Control

 

 

Control

 

He was the puppeteer, she the marionette.  He was handsome,

she hung on his words, ensnared by their candour.

He brought flowers, seemed earnest in his ardour,

He was manipulative, she was submissive.

She should have listened to mother, who said

never trust a man who will not meet your eye.

She laughed it off, far too soft,

down to her very last curl.

The puppeteer was a plotter in control,

soon she became his puppet, 

tried and tested to a high specification.

Rows ensued if she broke down, became loose,

disengaged or tried to break away.

One day huge cracks appeared;  a split  occurred,

She finally snapped and when they became uncoupled,

he was shriven, spiteful, selfish.

Instead of crumbling, she was dignified,

she forgave and wished him well,

before she left him, more in sorrow than anger.

 

Cait O’Connor

 

 

 

 

Beware of the Wolf

 

Tsars Ivan, the son of the grey wolf

Viktor Vasnetsov 1889

 

 

Beware of the Wolf

 

Unknown  to her, he was deadly, like nightshade

A crow or raven would have taken flight;

even a dog or a deer would have caught his scent but

she, gentle, like a bird, was shaky and only ever looked upward to the stars.

She thrived on romance, didn’t  notice the morass that she was nearing

nor the embers  burning beneath it.

She knew only how to give, to hold and not  break faith,

there was no finite quantity to her love.

Not fond of measuring, she couldn’t see they did not fit,

but he had sized her up and his lure, though tempting, was deeply insincere.

His ways were knaveish, wolfish,

more than a match for the naive or the squeamish.

His actions were shameless, slippery, dead to all honour.

A dealer  in the shabby, paltry, cunning and oblique,

he borrowed from her with a bribe and

in an extortionant, dishonest manner,

like a loanshark,  he stole away her innocence.

 

Cait O’Connor

Summer Sunday

Artist D Luckins

 

O Curlew, cry no more in the air,

Or only to the water in the West;

Because your crying brings to my mind

passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair

that was shaken over my breast:

there is enough evil in the crying of the wind.

 

William Butler Yeats

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Sunday

Sunday, surely a day for chasing sun, not shadows?

Waking from a fractured sleep, where fractions

of my heatwave dreams still held me in their grip,

I rose to walk in my garden where a riot of  roses

had joined forces with lilac

and wild honeysuckle was chasing the exuberant ramblers. 

I took in their sensual delights as their blooms

smiled at the world with such a joyous expression.

The songbirds’ chorus was drowning the valley,

the river joined in with its gentler, summer melody.

There seemed to be so many shades of green,

the skies were wide and blue, the sun seemed full to bursting,

the palette a perfect backdrop for a midsummer work of art.

I loved how the birds nest in every nook and cranny

(whatever a cranny may be) and then I remembered

that yesterday on the Epynt mountain, an old friend had returned,

I had seen a curlew, and realised I had so missed its eerie, heartfelt, cry.

Soon my bad dream’s grip was loosened and all worries were forgotten,

for there is always hope in nature’s balmy days like these,

days to savour in the dark and sometimes trying times of winter.

 

Cait O’Connor


PS   I have posted some of my Summer Sunday photos on my other blog, Cait's Photos which can be found here

 

Andy Murray Wins Wimbledon

Summer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butterfly

A Rarity

A Monarch butterfly, regal wanderer,

flies from the bottom of the world over

field and meadow, prairie and city, her

migration secret,  always unfollowed.

Such rarity, a welcome migrant in

a hostile land, queen of all her domain.

Dark-veined, extravagant, she flies on stained-

glass wings of ochre, tawny citrus and the

darkest ebony.  She craves the sweetest

milkweed, not for her the parched aridity

of stony common land laced with groundsel,

or ragwort, that noxious old-man-of-the-spring.

For scarcity value she is priceless;

no-one’s familiar, no mere butterfly

which is quickly viewed and soon forgotten 

 

Cait O’Connor

Progress?

There is more to life than increasing its speed

Mahatma Gandhi

The F Word

 

Fast flies the new ‘F’ word:

fast bucks,fast speech, fast food,

fast broadband, fast cars,

fast planes, fast phones, fast trains,

even faster planes, even faster trains.

Fast news in short staccato bursts

(this and only this is what you

need to be fed today).

Education a game, degrees worthless,

genius sidestepped, 

no time in life for daydreaming,

imagination fades.

Eyes fixed on screens; brains shrinking,

attention spans reduced to almost nil.

Original thought struggles for survival,

(mostly missing, presumed dead).

Libraries closing, books burning,

those without souls worshipping speed,

uniformity and conformity.

Tick-box fanatics with disjointed thinking

wanting us to sacrifice our souls,

and meekly follow their commands

and to do it fast

 

Cait O’Connor

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

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