Thursday, 13 June 2013

Edward Snowden Petition

Stand with Edward Snowden petition

People signing all over the world every half second


http://www.avaaz.org/en/

Sunday, 9 June 2013

Garden Thoughts





 
Pot Pourri, Herbert James Draper 1863-1920
 
 
Garden Thoughts

I am perennial, lasting, stalwart and courageous;

fragile but not brittle or insubstantial for I am an enchantress

and shall not easily crumble, fracture or fragment.

I am hardy, tough, bouncing back whatever may befall me.

I am pastel, soft-hued, sweet-scented,

seemingly gentle, quiet and tender.

(Keep me from exotics, the red-hot, fiery fervent types,

those hot-house specimens will only disturb my roots).

Plant me near water in semi-shade,

let me flourish in a space where only warm sun shines

and the soft rains of Ireland fall.

Keep bees around me; may you and they enjoy my scent and colour,

let my ambrosial, aromatic balm scent your days and sate your senses.

Preserve my petals in pot pourri or a pouncet box.

Do not prune me, cut me back or take cuttings from my stems so I

may bloom and bud and for you I may even set seed, if you nurture me,

speak to me often and gaze at me with love.

Think of me in winter when I am unseen but un-dead,

hiding with the dormouse in a deep,

and sweet-sleep hibernation under a snowy blanket of white.

Wait for me for I shall return.

Do not lose hope,

Keep me in your heart and your imagination.

 

Cait O’Connor

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Ode to Rain






Blue Rain
Artist Marcia Baldwin



Rain Goddess


Into each life a rain must fall.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Rain goddess; elemental, vital, only
only really at home in the mountains;
she mizzles, drizzles, spits and spots
for she is pure rain, she is precipitation
falling from the skies, carried on a cloud.
She is a downpour drencher, a cloudburst
soaker who can either be a flurry
or be foul, wild and wanton with the wind.
She can shower you or she may scare you
but a rain goddess may softly caress you
and with the rays of the sun might bring you
rainbows in her wake. Her outflowing tears
really only want to bring you much joy
as she descends upon you from the skies,
feeds your body and sustains your dry Earth.
Her diamond dust brings forth our magical streams
and rivers; gives birth to our deep oceans.
causing torrents with her force for she is
pure rain, she is  precipitation.

 

Cait O’Connor

Sunday, 2 June 2013

Funeral for a Friend



David Cox, ‘A Welsh Funeral, Betwys-y-Coed’ c.1847-50


Funeral for a Friend

 
As I watched a wholly good man’s body
laid into the ground after the requiem,
the missa pro defunctis, I thought how
his kind seem all but extinct now, a priest
with such an honest heart, like the Roman
ring he always wore, pure gold, intagio,
a gem engraved in pastelled cameo.
For his ways were truly mellow, moderate
 
and kind, tender but always unobtrusive
 
whose lips had brushed no others’ mouths, only
 
the pax, the holy kiss of peace at High Mass
 
in his sacred monastery.  As the

crucifix was laid upon him I considered

his life, forever enclosed, his spirit
 
ruled by his  religion and its cloistered
 
celibacy.  A force for good passed with
 
him on that day and as it rose we were
 
left miserable and marooned in our

disillusioned, aimless orphan of a world.
 


Cait O’Connor

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Friday, 24 May 2013

On a Full Moon in May



 
Notes of a Therapist Part II

 
Our next meeting was on a night of a
Full May Moon, the time when the  planet’s
pull brings feelings bubbling to the surface.
For me it bode well, for her it was time
to broach her childhood; how would she describe it?
Were there things only a few knew that she
could and would willingly reveal to me?
Childhood was a storehouse of secrets she said
for she'd lived amidst a labyrinth of lies.
I asked how she'd coped.  She laughed because I
had for once made the therapist’s classic
mistake but she was kind and humoured me.
Sweet solitude was her saviour, she said,
along with music and learning and a
solid self-reliance. She said she read
all the time and she wrote copiously.
Books became friends and animals her constant
companions. She even talked to flies and
could make them leave a room (if she asked nicely).
I laughed until she told me Uri Geller
used to do the same. Laughter had loosened
us both.  Tissues for once were cast aside.

 
Cait O’Connor

 

 (Part 1 can be found here).

 

Friday, 12 April 2013

Fragile Days



 
 
 
Fragile Days
 
The thick coat I wear is  Irish tweed and
bears a poet’s pocket, a deep vessel
for the rescue of snippets: phrases, dreams,
memories,  ideas and inspirations,
The coat is soft charcoal grey and crossed with
blackened herring bones, quite long and belted,
woollen, warm and wide but no-one can tell
how very safe and snug I am inside
its tailored sanctuary or understand
my need for its constancy as I go
on my daily round.
 
