Nice Bit of Weather We’re Having

The rain batters down
On the country and town,
As we gaze out the window and shiver.
In our bright plastic macs,
Sure, it’s hard to relax
When we notice the height of the river.

The North Wind doth blow
With her promise of snow,
And rampages wherever she pleases,
While we bow our head
And redouble our tread
As we battle those cold, savage breezes.

Each long-waited summer
Turns out quite a bummer,
Dismissed in September’s post-mortem,
For the promise of May
Doesn’t meet us halfway
As we leap straight from Springtime to Autumn.

Pervasive, bland drizzle
Ensures we don’t sizzle,
The clouds rush in from the Atlantic,
And the sun’s golden sheen
Only seldom is seen
In depressions from large to gigantic.

The crap Irish weather
Oft bonds us together
The country unites in frustration,
And black, white or brown
We all bicker and frown
At the cold and the precipitation.

We work up a sweat
When its dismal and wet
And we’re still lighting fires in July,
While in hot, sunny places
They’re creaming their faces,
With ne’er an odd cloud in the sky.

But every so often,
The weather gods soften,
With blue skies and warm sun displayed…

Then we moan ‘bout the heat
And our hot, sweaty feet
And can’t wait to get into the shade.

I’ve Seen the Future of Eurovision

Those manic Finns
With monster grins
And high-watt insurrection,
Have turned the whole of Eurovision
In a new direction.

A lilting song
‘Bout Ding Dang Dong
Or raindrops on a petal
Has now been rendered obsolete
By thumping heavy metal.

From Ballyfree to Roumanie,
From Iceland to Albania,
They’ll grow their hair in homage to
This retro metal mania.

The powerful ballad’s
Last year’s salad,
Banging heads makes winners,
While Iron Maiden records serve
As textbooks for beginners.

Our Daniel oughta
Feel the water,
Get his act together,
Don the knuckledusters and
The whips and chains and leather.

The bonny air
Is far too square,
Oh Dan, give up the preaching,
Grab the mike and give us all
Some high-falsetto screeching.

For Europe’s sweet
On driving beat
And shouted, twisted vocals,
And Mammy’s charms and loved one’s arms
Will not impress the locals.

So, like the Finn,
Let’s all buy in,
And make a bold decision
To swan around in Death’s Head masks
For next year’s Eurovision.

The Month of May

The fair month of May is upon us at last,
The thick woolly jumpers discarded.
The shivering mornings are hopefully past,
Called to one side and red-carded.

My wife loves the warmth of a fine summer’s day,
In winter she’s fractious and narky.
Her favourite month of them all is sweet May,
No longer incessantly parky.

The buds are all darling, the roses unfurl,
As nature has fun at parading,
The barbecue smoke disappears in a swirl,
The smell of cut-grass all pervading.

The hawthorn blooms white by the side of the road,
The dragonflies hover and shiver.
The consummate bark of the natterjack toad
Resounds on the banks of the river.

When April is done and dark evenings contract,
Great peace on warm breezes is carried.
My wife adores Maytime, despite the sad fact
That that was the month we were married.

Wooden It Be Nice?

Let go my palm, my darling girl,
And lay back on your pillow,
And listen to my story ‘bout
The man they knew as Willo.
Jock McWilliams was his name,
A spruce and poplar man,
Tough as teak, he roamed the glens
Around Loch Inverban.
One day he spied a bonny lass
A –rowan ‘cross the loch.
She landed on a stony beech
And sat upon a rock.
“What is your name?” he asked of her.
“Is’t Holly? Hazel? Breda?”
(He knew he was in love with her
The moment that he cedar.)
“I like to carve wood statues,”
She announced out of the blue.
“What’s your fav’rite wood?” he asked.
She answered, “I love yew.”
Poor Jock, though, was quite elder-ly,
And also somewhat plane.
The lassie flew to Cypress and
Was never seen again.
Jock took to the whisky,
(Well, you know the way Scots pine)
Without a woman at the ‘elm,
His boat sank ‘neath the brine.
He didn’t give a fig for life,
He just got sicker more,
And in the end, the wooden box
Was carried from his door.
It was a cold and wintry day,
The women dressed in fir.
They cast his ash-es to the winds,
Their eyes all quite a-blur.

Sweet dreams, now, my darling girl,
Asleep upon the hay.
That story that I redwood make
The devil seem oak-ay.

Whales – a Rant

I must admit
That every bit
Of logic in me fails
When I observe
The massive leurve
That people have for whales.

Men march, unquelled,
A placard held
By each and every walker,
Composing tunes
Against harpoons,
And harvesters of Orca.

“Save the Whale!”
Their shirts regale,
“Expose this foul allegiance
‘Twixt Japanese
Who roam the seas
And murderous Norwegians!”

Thus they protest
And beat their breast,
And cause a great commotion
To save these giant
Non-compliant
Bullies of our ocean.

But ask a crab
Or hake or dab
Or…anything with scales,
To please reveal
The way they feel
Towards these ogrish whales.

They will relate
And tell you straight,
That whales are born to put
The fear of God
In squid and cod
And plaice and halibut.

They dive and blow,
Above, below,
In North and South Atlantic.
To hear the squeals
Of baby eels
Does drive their mothers frantic.

“Get out the way!”
Yell skate and ray,
Whene’er a whale is spotted,
And inky cuttle-
-Fish all scuttle
Out the way, besotted.

And here he comes,
All teeth and gums,
With skin as smooth as rubber,
This oversized
And much despised
Great floating vat of blubber.

It’s fine to kill
The poor old krill,
Who never hurt nobody.
Yet we regale
The murd’rous whale
Whose practices are shoddy.

It’s really weird –
It can’t be sheared
Or milked or trained or ridden.
It won’t fetch sticks
Or do cute tricks
Whenever it is bidden.

