Read Online Poems for All Occasions by Mairead Tuohy Duffy - Free Book Online

then she quickly cast
    The ruptured remains of her labour,
    But carefully piling up in a half barrel
    The prospects of next year’s potato harvest.
    Laboriously, she sat near the open fire,
    Her grey hair falling untidily in bundles
    Over her black woollen shawl, which covered
    Her humped shoulders, rounded and brawny,
    Like a witch over her magic cauldron
    Preparing her special furtive brew.
    The thud thud of falling fragments
    Was lulling to our childrens ears,
    She seldom spoke, but just continued
    With aristocratic dignity, surgeon like,
    Until the fall of evening, she stood and
    Then suddenly departed into the air of night
    Leaving large bundles of potatoes
    Cut in artistic shapes and sizes,
    The precious seed to return to earth,
    Their carved remains as fodder in the byres.

DRIFTING SEAGULLS
    Drifting seagulls,
    On currents of air,
    Effortless, free
    In the morning air.
    Relaxing feeling
    To the naked eye,
    Soaring, suspended
    Like specks in the sky.
    Floating still higher,
    Sending out calls,
    Piercing to the robins
    On the garden walls.
    Emblem fair of freedom,
    Earth cannot hold
    Free to fly up yonder
    Heedless of the cold.
    Wish I were a seagull
    Gliding in the air,
    Like a kite of sunshine,
    Peaceful, free from care.

S HELBOURNE P ARK
    Beams of moonlight
    Illuminate the Shadowy
    Slopes of Shelbourne Park,
    New punters in pensive
    expectation, silently awaiting
    The goddess of fortune
    To clasp them to her milky bosom
    New punters; the old have gone
    With empty pockets.
    A new deluge of eager faces,
    Nervously stroking
    Their long earlocks.
    Features alight
    Moments of excitement,
    The brisk rush of
    Panting greyhounds
    Stretching, leaping, rising
    Cheated, by a dummy hare.
    Pencils, chewed unknowingly
    On lips, that trembled,
    Features droop
    All is over.

THE HUNT
    A hanging tongue sporting
    A slight tremor,
    Sending clouds of vapour
    In ridge like lines
    Through the green foliage
    Of a white thorn bush.
    Bared teeth, craning ears
    Awaiting the howl, howl
    Of that pack of craving
    Quadrupeds, eager for life’s fresh blood
    Spurting from fox or vixen,
    Making red the greenery
    Of the once silent forest.
    Panting, rushing, howling,
    Teeth bared like razors
    Rusty, dusty, eerie.
    Paws, white tipped, tripping,
    Leaping, jumping,
    Throbbing heart, pounding,
    Thumping, bending, nose touching
    The earth’s cold damp cushion.
    The noise of the chasing pack
    Diminishes in the distance.
    Some other inhabitant of the forest
    Saved for the moment
    The lone fox in the bushes.

THE TREES AND I
    Nov 1988
    (I wrote this poem, as I lay in bed, recovering from flu. Outside my window, a few large trees, bare but spirited, froliced in the breeze.)
    Antibiotics fighting in my crust of clay,
    Across my bed too weak to care, I lay,
    But only then they caught my gaze
    Those limbs of timber like giants, they stared.
    As if to say “poor weakling dry your tears,
    We’re here to entertain you ere you sleep,
    Relax, just watch us quiver in the breeze,
    And we will bring you to a world of dreams.”
    Their limbs were bare this Winter eve
    Millions of veins from branch to tree.
    ‘T was then I saw the pictures clear
    That my friends the Threes had promised me.
    Nestling in their midst I saw the noble heads
    Of horses tall, some deer, some elephants
    Their trunks araised, playing ball
    With a painted clown, how he could fall
    I saw his face, with monkeys glaring
    Like tiny boats on the waves asailing.
    But best of all was a grey brown hare
    The trapeze expert I did declare.
    I moved the pillow ‘neath my head
    And gazed again from my sick bed,
    Gone was the circus that I viewed
    But what a sight, ’twas an instant cure.
    A Victorian party in full swing
    The ladies dancing they seemed to sing
    The gents all chatting in groups serene
    Raising their glasses in joyful glee.
    Waiters tripping slipping, laughing,
    Glasses falling, wine was splashing.
    I moved my head and looked again
    To see the view had changed and then,
    My friends, the