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Uploaded August 2015 (3 poems) Click for Readings
Poetry Personified
My first exposure to poetry was as an infant, when an aunt who lived with us
used to recite to me at bedtime from a small stock of loved and memorised poems.
used to recite to me at bedtime from a small stock of loved and memorised poems.
She has loved me all my life
From the very first day we met And despite long years apart I know that she loves me yet. I loved her first as a child In the infant way I knew And throughout my teenage years My love for her blossomed and grew, Till I turned to another love Thinking she offered me more And coldly closed my mind To the love I had known before. |
This lady helped me succeed
While together with her at the start For she taught many things that she knew But she never captured my heart. And once, when my life was distressed My love was found knelt by my bed For I must have whispered her name Though never a word I said. Now again, in the evening of life She has answered my silent call As slowly I'm learning to know The sound of her soft footfall. |
A Walk by Twilight
This poem is about a youthful solitary walk when on holiday in Kilkee, County Clare in Ireland.
It was accepted for publication in the youth magazine of the Poetry Society.
It was accepted for publication in the youth magazine of the Poetry Society.
I walked the dim-lit level sands and watched
The ruby-tinted twilight gild the sky; As the red frieze, with myriad sparkling lights, Crept o'er the trembling water, the plaintive cry Of the last lone seagull echoed on the cliffs That overhung the shore. A call of peace Dying among the murmur of the waves; And sun-lit islands melted in the seas. I turned and traced my path across the bay, The cool sand stirred beneath my dusty feet, The town lights glowed like sequins through the dark Marking the plane where sky and water meet. The tide was washing memory from the beach As sleep washed memory from the mind of man, And little Everests of children's hands Broke, as ideals have since time began. |
But in my mind the sun again had risen,
And children's voices sounded from the shore. The brown waves swirled in foam around the feet Of happy bathers, joined by more and more Until the water echoed with their cries. Four boys were leading ponies round a mark While wind-blown children clung upon their backs, Till with the softening sea-breeze came the dark. Then rugs were lifted from the cooling beach, And tired children, close to mother's side, Watched the boys lead the ponies from the strand. The sun's red plume sank lower on the tide. The figures disappeared as they had come, The vision of the day once more had gone, The dark and bitter night-air whipped my face - And left me but a dream to dream upon. |
1956
Power
Breaking the chains that bind
Speak the truth to power,
the power to so deceive, for what you fully are is more than you believe. We scarce ourselves can know though we ourselves are known when knowledge from within most often we disown. Know first that you are loved by love that holds you dear then face the truth you are and face it without fear. |