What use is it,
This outsized git,
That does just as it wishes?
It thinks it’s great
To undulate
And frighten little fishes.

It’s not p.c.
To say that we
Should hunt them, and of course it’s
Quite wrong to say
Out loud that they
Are better off as corsets.

But is our Navy
Really gravy?
Do we have great sailors?
Do we breed
True men indeed
The way they did on whalers?

When rolling seas
Would scour and freeze,
When force elevens gusted,
When he who flinched
Was shot or lynched,
And scabs became encrusted.

When men on bows
Spied bulls and cows
With harpoons at the ready,
And though the swell
Was fierce as hell,
Their aim was true and steady.

So let us rise
With steely eyes
And done our winter woollies.
Let’s rid the seas
Of all of these
Great overvalued bullies.

There’s a Bit of a Nip in New Delhi

There’s a bit of a nip in New Delhi,
The thermometer’s never been lower.
In Bombay, they are shiv’ring like jelly,
And they’re wearing their Arrans in Goa.

There’s been quite a frosty reception,
For most, it’s a bit of a bummer,
For the weatherman made the perception
That they’re having an Irish summer.

There Was a Young Poet from Gort

There was a young poet from Gort,
Who left all his limericks short.
He never could end
All the lines that he penned.

The Strokestown Poetry Festival

The e-mail came out of the blue,
I’d forgotten it completely.
Incredulously, I read it through,
Then gave a smile discreetly.
My mouth hung open, catching flies,
When reading, to my great surprise,
I was in the running for a minor prize
At the Strokestown Poetry Festival.

I called my wife with voicebox hoarse,
And proudly bade her read it.
Although she was impressed, of course
There’s no way she’d concede it!
“My dear,” she said, “I realise
You’re wanting me to eulogise,
But sure, it’s only a minor prize
At the Strokestown Poetry Festival.

“It matters not, dear spouse,” quoth I,
Responding quite athletically.
“The judges have been struck by my
Attempts to wax poetically.
Henceforth I’ll punctuate my cries
With sonnets praising dappled skies.
Gee! In the running for a minor prize
At the Strokestown Poetry Festival!”

“Seamus Heaney’s literary talents,”
(She said) “are rightly famous.
Your verse has neither wit nor balance –
In short, you are no Seamus.
I really must apologise
If I should seem to criticise,
But you only might get a minor prize
At the Strokestown Poetry Festival.”

“I know that you’re made up,” I said,
“Just trying not to show it.
It’s hard to get into your head
That I’m a major poet.
In time, you’ll come to idolise
This wordsmith’s art I exercise,
Nominated for a minor prize
At the Strokestown Poetry Festival.”

At this, my wife collapsed in mirth,
O’ertaken by the giggles,
(A habit she has had from birth
Which sometimes frankly niggles.)
But sure, she’s trying to disguise
The pride betrayed beneath her eyes
That I am up for a minor prize
At the Strokestown Poetry Festival.

The Flash of Orange

Written in response to the oft-quoted remark that nothing rhymes with "orange"

One summer’s day,
I chanced to stray
Below sweet Ballycorringe,
And by the lake,
I took a break,
And paused to peel an orange.

And as I chewed
That luscious food,
My mind began to porringe,
And in the bushes
By the rushes,
I spied a flash of orange.

“This cannot be!”
(Said I to me,
My neck-hairs stiff and lorringe)
“For I have heard
About this bird,
Bright-painted green and orange.”

“It is the famed
And long-acclaimed
Far-fabled Arctic florringe.
There’s no mistaking
It’s breathtaking
Plume of green and orange!”

As though in death,
I held my breath,
And watched it scour and forringe.
From hawthorn twig
To holly sprig,
I watched that flash or orange.

With garbled song,
It hopped along,
Untroubled by disporringe.
Why had it flown
So far from home,
This ball of green and orange?

And then it sighed,
Keeled o’er and died,
No more would it concorringe.
I watched it break
The still glass lake
In one last flash of orange.

And now I’m old,
My heart feels cold,
And shortly I’ll exporringe.
But still my eyes
Peruse the skies
To spot that flash of orange.

And when I go,
Above? Below?
To Paradise or Thorringe,
I hope that I
Once more will spy
That fabled flash of orange.

The Coldest Place in Ireland

They were rubbing their legs
Up in old Killybegs,
They were rubbing their noses in Tuam.
Around Abbeyleix
They were rubbing their cheeks
To restore normal feelings into ‘em.
It was nippy enough
Out in Ballyjamesduff
As the natives around will concur,
But the chilliest place,
Wasn’t Carlow or Naas,
But the tundra-like townland of Birrrr.

Activities stopped
As the mercury dropped
In the villages skirting Lough Swilly.
And down in Fermoy,
Every man, girl and boy
Said they never had felt it so chilly.
And in Dublin Four,
It was bitter and raw,
So they sported their ermine and fur,
But still, I am told
That it wasn’t as cold
As it was in the townland of Birrrr.

They claimed Minus Seven
In Monasterevin,
And Near-Minus Nine out in Gort.
‘Twas Minus Thirteen
Down in Cahirciveen,
Or so the inhabitants thought.
They said Minus Twenties
In Lifford and Glenties
But all of them had to defer
To the truthful submissions
‘Bout arctic conditions
That came from the townland of Birrrr.

It sleeted and snowed
And the glaciers flowed
Down the far-fabled Mountains of Mourne.
And by Oughterard
Lough Corrib froze hard,
As a terrible beauty was born.
There were penguins at play
On Lough Derg and Lough Ree,
As the Eskimos there will aver,
But the coldest of all
Wasn’t sweet Donegal,
But the perishing townland of Birr.