On reading AE Houseman

 

And of my three score years and ten

most will never come again

and take from that my sixty- nine

that only leaves me one more time

to get it right and get it good

this walking, dreaming in the wood

and watch the tree from bud to leaf

to flower to fruit and then to grief.

I'm hoping four score years and more

become the twenty first century norm

that way I can at least enjoy

for one more decade Nature's lore

desport itself with nonchalance

despite our blatant carelessness.

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

A word about Norse Socks

 I came across this gorgeous blend in a craft shop in kenmare. 

https://www.kenmare.ie/kenmare-item/kenmare-craft-hobby-centre/

75% Superwash Wool, 25% Polymide.

It's a King Cole product and knits up to a lovely pair of Nordic looking socks.

This blend is called after Thor, a hammer wielding God in Norse Mythology. God of fertility, thunder, lightning and storms!!

I was so pleased with the result that I went back and bought a few other Norse Gods.

There's Loki, son of a Norse giant, a trickster God and shape shifter

Then there's Vali, son of Odin who is the main man in the Norse canon of Gods. Vali is the God of vengeance!

Modi, son of Thor, is likewise formidable in his associations for he symbolises wrath

And finally I purchased Skoll, synonymous with treachery and mockery, a wolf that chases the sun.....

Not for the faint hearted these Norse socks.

From left to right Loki,Vali,Modi and Skoll

(Thor is a light blue than Vali)

Autumn

 At the seaside I notice a last desperate flurry of activity before the demise of summer.

 I also notice our elders beginning to don gloves and socks, specifically designed to deal with colder climes.

While the rest of us scurry for comfort, they'll stick it out all winter long...or for as long as they can. This poem is for them.

Autumn

The park has been shorn of its summer mane

and wears a razed pate, smelling of meadow- sweet

and nettle and yarrow- strewn across its salon floor

 And in the garden I practice euthanasia

root out jaded lobelia, cut back and secateur all

that is stooping and failing

And at the shoreline mothers stand lifeguard

while their young take a final plunge

before the tyranny of school timetable begins

And though the temperature is dropping

and lifeguards pack away their red and yellow paraphernalia

our elders wade in, ready to embrace and endure 

This change that has begun to shift 

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

Irish Weather Forecasters

While some appear apologetic, and others defensive,

even defiant to the point of alarming

with gritted teeth and threatening brow

and a tone that defies contradiction

(latter day Cassandras, endowed

 with the gift of prophecy but fated

 never to be believed) 

there's something reassuring about Joanna Donnelly.

Whether she's forecasting an approaching hurricane

with a Saffir-Simpson wind scale of 3 to 4

or weather warnings: red, orange or yellow

or fronts passing in and across and out, 

or hazy sunshine followed by persistent rain...

you almost feel like thanking her for it.

And when she says,"Whatever you had today

you'll have more of the same tomorrow,"

with a shrug that adds,"Suck it up!"

you may as well just order another pint.....

 

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

Water Colour by Marie-Helene Brohan Delhaye Lamb's Head,County Kerry, Sunset  Sky

To Air or not to Air?

 

"It's  more like watching the ads," you say,

"with Olympian breaks in between.

And someone has written to The Times to complain about it!"

And a lot of the ads aren't even themed on sport,

though performance is alluded to, by the by, uneven as it is-

For there's the fellow brandishing the magic duster,

the one with the electromagnetic charge

that grabs and retains dust particles as if they were gold- 

Versus the woman who scent-boosts her shirt instead of washing it,

she can repeat this in training up to a hundred times,

I hope she doesn't, for when it comes to the test

a clean, fresh shirt will surely pip her at the post.

But most of the hype is about spraying rather than airing

so back to that air time where we'd rather be pondering depth

 of field and cadence in stride than Busting the Must-

Though the word cadence, when you look it up, 

comes from cadere meaning to fall

which isn't so great for an Olympian hopeful

for there's no repechage for a DNF...

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

Transience

If I hadn't read about those Tibetan monks

sweeping their sand mandalas into an urn, 

and dispersing them in flowing water

to symbolise the transience of art and life,

reminding me of Banksy's Balloon Girl

shredded during auction,transmuted by the hammer

 into Love is in the Bin,

I might have enjoyed the sun setting alight 

the under leaves of my Smoke Tree

from royal purple to claret red

or the reflection of hot lipped Salvias

through a window pane half ajar,

their open mouths prone to the suckling of honeybee

or the sun highlighting a ball of wool from West Yorkshire Spinners

catching the promise of Christmas in its Nutcracker glitter

and thought about the socks I would make out of that...

That's the kind of morning I could have had...

Copyright 2024 Cathy Leonard

Merlin to the rescue

 After days of being perplexed by a cry emanating from  a copse of trees I resorted to the wisdom of my Merlin bird app. I'd been thinking fox or fox cub, maybe in distress, and had been trawling through the thicket at 7 a.m. looking for a wounded creature. 

The creature turns out to be a sparrow hawk and far from distressed I'd say it's making a meal of it, surrounded as it is by wrens, robins, blue tits and siskins....

Am reposting a poem I wrote a few months ago about the sparrow hawk that visited our back garden.

https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/sparrowhawk/

The Killing Field

He would have had his head tilted listening for earthworms.

He wouldn't have noticed a shadow hugging the ground

or heard the short wings swooping the air 

propelling the raptor forward, its long tail fanned out 

to break speed.

The last thing the blackbird saw was the yellow eyed sparrow hawk

fixing it in a deadly stare before claws descending 

left shorn feathers blacken the air.

What we saw looking out our kitchen window

was a hooked beak delve into bird skull 

and strong yellow legs pin their prey to the ground.

It was too late to save the songster 

and probably unwise.

Copyright Cathy Leonard 2024