I didn’t know that I didn’t know

What love was til it found me

Sitting by the bed of my mother

Thinking she would die.

Now I take a puff of my cigarette

And still I wonder why.

The Search for Rose.

A young girl came to look after the children. Her name was Rose. She was from a neighboring parish, a remote cottage on the top of a woody hill in the boglands. She was a lovely kind person with a nice way with young children. During the course of her time in the household it became evident that she had arrived there well into a pregnancy which she was no longer able to hide. My mother was herself at the same stage of pregnancy.

Because it was Ireland in the early 1960's, the general routine was to send her off to a Convent to have her baby and then give him or her up for adoption. It had been decided by her parents and she had been obliged to agree. A very common and very cruel law set down by the Roman Catholic church at that time, and utiliszed by communities who had been brain-washed by their local parish priests into thinking they would go to hell for rebelling. The ten commandments had nothing to do with it. Hell, most of them couldn't even read rendering it impossible to even break away intellectually from the status quo of the sermons preached to them every Sunday. The power of the church!
My father had been the chosen one to do the dirty deed. He had to drive and leave her there, his heart breaking slowly with every mile. When he entered he was ushered into the Mother Superior's office and  given the third degree. It was assumed he had fathered the child and was now renegading on his responsibilities. There was no way he could convince her otherwise. My parents already had four children under the age of six and were on the cusp of a fifth. It would have been an enormous task to take on a sixth and their mother, so I guess he felt she could at least carve out some kind of decent future without the burden of being a single mother in a society who treated such as out-casts and hurled them into social isolation. It was easy for me to say, in the modern day 1990's that what he did was wrong, but times were very different then. My instinct was to ask my father why Rose and the baby couldn't have lived with us as one of the family. Even then it was a question I didn't dare broach. I didn't want him to think I was disapproving of him as a human being, considering he assisted in something which at the time was the 'right thing to do'. I know for a fact that it is been haunting him ever since.

I heard later I think from a local or family member that when the daughter (the baby was a girl) finally grew up she went on a search for her mother and that they had been re-united in England. Rose had met and married a local boy and they had taken off in search for a better life. I also believe they had several children between them. On top of that it is also rumoured that the lad she married was also the father of the adopted child.

I want to write the story of Rose, with her permission, and let the world know the true story of a very bitter event. She had been a loving and tender influence on us all. She even saved my youngest brother's life during a car crash which left my grandmother in a wheel chair and the other two siblings in hospital with severe bruising. My youngest brother had been sitting on her knee in the front seat without a seat belt and how ever she had held him, had protected him from injury. Considering she had a hidden pregnancy at the time, it was amazing she came through it without losing her own baby.

I need to add that the crash was not the fault of my grandmother who was driving the car, but another car had crossed the road, fast, taken a left turn and slammed into the side of the stationary vehicle, hosting my loved ones, which had been waiting for the coast to clear before heading onto the main road.

My search for Rose begins in earnest soon, and I really hope I find her in good health and happy.

Re-set.

Like trying to re-connect with an old lover
she re-visits the scene again
the gap widens, reality grips
cuts the strings, free-falling
lands here, with no place to go
but onwards...

I didn't want to do the dishes
to wash away the loving memories
of the round the table.

as I absent-mindedly laid the extra place
my tears reminded me that the seat
would remain un-warmed

Gertrude.

This is not Gertrude.

This is Aoibh with

her cygnets Fionnula, Aodh, Faicra and Conn, Bodb, and Lir.

Who knows, they might be distant cousins.

In the early sixties, my mother found an injured swan by the side of the road, a female. Wanting to set her free on the lake, she buckled it into the passenger seat, and drove a hundred miles north. The swan lived on the front lawn for a few months to recover then flew off to join the other swans. Mum named the swan Gertrude after my great-grandmother, who dies the year I was born. Her
I briefly knew both Gertrudes. 

"Out with you upon the wild waves, Children of the King!

Henceforth your cries shall be with the flocks of birds."

~ The Children if Lir.

What is 'good thinking'?

Thinking, not thinking.
Thinking, not thinking.
Not thinking, action,
Thinking, control.
Thinking, tiring. Not thinking, tiring.
What are thoughts?
They flow into your head, through the stimuli around you,
We act or react on them depending on how we are feeling.

Bicycle

The morning my son came home from working in New York I had bought a used bicycle. The most dangerous, funniest, most furious, incident came from it. The following day, I rode the rusty, bald tired, single-braked pedal-pusher around the neighbourhood, remembered how much I loved cycling and as I steered out onto the main road, a car came behind me. The bike ceased to a halt mid-cycle, and the car screeched to a stop. I got off to the laughter of the man driving. So you would laugh if I had been killed, would you? Would you be laughing at my funeral, if you even bothered to go to it? In a semi-whisper swallowing down my anger, even though it was more my fault than his, if he was even at fault at all. I headed towards the place I had bought the bike, not really knowing what I was going to say only that I wanted to sell it back to him. He was in his kitchen, so I waited outside amongst the bric-a-brac sitting on the old ironing board, computer desk and coffee table. A well-heeled woman walked by and I heard her say to her friend: "Oh, look at that bike, I might buy it." She looked at me, mistaking me for the vendor. I told her she could have it for thirty. She said she might, but would come back later. The scene was set. When the vendor came out of his kitchen I told him I wanted to sell the bike back to him. He looked at me in disbelief. I told him he could sell it again for thirty. More disbelief of the eye-staring variety. The 'anger' welled up again and I related the traffic incident. He sighed and shrugged: "Alright I'll give you back your twenty." I went off trying not to smile all the way home.

Louis was waiting as I walked into the hood, lazing like a lion over-looking the Savannah. Like the opening scene from the Little House in the Prarie, I ran towards him, arms open in slow motion. Like a Monty Python sketch we missed and he bounded on towards the guy with the pipe down the open man-hole.

What writing career?

Cowards

Cowards knocking on my door.
running away.
The old cliche.
Don't they know one day someone is going
to do it back to them.
Don't they know,
I could take each of them by the heel
and make them squeal.
What fun it must be,
What glee they glean
from their own idiotic scheme. 

Demise of a presidential candidate

Dignity is his middle name.
Honesty and integrity are his game.

Dad.

Dad phoned. He is booking in for the night on his travels. He sees me first and last before taking the boat back. Same as he has done for the past two years. "Tell me this and no more." he said. When I was ten he told me: "Only speak when spoken to."
He is nearly finished his book. I may read it when complete. Not for publication., but because that is what he wants to do, for his family. He has a kind heart. He works still for no pay, doing his thing. SAFFA  - Soldiers, Airforce and Army. He loved his father. He earns his life. He may well out-live me. He wants a section out of Solomon's song after he goes. I don't know which one. 

CMC - an echo, a ricochet.

a dog with a bone,
a squeaky toy
jumping in circles
mimes: "Get me a friend"
This is no pretend.