracing breath of salt-eating years

And too much shrieking in the wild wind's jaws.

Men who told tall tales of rugged journeys in endurance

Away to Hy-Brasail and back to the Holy Ground

With winds now blowing softly that once blew hard

Amid ponderous lolling and thunderous rolling 

Until the howling of their coming and going faded

And the tides on the main became their own lives' measure. 

During the tilting weather of those long-ago days

They bore witness to water in its temper, as sailors do, 

Sparring with the wind carrying loud arguments and threats

And throwing a heavy hand upon many a shifting shore.

For them such things held all life and breath

Addressed in the sun's and the storm's esteem

'Fore the beckoning sightings of trees in their costumes

And harbour waters strewn with twinkling lights.

Yet after some last high tide is done flowing into faint shadowing

Comes a time when old mariners are done with quaint pretending

When all their dreamed-of ventures inevitably vanish

Into that engulfment everything approaches

At the end of all our journeys.

Footnote: Hy-Brasail  = magical and elusive Isle of the Blest somewhere off west coast of Ireland. 

Holy Ground = famed and "comforting" part of the harbour town of Cobh in County Cork, Ireland.

Urban "Society".

There's something like despair in that urban atmosphere

Held tight in jaded light at the dipping of each day

Amid the swarm of city slickers and air-conditioned "players"

With high-falutin' airs up on their high-positioned chairs.

Interacting with each other you can sense the constant bother

In their jerking play like lightning before thunder rolls away

While sucking mad constricted air just beyond the edge of sight

Holding forth on urban matters and the need to tame the night.

The chatter of these cultured apes haunts their situation

Unaware of any learned doubt to deflate their reputation

Lying in comfortable arrears to earlier savagery deployed

Building their rules and their laws on the countless lives they've spoiled.

Their world admired and desired but without a shred of worth

Is a cold unnatural place with something missing at its court

Full of shadows in the shallows with locked doors behind their eyes

As they populate their urban space with pontificating lies.

Footnote: There's potential for real alienation/disconnect in our modern city scapes?

Creative Choice.

We don't need to defeat anything or anyone

We don't have to eliminate what we don't chose

Just don't chose it.

It's always a matter of choice

This business of quality self-creation

We can never stop doing so.

We can leave the bad stuff behind

Every soul does so eventually

There are no long-term losers, only creators.

We don't need to change others 

They have their own reality

Walking their own path at their own pace.

It's up to us to change ourselves

To be the change we wish to see

Providing a wide platform for free experience.

And looking for peace within rather than without

We can bring this vital gift to the world

As our own unique contribution.

Footnote: Our world can be a huge contextual field within which we create what we will.

Thank y'all for reading and thinking and maybe even some resonating.

Sean.

Dean of Quareness.

October, 2015.

My wish is for these words to tug at the corners of your minds to some extent.