GOUGANE COLLECTION
(1984-1985)
"Growing up in the Sixties"
NIGHTDRIVE
Star-studded sky
above Gougane
kept me company
as I drove home.
Pity Pat
Kavanagh
never knew
this
wild starry place
for no poet praises
this local beauty.
"Fine for
tourists
but what about us?"
Farmers prefer green fields,
high milk yields and a drop of rain.
What use are lakes
and worse
still-hills?
Who profits from purple
heather,
gold-flecked furze
and red-berried mountain ash?
Place of my heart and home
I
return and rememeber..
~~~~~~~
SUNDAYS IN THE VILLAGE
We spent silver sixpences
in Kelleher's shop
every
Sunday after Mass.
Eating ice-creams
to observe the Sabbath.
In
Creedon's pub
red faced men
sank pints of porter
to
quench the weeklong thirst
of field
and bog.
Their women went about their
weekly shopping:
swopping stories,
sharing secrets,
even
scandals in long low whispers!
The
village hummed with life
from near
townlands and back the hills.
People
meeting, laughing, talking
neighbours, friends, relations.
No
anonymity here
or not for long
a stranger stayed a stranger.
JACK KEARNEY
Father of fun
larger than life
he burst into my
childhood
on his battered bicycle
with images of Long Island.
Singer of songs
weaver of magic
stories....
Fairies, wild women and
wakes,
white horses in the night!
I see him
on a Sunday evening
calling on his way
up the
caol
to set other traps
while warning me
they'd break my
bones
before they'd let me go.
September sees him always
fixing up the thresher in the haggard
happy swigging "white stuff"
or a keg of porter.
I see him
sometimes
at the bog
on
hot summer afternoons
turning turf
between his yarns
or piking hay into
the shed
before the weather broke in
mid-July.
But-he is gone
those days are lost
and gone forever.
No more barefoot toes
sticking to tar bubbles
coming home
from summer school;
no August
nightfalls
drawing warm milk
from stall to churn
and back
again.
No more.
Old people
leave us
one by one
and in
their absence
we are weaker
but strong, calm places
stand
forever.
~~~~~
MARY LEHANE
You'd
never think that hillside
held a
houseen like it.
The bóithrin is now
bedecked
by honeybees and hives.
That time it was an open house.
Nights of laughter
at our
"scóraíocting"
echo down the years.
There were some good acres
a
few rocky outcrops
a donkey and car
some cats, a dog
and a
brother
smiling in the corner.
Her erady smile
with soft
words of welcome
always put us at our
ease.
The paraffin lamp threw shadows
through the kitchen
on dark
wintry nights
while the door was
always open
in the good weather
to let the light and callers in.
She knew joy.
We met like
magnets around her
sharing stories
and small secrets.
May you rest in
peace, dear Mary.
~~~~~~
FULL CIRCLE
Flickering candles in the
island church
held out against the
rainy wind
of a mid-April evening
in Gougane.
What do I expect
to see
when I drive in?
Each time I come to worship
I know
the scene is set
and has been since
the ice-age.
So-why wonder?
Times there are, the mountain-top
is dark and brooding
sheltering the valley
from the world
without.
But on sunny summer evenings
those same hills
bend down
caressing holy waters
with
the gentlest streams.
Place of peace
and pines:
My heart comes home to
you.
~~~~~
NORA O'RIORDAN,
GORTNALOUR,
INCHIGEELA.
NIGHTDRIVE