Dodging the Snow 2021

 

A Schoolboy Sleeping on his Book Jean-Baptiste Greuze

I'm delighted once again to be included in Dodging the Rain's 12 poems of Christmas, aka Dodging the Snow. Thanks to editor Neil Slevin for including 5 poems, written late last year, all on a festive theme. The poems can be read here, while The Christmas Book is posted below too. 

The Christmas Book

Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Heidi,

Lorna Doone, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn

all populated Christmases past

(I can hear Marley’s chains rattling).

Their names are reeling spools, 

a child’s cinema on a dark winter morning, 

a galloping horse, a raft on a wide river, 

a high mountain top.

Under a duvet sky I ran by the moon 

of the torch with The Famous Five across moors.

I watched Anne’s dreams unfurl on Prince Edward Island,

realise her courage in those journeys to family and love.

You could never be lonely with a window 

to a wider world, another’s passion processed,

a transfer of energy, a most sincere communication,

a leaving for foreign places, and always a coming home.

Books are the real fairy tales.

Orla Fay

Happy Christmas 2021

 

Happy Christmas to the readers of the post. I've written this poem in the last couple of hours while pondering The Three Wise Men and some images I collected today on a walk. I couldn't help hearing T.S. Eliots's Prufrock telling me earlier,

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Last week I saw a shooting star, and hence the title of the poem. 

A Falling Star

Two millennia ago, it was a Middle Eastern town

that they visited with gold, frankincense, and myrrh,

not an Irish village dappled with rain and more blurry rain.

None of the white stuff this year, except in a snow globe,

a shaken, shook thing, a genie’s lamp, a spirit conduit,

transport to the past, a future, dreamland. 

Before the fall of night, (that great, black citadel)

the curtain draws shut, hush of Christmas Eve 

descending while light rises colourful, myriad, 

blue bulbs swaying on a penned tree, window sparkle,

twinkling phials and canisters carried on camels

across sand, hourglass, windswept dunes by Magi.

What of them, these shadowy, bronze-skinned men?

Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar, in transit from Parthia,

astrologers chasing the sun, Star of Bethlehem, 

lost in their alchemy, Jerusalem bound, where they asked,

Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? 

For we have seen His star in the east and have come to worship Him.*

Where would they go now, following primitive instruments?

Wise still to believe in dreams, to be guided by the heart

and faith? Would they be led to a place of the faithless

to think that among the very mortal, the fallen meteors,

grace and humility could be born? When they arrive at the river

that carries the sorrow of the people,

will they recognise the child of the city?

Orla Fay

*Matthew 2:1-2

Crow of Minerva

 

Joos de Momper (II) - Helicon or Minerva's Visit to the Muses c. 1600

Huge thanks to Crow of Minerva editor Roisin Ní Neactain for including a poem poet Maeve McKenna and I collaborated on. The piece has been through several drafts and was initially formed over a year ago. Auto-da-fé can be read here. 

On the subject of Minerva (associated with the Greek Athena), the story goes that when Perseus beheaded Medusa, Pegasus grew from some spilt blood. Minerva tamed the winged horse and gave him to the Muses. It was a kick from Pegasus' hoof that created the spring of Hippocrene. It was said that if one drank from this fountain poetic inspiration would follow.

Ovid recounts in the Metamorphoses Minerva speaking:

“Fame has given to me

the knowledge of a new-made fountain—gift

of Pegasus, that fleet steed, from the blood

of dread Medusa sprung—it opened when

his hard hoof struck the ground.—It is the cause

that brought me.—For my longing to have seen

this fount, miraculous and wonderful,

grows not the less in that myself did see

the swift steed, nascent from maternal blood.”

Diwali Festival of Lights

 

Meath Writers' Circle 7th Annual Magazine

 

Congratulations to Meath Writers' Circle for once again coming up with the goods, and after a tough year. I'd like to express my gratitude to editor Frank Murphy for including my poem. One of the themes of the magazine is WW1. Other areas covered are the American Civil War, the Meath War Dead, and COVID. The magazine is really interesting as a book of local knowledge and history. There are lots of fine Meath writers included. The magazine can be bought in some local shops, or by contacting Frank Murphy and William Hodgins of the Circle. Be sure to pick up a copy.

Drawn to the Light Press Issue 4

 

Issue 4 of Drawn to the Light Press is now live and can be viewed as a flipbook or as a word document download here. 

Until the Harvest Comes, Dunderry Park

 

I'm very happy to be doing a bonfire reading this Saturday night in Dunderry Park as part of Until the Harvest Comes, and to celebrate the autumn equinox, with thanks to Sofft Productions. I was Queen of the Bonfires as a child (and camp fires).

A few years ago I was passing the house on the Dunderry to Robinstown Road when I had a vision of a warrior with streaming hair and his hound racing past the poplar trees that grow there. I wrote this poem in response, which I will read on Saturday night.

The Park

 

Poplars stand poker straight

and silver as the light would have been

bouncing off spears

 

two millennia ago.  Those carriers

were Fianna, warriors who ran

the length of the coast

 

to defend territories from invaders.

I see them with their hounds,

shadows flickering

 

through the trees.  Blonde, ragged, long

hair flows and brown, matted rat ends

dart past.

 

Preternatural, it is only for an instant.

The oak stands alone when once

it was lost in the woods

 

and cattle are foddered by a red feeder,

freshly painted,

withstanding rust and frost.

 

When I pause by the big black gates

opening up the road inside

I dare not enter,

 

not in deference to the private property sign

but from foreboding of entrance

to another realm

 

where my ancestors call me

to renunciate my worldly goods

and to commune with a universal soul.

 

With broken vision I move forward

from calling these figments out

into the light of day. In such clear skies

 

a plane leaves a wispy trail.

 

Orla Fay