Good Sherry Trifle

"True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings."

I spent some time this evening reading Kate Dempsey's poetry pamphlet Good Sherry Trifle which Michael Farry passed on to me at the last Boyne Writers meeting.

The first poem I was attracted to was The Flight of Swallows as I love the physical form of the swallow and have they returned yet this year?  It is horrible to see a bird flying into glass:

"...And she's flown so far

from that baked Sahara fringe,
to this cold north; all so pointless - breaking

on my frayed-sash window.  And me,
my mouth again a soundless O."

By Strawberry Beds is a fresh and energetic piece with great description of Dublin City:

"The Chapelizod ponies drink, heads shaggy to the water;
they examine their reflections,
flicking their manes like schoolgirls."

Each verse in this poem offers something within it so you'll just have to look it up for yourself.

While it Lasted leaves me thinking.  I'm not quite sure what the poem means yet, maybe I'll read it again and again sometime and I will understand it more. 

The Light Fantastic offers a comical and unusual picture of cows in the countryside.  It is too a very good poem.  This image in the first verse is lovely:

"a heavy pause rested
like the silence on an empty beach
after a surfer's wave."