Today, another swiftly passing day
of no merit,  I had eavesdropped; something 
overheard stilled me into silence. I
disliked its nuance, I  saved its essence, 
wrapped most of it up in sorrow and threw
the rest away.
 
I may seem calm but only I can feel,
as I walk, that my tread upon the stair
is aggressive, frustrated by cause of
my fear for the fragility of a
world which has lost all of its subtlety.
 
Beseiged now by its trappings I find myself
miscast till I am dizzy with fear that
I may topple.  But my poet’s  pocket
of words are close, they guide me away from
the edge of the abyss to a place of
recluse where I can write, safe once more in
my withdrawing room.
 
Cait O’Connor
 

Thursday, 11 April 2013

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

All in this together?

Should we give a state funeral to someone who sought to dismantle it?

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Mothballed


We have just received news that all the current production and the threatened possible massive expansion of a local quarry has been ‘mothballed’.

 

In Celebration
 
Listen, can you hear the sighing of the Earth’s relief?
My cottage sighs along and smiles, she always
smiled, even on the grey hanging days that
had beset us in the dark times when even
Earth’s light faded and even she seemed sad.
My cottage smiled at signs of spring; she opened
out her doors for me, threw wide her windows
and her heart.
At night, even in winter, her enchantment  
would  prevail; she would grow brighter,  the dust
motes, cobwebs and all the mess would retreat.
Tonight, with just  the flicker of a smile
amidst the kindness of a lamplight’s glow
she tempts me from her fire of crackling logs.
Under the moon we celebrate the news;
we sing and whoop and clap along for joy.
I play music and only very softly  
shall I sing but my son will write and sing
his song and play guitar.  The neighbours will
rock, the fields shall resound, Michael will play
harmonica. And all will whistle, hum
or la de la.
And all should miss this,  if ever it were gone.
Listen, can you hear the sighing of the Earth’s relief?

 

Cait O’Connor

 

 

Friday, 29 March 2013

Facebook?





Good Friday


Facebook is fine.  I resisted it for a long while.  I both resisted and detested it in equal measure. I joined it and I left it but now I have given in and surrendered.   It’s an entertainment, an exercise in distraction for me,  an act of procrastination which is at times fun but can also be serious, annoying, amusing, depressing, uplifting, negative, positive, pleasant, unpleasant, informative, anger-inducing or trivial in the extreme but mainly it is a good way to keep in touch with some lovely relatives, the few who are on Facebook and also the many folk I never/rarely see.   I have also recently found some people who I lost touch with some years ago,  a wonderful bunch of fellow bloggers of old, some of which who, like me, are still at it.  So Facebook is a great place to while away (waste) lots of time.  I should be spending this time trying to be creative instead of sharing little ‘snippets of fascination’ which are passing round the Facebook arena.  I have been doing a lot of this lately and a very dear friend was even rather worried about my sanity recently :-).  No need to worry, I told him, I know I am mad, it's when you don't know you have to worry.:-)

I am also using Facebook to advertise my new genealogy/people tracing venture which my daughter and I have started recently.  The local paper did an article about us this week which I hope will generate a bit of interest. We have a website, a blog and a very new Facebook page as well.  I would love it if  you would visit and if you go to the Facebook page could you Like it? I hate asking these sort of things as I hate promoting/publicising myself in any way.

But I am being called to my own blog today and coming here is like coming ‘home’ to a safe and cosy place, sometimes serene, sometimes not  -   but a place where I welcome special people who I feel blessed to have met within this space that they call the Blogosphere, a place from where I can go out and meet and visit like minded folk and read their wonderful writings.   I cannot imagine leaving this world as I would miss it so.

I also feel the need to be positive and to start posting Blessings again as I did in the old days.  I have been reading A Year of Doing Good  by Judith O’Reilly – a blogger of some standing of Wife in the North fame.  Her book is written as a diary of her attempts to perform a good deed every day for a whole year; it is an inspiring book which is  funny but is also very moving and one which I can (positively)recommend.

Anyways, I shall start posting blessings on here again, daily if possible (!) even if I can only think of one and I shall also endeavour to record, like Judith O'Reilly, the good deeds which I have done or which others have carried out – the latter of course being blessings in themselves. I apologise if I am repeating blessings which I have posted years ago, I have been blogging since 2007 so there are bound to be repeats but heyho there must be a limit to the blessings in life,..............or are there not?

Today’s Blessings?  – the day is still young  but so far there has been
Sunlight
Robins
This is my special one
 
Melting Snow
Friends and the ability to communicate, chat even, online. While I was writing this post I was chatting to two friends at once on........... yes you’ve guessed it -  Facebook.
I think it’s trying to tell me something don’t you?
My much loved music brought to me freely now by Spotify.  (I am working on adding it to my blogpage for you to enjoy also).
Words,
Pictures.
Good Deeds.
And my Good Deed for today?
Keeping my wild birds fed all year, so it’s a daily thing.  Am spending a fortune on fatballs (that word always makes me smile) and wild bird seed but it’s worth it for the pleasure I get from birdwatching.
That’s what giving is all about isn’t it, much lovelier for one’s soul than receiving?

