We don’t really know our parents until we look back and do the sums.
My mother was born in 1916.
She was Maureen O’Halloran. Her father was a sailor.
There was a war on. There were a lot of wars on. Continue reading “The Moving Finger – A Memoir”
Category: Literature
Dad, 1930
Wears St. Patricks Academy
school uniform.
Striped tie, pen in pocket,
wool socks, strong leather boots.
Nordic good looks,
a confident gaze.
Remembrance
We ran the hazel byways he and I
And chased the morning glory down the lanes
And tumbled through the meadows on the way
To lay our tousled locks in secret glades. Continue reading “Remembrance”
The Healing Story
Seventeen writers each take a theme: a middle-aged woman, two kids, is packing her bags in the supermarket. Seventeen stories emerge, each different. Those who know the writers can tell – this is John’s story, this is Bob’s; no one else would have taken the same approach. Yet our stories are not always simply our own, nor are they merely commonplace. The best stories take their life from the twilight zone between the individual and the universal. They bring with them the sense of something both unexpected and inevitable. Continue reading “The Healing Story”
The Blossom or the Bole
The original idea for this book came from a short story I wrote as far back as 2008 about two boys growing up in the Sperrin Mountains at the turn of the 20th Century. Later that year I was given the opportunity to visit WW1 Graves in Belgium and France, and it sparked the question, why did so many young men go so readily to a war-torn country and how did their decisions impact on the families they left behind.
Collage Collective
If you wish to see a veritable cornucopia of creative art in all its variety locally, just take a dander to the Collage Collective at The Buttermarket in Enniskillen. Actually, don’t wish – just will yourself to go and look. On sale there most days of the week is the work of a range of local artists and artisans. Continue reading “Collage Collective”
Some Other Rainbow
The Girl With Rainbow Hair
I never really knew you
That’s the sad truth of it;
Just a smile and a chat
In my morning paper shop
When you were on shift.
You would colour your hair
In a range of bright hues;
A rainbow formed a halo
Around your fair head. Continue reading “Some Other Rainbow”
Fox Power!
The she-fox
Walking in the nearly full moonlight
This evening
A shooting star falls
Into my mouth
A vixen screams
across the navy blue of the
night Continue reading “Fox Power!”
What’s in An Epitaph?
Cast a cold eye
on life, on death
Horseman, pass by!
I was for years intrigued by the structure of this epitaph. I wondered about the rhyming pattern of these three lines which are cut into Yeat’s gravestone in Drumcliff churchyard, Co. Sligo. Continue reading “What’s in An Epitaph?”
The Rock Remains
For Francis and Ellie
They came and went, this trysting couple
Seeking shelter from both wind and rain
And from the prying eyes of the prurient; Continue reading “The Rock Remains”
