Berets and Spanish dogs

 

I remember someone admitting

that all they could remember from War and Peace

was the story of a policeman tied to the back of a bear

and thrown into the canal.

And having read the Eye Witness guide to San Sebastian

on a flight from Dublin to Bilbao

and tasted, on arrival, the city's Top Ten 

and a plate or two of pintxos,

I have to admit that the daily highlight for me 

was the fellow at the corner cafe,

his black txpela, finger softened to a peaked front

speaking basque to his dog

as he sipped his cafe solo.

A caricature almost of a Basque separatist,

lean to the point of wiry, or visa versa,

nonchalant to the point of dour.

And given my own Celtic ancestry

I bought myself a beret,

or rather several of them

But failed to create the same effect-

lacking perhaps the required fluency in Gaelic,

the correct amount of finger dexterity,

never mind the dog,

and not forgetting my complete lack of nonchalance.

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

Not a Still Life

 

Friday morning and having

no grand design or marble statue

to write a poem about

I look out my front window-

where Kit is hunkered beneath the white beam

his one eye cocked on a wood pigeon

sitting on a high rise wire observing-

cars breaking, halting and reversing,

angling around lorries delivering

bricks and mortar to our neighbour's garden,

and kids on bikes schoolward bound, 

speed lines flying from their spokes

as if they were in the final stage of La Vuelta.

The white beam shakes its berried boughs

and pigeon ascends to the highest branch,

while around the tree trunk a cat's tail

is snaking upwards.

Seriously,

how far does he think he's going to get?

What with his one eye and two pins in his hip

and his nine lives already spent?

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

On Maeve Binchey's commemorative coin

 I wonder who collects collector coins?

And the unveiling of them seems to me 

to be a risky business altogether

for said coin could easily slip between the folds

of said veil and miss the show altogether

or be swept away by the flamboyant 

performance of the Central Bank unveiler

right into the pit of the auditorium,

maybe even reaching the gods,

like those tennis balls at Wimbledon

only returned at the behest of the umpire

threatening to suspend the match.

Anyway our very own Maeve Binchey

is to be honoured by the minting and unveiling

of a 15 euro silver proof coin,

more than seven times the value of the U2 coup.

A surprise ending. She would have loved that.

But given that she polled ahead of Jane Austen

and Charles Dickens and even Stephen King

in a millennial survey

and given her appearance on Oprah, The Late Late,

and even Fair City,

I say fair enough, especially for a woman 

who once described Beckett's spikey hair

as the probable result of a poor Brylcreem job.

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

The Escape Artist

 

Not wings of feather and wax exactly

but feet too close together

to successfully execute his plan,

he grabs hold of the bars

and raises himself to stare

his two witnesses in the eye,

with the smug look of a thief

who has just cracked the safe code

or the accused in the dock

just acquitted of his crime,

to a chorus of OMG

and a mother's hand

stretched out to stall

baby's fall back into the pen.

Copyright Cathy Leonard 2026

Jack@customerservice.com

 

I wonder who came up with the idea

to call the first responder@customer service Jack?

I mean it could have been Sophie

or Emmet or Deepak or Rahul

answering my query

but it's, or is it?

colloquial, relatable, friendly Jack,

(if I discard connotations

like The Ripper, or The Lad.)

And so I've been baring my online purchasing soul

with a customer service initiative.

If only I hadn't been so chatty, intimate almost,

declaring myself a technophobe 

and nearly apologising for it.

For it's just occurred to me

that given Jack's prompt efficiency,

almost instantaneous responses,

that he/she/it

may well be a bot.

And where's the box it can tick to verify that?

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

Keeping Time

 

A bird is tapping on the chimney cowl

installed recently to prevent

said birdy and its pals from descent

into the burning flames of eternity.

Its beat strikes alternate time with the clock

ticking on the mantle piece

recently introduced to act as metronome

for  my daily floor exercises

also recently embarked upon

to stay my journey to the afterworld.

Tick Tock Tick the bird and clock

in duo seem to call,

my very own cuckoo clock,

but heralding every second

and not just the hours,

a reminder of the relentless passage

of time and the need for me to persist

with building bridges, tilting pelvis

and, if I can manage it,

performing a one legged squat.

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

Haikus

 

I recently attended a workshop on prose poetry, flash fiction and Haiku with the renowned Irish poet John W Sexton. The Haiku part caught my attention and has set me looking for flash inspiration ever since. John's take on this Japanese form is that it has been misunderstood and we can forget about the 5/7/5 syllable rule, which is great as it allows more freedom. 9-17 syllables will suffice in one line, two or three.

Some Background

Haiku started out as a popular activity called “Tanka."  during the 9th to 12th centuries in Japan.

A Tanka was a progressive poem.

The first poet gave a 5-7-5 mora verse, 

the second a 7-7 mora verse 

and on it went.

(a mora is similar to a syllable but not the same- hence the misunderstanding I referred to above.)

The hokku was the name given to the first verse that set the mood for the rest.

It came into its own in the 19th century when hokkus were written and read for their own sake.

The three masters of “hokku” from the 17th century were Basho, Issa, and Buson. 

                                          *****

The theme of Haikus was traditionally Nature but Love crept in as a permissible subject.

A haiku is made up of a fragment and a phrase. Here are some I wrote after doing the workshop.

clothes horse in the garden (fragment)

pegging down the sun (phrase)

mountains on the horizon

upholding the clouds

treetops on fire

morning sun rising

her spirit

sunshine breaking through cloud

They are fun to write and also hone our descriptive writing skills. 

Enjoy