Too Far !!

Tom Stoddart’s disturbing photograph of greed, as a starving Sudanese boy watches his bag of food being stolen by a man with a stick. Fortunately the camera didn’t catch us: sympathetic, very wealthy, but too far away, much too far away; maybe 6 hours flying from London!

(As a point of information, in 2008 the cost of one B-52 bomber was approx $2.2 billion; potential to carry 31,500kilograms ordnance - 45 bombs. It could do the above journey more quickly than above and wouldn't need refuelling before return.)

LADY'S ISLAND.

Our Lady's Island in Co. Wexford has a special atmosphere to it. Like many places of pilgrimage, christian or pre-christian, its topography is distinctive and interesting. An island in a lagoon,(appears more like an inland lake); add to that some striking ruins,(Augustinian priory and Norman tower), outdoor furniture needed for crowds of pilgrims, quirky mementoes left by pilgrims, and you've got a place that cuts a dash in the landscape and draws the curious in.



LADY'S ISLAND.

The water waves roll ashore in Hail Mary rhythms,
winds come, contours around the island
and speakers on poles are abandoned mouths
where rosaries of sinners collected in May.
Pews like pricked ears; regiment readiness;
oh Mary, you sure pick your locations!

In a hole in a ditch a community of holy ones
fancy dressed and frozen by a wall;
and all encased in glass, ready to shake
but snowless in July.


Best wishes, see you Monday,

Michael

More FREE Laughter Yoga

18.30 – 19.30, Tuesday 27th September, in the Swan Centre,(opposite The Hopsack), Rathmines.As before bring a towel or yoga mat and a willingness to laugh.

And for a paltry €40 or €5 drop in: Tuesday evenings in the Travel Lodge Hotel, Rathmines from Tuesday 4th October for 10 weeks.

For more information (www.laughteryogadublin.com ) and booking for the Swan Centre Free event and the Travel Lodge sessions contact me at info@laughteryogadublin.com, or 085 707 4465 / 01 4922892


The Laughter Yoga Movement was started in 1995 by Dr Madan Kataria; an initial session with just 5 people in a Mumbai park has since mushroomed into a global movement with over 6,000 clubs in 60 countries.





Just last week came the report: “a research team led by evolutionary anthropologists from Oxford University in the UK has concluded that the endorphins released by a big belly laugh in a social setting can make pain more bearable.” Noting that laughter was more likely in groups, it was reported that “Laughing with friends for around 15 minutes boosts a person’s pain threshold by an average of 10.”

The paper, entitled “Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold” was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Most Poetic Painter

Marc Chagall is the most poetic of painters. I think you can immerse yourself in the images without knowing their references. His beautiful colours, the floating dreamlike nature of his characters, the sensual depiction of lovers, the gentleness and sometimes homeliness; the possibilities for varying interpretations. To stay with them awhile can be just enough to start a new poem. Thanks to uploader Yaellavie for the video below.

To Say That You Are Beautiful

The sunlight on the back of your neck,
ear-lobes and hair;
the page-reflected glow on your chin,
dimming upward towards your forehead;
all else in darkness around you.

If I’d never seen that you are beautiful;
that day, the light that chose to steal up behind you,
to settle on you so gently but dazzlingly;
that light would have been light enough.

The Yellow Rose

The Yellow Rose.

for Alan Biddle
(1952-1994).


When his eyes had shut for good
and his face was just a face,
and conversation had slowed
to the ebb and flow of memories
speaking among themselves,
a small gesture recast the day.
She placed a yellow rose on his chest
over the picture of the Sacred Heart.
The gentleness of that moment;

the single rose: how well chosen;
how well she chose it.
His face: changed, full of ease
as through all his illness,
but death had sculpted warmth away.
His eyes shut against us,
fingers tangled up in rosary beads;
I'll remember him alive
or remember the rose when he was dead.

Breathing

Now my father's life
is breathing.
Heavy work.

He has already slipped away
to be alone
while we outside
mark every breath
like lap timers.

Now come the spaces:
a breath
is an isolated thing.

Finally one breath
arrives alone.
I feel a soul has left,
but just then

I see, so clearly,
it was hope
that slipped out of the room.

