Una hora menos

  Daffodils Daffodils are dancing On the Feb’ry breeze White clouds are sailing ‘Cross the sky with ease.  Low sun is peering  Through the leafless trees.  Green growth is thrusting From the sleepy earth Another spring is coming  Another year, rebirth.  Hope in every bud That rises toward the sun Music from the busy birds Their happy notes are sung.  Mothers pushing buggies Grannies wheeling prams Children walking doggies A new season has begun.  Smelling pungent garlic Spilling out on paths Shadows dancing in the lane Leading to the sea.  Wexford welcomes and awaits The neighbor and the stranger.  Thankful for a mid month sabbath When families leave their kitchen To breathe the bracing sea air  Refreshed, reclaimed, remade. 

Seagulls The seagulls scatter o ‘er the golden sands That gild the quiet beach of Sandycove  They wheel in graceful arcs above the Forty Foot And turn to cross Dublin Bay to Malahide.  Spring comes early this gentle afternoon As swimmers lie on backs to greet the sun That warms the waters lapping on the shore Hope is rewarded and we have survived.  The buds are bursting forth with color In defiance of a winter barely gone Another year, thank God, of subtle beauty Creeps slowly ‘cross Dun Leary and her spires.  The sun is setting behind St Joseph’s Church The water glimmers in the bay  The office workers close the office doors In Dublin City just five miles but a world away

  This plastic patriot This plastic patriot Full of high pretense  Forever angry and indignant Suffering slights he learned in bars His prison sentence drinking jars.  Nothing done in all his years But slap a back and tell some tales And live in days obscured by time Unwilling to accept the sunlight That shone outside the smokey pub.  Fighting battles of wars long over Captured in eternal frieze  Do anything but do his duty To his wife with abandoned kids First conceived when time was called.  Such a tiny life he sought to hide Behind the songs and revelry And the friendships born from booze Projecting shadows of his heroes On the walls of public houses.  Not content to plough his furrow Unhappy with the mediocre  Drink will help escape the hell Remove the traces of the ordinary Make a stuttering man a character.  A wasted life flows down only The ragged road to poverty But perhaps it’s what he wants To deal with savage reality Prisoner of hi...

  Hail Mary Hail Mary, mother of Jesus, Misunderstood then, misunderstood now, Overwhelming you with divinity When we might praise your humanity.  Different tales, confused over time, Forgetting the most important The son you reared can be proud of Who changed the course of history.  Dying as he did on a cross Dying too young for a mother Who had stood by her son From the humble start in a manger.  The rest is guessing and supposition Yet we sustain the tradition To honor and bless your name In a world no longer the same.