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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

Passenger Let Her Go

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

Funeral for a Friend

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

Free World?

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).

 

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

 

Glenda Jackson

All in this together?

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

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

 

 

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.

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.

 

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

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

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 .

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Find Your Family

http://www.findyourfamily.org.uk/

Many thanks,

Cait

 

 

 

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.