The Busker

Decisions

The Lily Wilts

The Lily Wilts

And there he cradles, with rifle aimed

The ideal nurtured from history pained.

And spoken to by public men

The righteous goal to fight again.

And now to choose from life apart

To live as is or die to chart

A means for man to share his bread

For simple end, that all are fed.

In his trench, his communal grave

Ideal words, those deaths, forgave.

All is well, those others say

But in that trench your dream must stay.

The world you gave, but could not cross

Has now decayed for that loss.

The lily wilts, your bloom does fade

Whilst public men in silver trade.

Ocean Sunrise

The Painter's Pause

Donal (7) School Portrait

Autumn

Autumn

Strange the clarity

In the autumnal sigh.

A sense of pause,

To contemplate the end

Of expectant times.

The dawn is darker.

As the pillow complains

Of unfinished dreams,

Broken,

By an intrusive day.

A whispering grey

Permeates the stillness.

A dew drenched haze,

Proclaims the ritual

Of the weeping trees.

But all is cycle.

And in its place.

The relentless truth

Of life and change

And change and life.

And still there is laughter.

Challenge and ambition.

An indifferent defiance.

The varied voices of the young

Play amidst the fallen hues.

Tadhg (7) School Portrait

Bob Dylan

Emma's Portrait

In Time's Meadow

In Time's Meadow

There is a beatitude
In the timeless vale.
Where rhymes chime
And colours converse.

I walk there seldom.
Alone and not.
With canvass and quill.
The collective solitude.

And dialogue.
With perfect abandon.
Where even a glance
Utters its meaning.

There is a lot to be said
For not having to say.
A lot to rue,
Once it is said.

'Monday's Child'

Tom's Portrait

Between Time

Between Time

The world is awash
With breathless colours
Speaking chaos
To the hurried self.

This is life.
Ordained by others.
Orwell's regiments
Marching, grey and cold.

And then it appears,
By repentant chance.
An idle view
Of something free.

Like a child,
Brimming with simplicity.
A moment in harmony
With the precious, privy self.

Adagio

Adagio

Tranquillity
Dishonoured by a pace
Which utters treason
Against a rationale
Which knows itself well.

Socrates adjured us:
'Know thyself'
And for what?
If Plato cannot convince
Others need know it too.

I slumber long
In the great adagios.
The world is deaf.
I hear it clearly.
I hear it all the time.

Donal's Portrait

Bon Voyage

Bon Voyage

Tomorrow a plane
A journey east
An island recluse
A sanity feast

The Tipping Scales

The Tipping Scales

What is denied, recurs.
And erodes
Unprepared shores.
Life's rites,
Win or fail,
Must be lived.
Or islands
Cease to be.


A ponderous death
Is a wasted life.
The forlorn rebirth
Of what might have been.
The death knell balance
Gazes aft.
At sacrifice rebuked.
Life lived, and missed.

In Ireland's Garden

In Ireland’s Garden

Beside the grey the pastures lie

Beneath the mountain luring sky

With tempting hues of rolling light

And solace pledged in meadows bright

And colours to the halcyon eye

Dance amidst a leafy sigh

A barren beauty within our reach

Depart the grey, to life, beseech

Pat's Portrait

Portraiture

Portraiture

All is quiet
The day sedated
The breeze is gentle
The muse awaited

The palette primed
The canvass stretched
The spirit cleansing
The image etched

And to the brush
And colours form
The view appears
The shades inform

And let it rest
And sing awhile
All that remains
Is the muse's smile

Tadhg & Dónal

Tadhg & Dónal

The night is sleeping, its duty done

Dreams surrender to a tepid sun

The waking thoughts that greet the day

Are of the womb or debts to pay

Amidst the toil of labour’s lot

Sulks the toil of labour not

The idle mind does burden more

Cast adrift from haven’s shore

Withering on this great expanse

Hostage to official chance

Recurring waves of nowhere bound

And tidal strains that run aground

No metaphor will see this through

Nor pleading to compassion’s hue

‘The world is all that is the case’

The coldness of indifferent place

So when the night reclaims the dreams

From low and slumbering sunlit beams

The sleeping thoughts are of the womb

Those guiding lights , the eternal bloom

Beethoven

Beethoven

The pastoral birds have taken flight
The rainbow's hues attentive
The moonlight's shawl is tailored dusk
The human voice is pensive

