"...to seek and to find the past, a lineage, a history, a family built on a flesh and bone foundation."

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Wordless Wednesday, almost: As Autumn comes to Dublin City...

Along the paths of Farmleigh House, Phoenix Park, Dublin.
The pumpkin patch in the Farmleigh House gardens.
As Autumn comes to Dublin City, the changes the season brings always get me thinking about my ancestors and what their lives may have been like as one season moved into another. As the cooler weather of Autumn draws down over Dublin, I think about those who would have been bringing in the last of the harvest, while others might have been buffeting their cottages against the bitter winds which the coming winter would bring in from the sea.

In the streets of the metropolis Dublin, I imagine the long skirts of female ancestors sweeping through fallen leaves along the footpaths, and picture the gentlemen's hats being whipped by the wind. The clatter of an ancestor's carriage wheels rolling over damp cobblestone roads plays in my mind, while the scent of burning wood catches my nose, as I envision a scriber ancestor etching words into the side of a Jameson whiskey barrel.

In Phoenix Park with the Wellington Monument peeking through the ever changing leaves of the trees.
©irisheyesjg2014.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Wordless Wednesday, not quite: Canal Bank Walk

Canal Bank Walk

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

                                                                       — Patrick Kavanagh

John Coll's bronze sculpture of the poet Patrick Kavanagh seated at the side of the canal he loved,
Mespil Road, Dublin.
©irisheyesjg2014.
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