Before I go, a poem.

 
I Taught Myself To Live Simply

 

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,

to look at the sky and pray to God,

and to wander long before evening

to tire my superfluous worries.

When the burdocks rustle in the ravine

and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops

I compose happy verses

about life's decay, decay and beauty.

I come back. The fluffy cat

licks my palm, purrs so sweetly

and the fire flares bright

on the saw-mill turret by the lake.

Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof

occasionally breaks the silence.

If you knock on my door

I may not even hear.



Anna Akhmatova

 

Bye for now,
Go mbeannai Dia duit,
Happy Easter,

Cait.




Saturday, 16 March 2013

The Healer



Meal Beach, Burra Isles, Shetland by Robin Gosnall



The Healer

 

They called her the Lightworker because she

always healed with the Light. At her touch, woman,

or man, any whose lives were grey and flat like

sand were drawn into her Light. You did  not

so much see, as sense its reflection as

your pain and suffering were carried away over

the distant hills until you could barely

feel them.   As they were fading, their heavy

storm clouds were changing to the softest meringue.


On hearing her whispers, the wildest white

horses would quieten and become gentle

in her wake, the rough seas would calm, giant

waves become fluffy, till all that was dark

would start shining and sliding out of the shadows;

riding, gliding, deftly drawing into

the glimmering light and dancing slowly,

softly, into peace and enlightenment.

 

Cait O’Connor
 
 
Poem written for creative writing group Magpie Tales in response to the photo prompt.

 

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Notes of a Therapist


 

I started by asking what her interests were,

how did she spend her days? She told me that

she didn’t much like days. These were the things

she loved most of all: bedtime and dreaming

and sometimes, before nightfall, like the proverbial

shepherdess, she would gaze with an artist’s eye

upon the pinking of the summer skies which

called to her camera and for solo

trips into the hills. On her return she

spent time online with her secret ‘friend’

‘Jiminy Cricket’ whose real identity

could be anyone. This is what she said

she despised, that fact and the two stuffed squirrels

 which he said he kept in a case on the

wall and the way he was always disappearing

 to put fish food in the tank. (He sounded real

creepy to me).  She told me that she had

cried recently because she had seen her

daughter’s  copies of Cosmopolitan which only

reinforced her lost youth with all its past passions.

I left it there, when  the tissues had run out.

 

Cait O’Connor

Sunday, 10 March 2013

To Irish Mothers




Happy Mother's Day


I make no apologies. I am posting something I posted on Mother's Day five years ago.

Feelings about mothers never change do they?

Do revisit the page:

http://caitoconnor.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/to-irish-mothers.html

Monday, 25 February 2013

Shadows








Shadows

 
There are many  writers-in-cyberspace;
words flow like a proverbial, perpetual
fountain but one poet- soul, a wise one,
who weaves his words with skill and feeling, said
that the shadows racing over sand were
thoughts that the land is having. I marvelled
at what seemed to me a revelation
for I live amidst mountains and am often
found watching shadows as they cross, soft-hued,
quiet and tender, covering and changing
the landscape in their wake, from dark to light,
from light to dark and back to light again.
Now  I imagine the land’s emotions:
the wind is its anger, the sun is its
benevolence, the breeze a tease, the snow  
its strong urge to hibernate and always,
always I shall see the rain as its tears.
From a penumbra in the poet’s mind,
something ghostly, insubstantial, half-glimpsed
and half-hidden, just an inkling of an idea
became pure poetry,transformed itself
and flew on a journey to me, through space,
reaching my mountainous place from the sea
inspiring me, from those  thought-shadows in the sand.

 
Cait O’Connor


 
Written in response to a poem  Shadows at Pics and Poems .

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

A Little Request

 
View from the Sugar Loaf on a Winter Sun Day


I am sorry that I haven’t blogged as much lately but my daughter and I have been busy working together setting up a website for a planned mother-daughter small business enterprise.
I would dearly love you to have a look at the site and give your feedback on it  as I really value your opinions and any suggestions you may have.  I won’t explain here how the business idea came about but all is revealed on the site.
This the link; Google is not picking it up yet as it only went live a few days ago.
 
Many thanks,
Cait
 
 
 

Monday, 18 February 2013

A book I think you would love





I have just finished this book; it's a first novel, it's a real page turner. 
 
On the back it says:
Ireland
America
Family secrets
Laughter
Tragedy
Swimming
Dogs
Big beaches
Loneliness
 
A story of unexpected life-changing love
 
I loved this book and would like to recommend it to you.