A Painting of Home, Roscommon

On a frosty way to school,

our breaths condensed into word balloons;

the cows had word balloons,

so had Feeley’s donkey (even though he was a loner),

and Browne’s dog, Darkey. We all had.

They all said ‘Mornin.’ when we passed;

we said ‘Mornin.’

and the cows, eating chewing gum,

watched us head on

with a kind of distracted sympathy.

Childhood was that way, we all got on.

I had friends who were trees and streams;

picking mushrooms was part of our friendship,

cows said ‘thank you’ after milking,

trees regularly joined in our games.

I lived where country became town;

the frost came gleaming across the fields,

right to our back doors; we were all part of the magic,

ourselves, trees, cows; all in the painting,

chatting and looking fine.