Back in the Day, when Small Towns were Pure

What is Club 81 ?


Ba bloody news’s whaw tis.
We doan wan dah kine ting rown here
I’m tellen ya dah.................

What goes on there ?

I’ll telya wha’s goin on.
Dey cum owha dat place ah all hours,
day’r night, min.........an wimin.
I seen em owha dat place
ahafa leven of a Sunda mornin.

But what do they do in there?

Shure howd I know wha dey'd be ah..........
buh dey can fine sumwhar else fer doin it;
we doan wan dat kine rown here.
Anya can tellum I sed dah eswell.

Guluk.

Civic Responsibility

I wonder if there's a greater need than we acknowledge for civic responsibility to be inculcated in our children. I remember my grand aunt in her late eighties or early nineties saying after taking a fall, she was left sitting on the kerb in the middle of O'Connell St. This poem brushes up against the same issue.


On The Street.


He has her against the railings.

Holding his mouth up to her face
like a gun-barrel

he bawls;
words that burst clean into my sitting-room.

His fist, swinging in a small arc,
makes a soft sound of her cheek.

Inside,
with my marmalade coals curled up like a cat,

I ask myself what I should do,
taking till they've gone to reach no decision.

Rag Trees and Holy Wells

St Kieran's Holy Well, Kilcar, Co Donegal




Holy wells and rag trees, the exotic places of the Irish countryside, have long ago joined the list of endangered species. Disappearing yearly under bulldozers or through abandonment, one day they will be irretrievably gone and yet another colour will have been lost from the rainbow of Irish culture.

St Patrick's Holy Well, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal

The Moon and Me

I can completely understand why the moon is associated with madness. Watching it sail through the countryside of clouds, it becomes mesmeric and then it crashes out onto open desert to drift with its non-plussed face through nothingness with no apparent destination all through the night. And then there’s its strange enamel light, a weird brightness, the negative of day.
The whole effect is to bring you into yourself, to travel with it, through your own bleak wastelands. It always makes me introspective and catches me somewhere between it’s otherworldly beauty and a feeling of loneliness and loss. (The fact that cloudy conditions in Ireland makes the moon’s light scarcer and therefore more precious adds to the feelings)

Trapped between want and need;
desire brushing my face
like some woman’s hair.

Looking for comfort;
finding only a drizzle of muscles
and outside

the moon
filling the world with longing
and hopeless space.

Scarecrows.

We are two scarecrows: rags and string;
what the rain softens the wind picks clean.

We are two scarecrows: sticks and straw;
crows fly out from underneath our jackets.

We are two scarecrows: nails and wire;
each day drowning as the corn grows higher.

We are two scarecrows: sacks and hay;
nodding toward eternity, we tip toward clay.

Poetic Imagery in Art

The photographs pinned up in Francis Bacon’s studio re-emerged in some form in his paintings, The grotesque mouth in the still from the Battleship Potemkin (above) appeared more than once.

It helps in poetry to have images all around, to know the artists and images that will inspire. For me it’s Bacon, Hopper,Goya, Bosch among others. Among Irish artists, Le Brocquy, and Martin Gail’s work in particular inspires me. In this way, I believe that the process of writing poetry, in my case at least, is very similar to that of painting.

In Klimt’s “The Kiss”, the splendour of the enwrapping mantle expresses all that needs to be expressed about their love, it is so marvellously poetic. Andrew Wyeth, an artist I enjoy very much : his knowledge of countryside in his rendering of colour and textures is special. I find his eye for the poetic in rural settings moves me. In Snow Hill, he has his past subjects dance in a space
cleared by the snow’s whiteness that leaves plenty of room for poetic musings.

Laughter Yoga in Dublin

"What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul." proverb




Quick mention of a free Laughter Yoga session at Rathmines College, Town Hall, Rathmines on 18th September at 2.30pm.Bring yoga mat or towel. Check out link for Laughter Yoga Dublin in links column.

Caught, Tangled in Old Years.

Caught; tangled in old years
young man;
the brambles have made you
delicately eccentric.
Your ears are closed
but to the berries,
eyes fixed to where the winds
have bent them.
You are like a hawthorn above the sea;
you seem to have frozen
at the very moment you were jumping clear.