Why Not Dance?

Buttercups

 

 

Artist Marjorie Wilson

 

Ranunculus

 

On my antique oak table the French slipware

jug cradles such a temporary fragility.

I could not be disturbed by their profusion

in my garden for there could be nothing

malefic about buttercups; their joyous

yellows are never baleful or harmful,

thriving as they do even more so now

in our poor, drenched and depleted earth.

I store their magic along with their vision

in the compartment of memory that

I keep for those vile, vexed days and wonder why

we cannot be like the buttercups.

Could we not persist, rise up and open

our eyes wide enough to see between the

enclosing, dying  trees? When times are shaky,

the light is low and all about us is rapidly

breaking in pieces, should we not spread ourselves

in battle, against the odds. Instead we 

sleepwalk within a cosy, manufactured

reality; instead we make no sound.

 

Cait O’Connor

 

Just a poem

Passed Lives

Could I have been the hermit on a Celtic coast,

the writer in her hut, the poet praying at the well.

A solitary saint?

The lighthouse keeper, high, alone and lofty on some rocky shore.

The singer with a voice pure and lasting, effortless and sure.

The dancer with just music flowing in my veins.

The player of the tunes with much feeling in the strains.

The tennis player, swift, precise and pure, a legend in the game.

The true artist; seeing all and then setting free the sight.

The whitest, wildest pony roaming wide and free.

The sensual, sultry cat, somewhat pampered, fed and warm.

The bird that always flies alone, glides, swoops

and  nests where peace lies in a beauty

which the taint of Man has yet to kill.

 

Cait O’Connor

 

 

 

 

Kingfisher!

 

 

My year is made  because today M has seen the kingfisher on our river bridge. It was before seven in the morning and this poor photo was very hastily snapped through a (dirty) window through rain, wind, mist and low light (well it is summer!).

 

Last year I did not see it at all which worried me and most summers I am lucky to see only a few flashes of the brilliant blue as it flies up or downstream. Only very occasionally have we seen it unmoving for any peiod of time.

 

Needless to say I shall be up early from now on, camera at the ready.  Watch this space won't you? And please keep everything crossed.

 

Bye for now,

Caitx

 

 

Andrea Begley on the Voice sings Let Her Go

Edward Snowden Petition

Stand with Edward Snowden petition

People signing all over the world every half second


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

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