Light is spread across the earth
The tones of life abundant
Searching for their masters air
The prentenders now redundant

The concert hall is brimming full
The hills and mountains closing
The leas and valleys are under sun
The music score is chosen

And God itself has taken charge
And bid creation silent
And stood upon his tomb again
To once again enlighten

And chosen for His gospel new
An ode to joy to share
Authored by a tortured soul
Sitting deaf within a chair

The Impressionists

The Impressionists

Moments in time
Not posed, but taken
A captured essence
Truth to awaken

And ridiculed
By the imperial mind
The rigid affectation
A worldview blind

But scent on the canvass
Life in the brush
Sway in the breeze
Secrets in the blush

For what is art?
If not to move
The whispered senses
This they did prove

Come Spirit

Come Spirit

What calls us?
Truly
To aspire, to excel, to attain?
A feathered man
In the dawn deep forest
'Oh great Spirit,
Whose voice I hear in the wind'

Contemplation

Contemplation

Only the sea
Can move the child to ponder
What value on youth
When age is a one way tide

Unharnessed rush
To know the world
All is wonder
The unknowns tempt

But learn from the sea
It leaves to return
Stop awhile
The world will still be there

For Oilcan

For Oilcan

There is a barge
Which purrs through contented waters
It's the lighthouse effect
Skirting troubles
Finding shores

In Memory Of Bazille

In Memory Of Bazille

They shot Bazille
The wrong red hue on his tunic
His palette shattered
His brush silenced
The impressionist lost
And lost, and lost

The Hawk

The Hawk

Sail and soar oh freedoms father
In your realm where hope would rather
Dwell above the plains and wish
That food for gods bade humble dish


Hallowed hawk, heavens arrow
Gliding through the tempest narrow
Forgive me from your nestled reef
Where you kissed the man called thief

On Loss And Sadness

On Loss And Sadness

What lines for loss?
What words to say?
What verse to pen?
What songs to pray?

None but their name.
Their name.
The ultimate poem.

On Filling In Forms

On Filling In Forms

The rain is falling

Like forms to be filled

Incessant and pointless

As fields untilled

Yet rain has a purpose

Like mother to child

The two become one

New and beguiled

But forms are endless

Dull and repeated

The rain forest weeps

Her children depleted

And where does it end

On a shelf without smile

All that torment

Entombed in a file

Being And Knowing

Being and Knowing

The reduction to absurdity

A philosopher’s creed

A contradiction

The senseless seed

I’m of rational birth

And abstract life

A contradiction

Eternal strife

They say there are others

I say there are none

If two were perfect

They would be one

The Intimacy

The Intimacy

I take her there where myth is free

Removed from all the world can see

And bathe her feet with unmasked hands

The dream drenched rite, avowing bands

I know her fear, the darkened place

The whispered shadows upon my face

For I am known through other men

Who forge to many, and that times ten

But in this river, this weaving realm

A simple act does overwhelm

I lift her feet up off this earth

And with these waters caress our birth

For Catherine

For Catherine

They came at night to use the dawn

As chaperone to a waking song

Artists, teachers, students all

Gathered for the artists call

No brush nor quill nor masons tool

Or geometric form or rule

But freedom of expressive thought

The elusive art experience sought

The Words Not Spoken

The Words Not Spoken

Stirring in my memory’s eye

A lingering glance which told me why

Before I cast that image old

Regrets of having never told

I need that love which instinct said

No other mattered unto dead

And time is long as loss is read.

The Poet's Poet

The Poet’s Poet

Some like poems that rhyme

Others like odes which tell

Some like lines with colour as course

Others their verse with romantic source

And what of the poet?

The puppeteer of time

What fills the well to draw upon rhyme?

None but the soul, a harvest’s weight

For only being faithful can sow that faith

Mother

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Mother

All good things,

Rhyme with mother.

Betrayal

Betrayal

I admire mothers

God’s Word needed one

Before we could listen

I saw a mother begging

Her word in her lap

Her cup in her hand

Her cross on her back

Her Calvary to climb

Her Judas all around her

I Passed A Tree

I Passed a Tree

I passed a tree of unknown age

And sorry that I did

To sit and rest within it’s shade

The cackling city rid

And seek advice on heart and soul

And hear what it may tell

I passed a tree of unknown age

My heart and soul did fell

Shoelaces

Shoelaces

I love to tie their shoelaces.

The weavers hug.

All is well.

And.

All is well.