This
No ‘bad moon rising’
A brilliant blotch of white above a sea
And below
Furrowed fingers of a field
Earth brown traces
Ploughing for potatoes
A tree bent double
Fiercely forced to yield
My cousin’s painting
Memory he cherishes
Childhood days spent in a summer glen
We never saw the woes and wilds of winter
We visited a paradise back then
But our mammies knew the glen
In all its seasons
The sights and smells and sounds
Of yesteryear
Then off with them to Manchester
Families to found
But in their minds and hearts
Their home was here
Right here
Brian Fahy
15 September 2021
+ My cousin Hughie O’Donoghue, the painter, son of my mother’s beloved sister, Sheila, has a new and beautiful image in deep blue, entitled ‘Blue Moon – A Ploughed Field’. I came across it this morning and I love it. So I will work with words to try and express something of what Hughie has so wonderfully done in art.
BF.
Erris Poetry 