January -- Burn's Night an a' that!

Oh indeed, I have my haggis at the ready. I have my neeps and tatties and my whiskey cake or shortbread and raspberries (yet to be decided). I have a couple, well a few, okay I have a lot of fine malts tae sample including a very nice Speyside sent at Christmas by Jim and Kathleen, Glen Morangie a Crabbies and Bushmills 10 yr Malt. 

Burns was my mother's favourite poet and she had a bust of him in the china cabinet. The lowland Scots dialect wasnae a great stretch in Ballymena! We were really more Scots than Irish -- Dalriadans, as I always like to say. We were the folk of the Stone of Scone, the people of the olden kingdoms of the north when the seas were connections, not barriers to trade. When the sea was the easy way to travel.

So I regard Burn's Night as my tradition too, though I never had haggis as a child but this was because my mother could not stand even the smell of lamb! She'd have frowned a bit on the whiskey too even if we could have afforded whiskey. But I love lamb and I like a wee dram and almost despite her encouragement, I still write poems. So I'll address the haggis and enjoy the tasting and here's the story: 

Quare advise tae a buddin' poet

Betimes as a wean I’d help Mammy tae dust.
The Bust, eight inches high aye sat in the corner o' the cabinet
but I wasn’t allowed tae touch it.

He was that young an’ fair and looked tae be made o' honeycomb
so I asked, Mammy, Is that yella man?
Naw yella man’s fer eaten.

Thon’s Rabbie Burns, mammy explained, the greatest Scottish poet ever lived.
My luv is like a red, red rose, A Man’s a man fer a’ that, Ye Banks and Braes,
To a mouse and Auld Lang Syne’s a wheen o’ what he wrote.

We’d learned Ye Banks and Braes in school. I was impressed.
I want to be a poet, I confessed, when I grow up.
Aye, yer arse in parsley! she aimed a bussock at my behind,

You’ll ha'tae up yer ideas a bit, she said.
Poetry’s not a payin’ job and anyway, Mammy lot a hoogh gie fit tae burst,
remember that ye ha'tae grow up first!

First Published in A New Ulster Apr 2018

This was published at the same time and seems more relevant than ever in these day when Ulster's status is in great doubt. 

Belonging

I have the voice of no country. I don’t
know that my native land was ever real;
a place of fractures, born of volcanoes,
rifts in its rocks that never truly heal.
Even the old kingdom was united
more by a turbulence of sea than land.
But the blood, the blood was real between us,
these days depicted (Pict) by the red hand.
We were the Dal Riata. We were Scots.
Feth aye, we were! Fought over and fought back,
triumphed in defeat because Iona
was our own and the Stone of Destiny
belonged to us and spread our culture far.
And yes, that blood was thick and bloody real
between us, Aethelfrith, and the Ui Neills.
Yet we were not planted as in new soil,
but flowed here on the tides of history,
left and returned through many centuries.
Who will inflict a future on us next?
In global politics we have no friends.
But though I have no country and no voice,
I'll remain Dalriadan to the end.

January -- The Ides of

I've been feeling a bit trapped this past week. The cold and icy conditions have meant that I haven't been out for a walk. There's no point in risking a fall when hospitals are so overstretched. Right? 

And we seem to have a mouse! We can hear it periodically scratching about in the roof space which is all insulation. It can't get into the rooms from there as far as we know; at least it hasn't made an appearance thus far. We think it's made a little run for itself in and out. It may be a little uncomfortable up there because we have those electrical current deterents that make a nasty noise through all the wiring. We have traps at the ready just in case and are seeking some professional advice. I can't say I blame mousey with it being so cold. It wants in and I want out. Today we had a visit from the mouse man and he has confirmed a run in the attic. He found some nibbled paper up there. He was a lovely man! He asked how we were and we said fine -- no symptoms and he said 'I mean mentally. How are you coping?'    I felt like saying we were as mad as ever. But hey HOW NICE! He'll be back in two weeks to make sure they're gone and we're alright. That will be the 1st February 😁

In the garden there's little activity. A sudden Flight of Starlings rushed across the other day. I think the sparrow hawk had taken one of them. I could hear squeakings and alarm calls for about 5 minutes after the cerfuffle. This is the way of nature. We all survive as we can.

But the Sun is rising in the sky (or rather we are tilting ever more towards it in our yearly journey) and today for the first time it gave us some warmth through the kitchen door. It also showed up that the glass is very dirty. 

Apart from some political limericks I haven't been writing much. I can't get my head into that space. But I'm not a professional writer and so I don't worry much. If it comes it comes, if it doesn't I'll have to clean the windows of that sliding door instead.

January.

Getting lighter.

Buds appearing.

Birdsong brighter

penetrates my lock-down room

silences the motes of gloom

allowing me in my mind’s eye

to scud across the winter sky

momentarily escaping.

January 2021 -- I hate January and let me tell you why -- Featuring work by Donall Dempsey

Christmas is over. It's not that I like Christmas so very much -- no that's not it. New Year has never been my thing. It's just one day to the next when all's said and done. In fact every day is just one day to the next. But some days you never forget. Some days life doesn't go on! 

The 11th January 1960 was one of those days. I was 5. I'd just started school in September and that was a big deal for me. I didn't like it!! There were other kids there. Scarey kids. You had to interact. You had to compete. You had to learn all sorts of difficult things. It was the beginning of being in the bigger world and I didn't much like the bigger world!

It was a Monday like it is this year and a Monday like no other because that was the day my father died. He was 48.

Jack Kyle

I have written lots and lots about it before and if you would like to read some of what I've written I refer you to this POST 

But the truth is I've never maybe written so viscerally and truthfully as this in piece by fellow Irish poet Donall Dempsey who is a FaceBook friend and has kindly allowed me to share this. This is what it felt like. It's how it still feels. There are days I'm still 5 inside and 

NO I don't like being in the world -- Not in January -- I don't -- not today.

 BEING IN THE WORLD

"I'm scared...!" she sobs

"Of what love?" I cuddle her

"Of being in the world!"

****

This was when she was only a tiny little thing in the world of long ago but her words ring truer now in this rogue world of ours.

Her granny had just died and this all too too solid world of forever didn't seem as forever as it had before. She no longer trusted it if a granny could vanish...would she vanish too?

She cried and "wanted to go where ever Granny had goed!"

She was looking at a globe and asked me if she were in the world. And is Granny not in the world any more? And when Granny finishes being dead then will she come back? And what good is the world if Granny isn't in it. She sat on my lap and listened to auld Jemmy the Joist reading from Finnegans Wake with his own voice. I asked her what did she think the man was saying and she asked "Did he lose his granny too?"

                                                                    by Donall Dempsey