Slowing down Spring

A path dividing a wheat and a oilseed rape field filled with flowers and insects under a rain-heavy sky.

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            Slowing Down Spring

Leaden heavy clouds lay upon the land,

Slowing its spin, it seems, the wind

Whistling chill, winds back spring:

So all pauses, apparently, and allows us,

Perhaps, appreciate all a little longer:

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Continued calling of song thrushes,

Tree-creepers, warblers and woodpeckers;

The candle cones perched upon pines;

Chandeliers of chestnut blooms

Letting petals swirl to gather in drifts

And dropping fruits of tiny infant seeds;

New green sprigs on twigs of spruce trees;

Dandelions, the sign of spring, still

The dominant design of spring,

Drawing swarms of insects, revived

As running rivers; glowing gloss and

Ripples of graining barley, regaining

The aspect of May in Spain; golden

Sunspots, when rays sneak out of clouds,

That simply seep into souls like

Helium to help them soar…

Making every day a delayed delight

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We might not see for many more:

As spring shortens ever more and

Assimilates to frightful summer 

Sooner than we’re prepared for.

Rainbow marks the return of the sun, to fields not fully seeded from the earlier drought. We got a storm that dropped a lot of water this weekend which hopefully has saved the harvestt.

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We had a few weeks with cooler temperatures, which was a big relief, even in Navarra. Not so much rain in many places, but it gave us time to really see the green before it turns to gold. Which it was threatening to too soon this hear – to dusty tan and brown, too. And it seems spring will shorten as we go forward into climate chaos.

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Of course, in our village the verges went brown after the council yet again sprayed it with glyphosphate… And one local farmer did the same to his field verges, which just ruins my day as I cycle up the hill…

It’s just ugly, apart from idiotic etc… But it runs a brown line all the way up… in an area which has a natural park and is advertised to tourists to go hiking and mushroom picking in the forests above these fields…

Spring Springing, Sprung

Potted flowers upon the wall of a patio in Cordoba… not the hydrangea of the first stanza, but each a point of light in our lives.

            The Great Unfurling

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Potted hydrangea upon a windowsill

Sets forth fresh leaves: tender, verdant

Sheets break out along dry sticks, fragile.

I daily watch them form as March marches.

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Granted the gift of infinity of seconds,

In observation, I wish to break out,

Past the patio to spend

Spring beyond, experience

Every plant’s rebirth and blossoming,

To miss not this great unwinding,

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From forest floor, wild asparagus and

Ferns unfurling, breaking forth

Each bud, young leaves extending,

Spreading, fat fingered

Fronds from chestnut trunks;

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Witness every sprig of speedwell,

Burst of buttercups, 

Spray of daisies, and breeze

Dancing dandelions, dainty dog violets.

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Later let me see the fall

Of flower petals to the path,

From each high floral bouquet:

Dashing with pink and white

The grass, creating a colourful carpet,

Delicate to delight our way,

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Through this season; so short, yet

Too intense to appreciate the display.

Been a busy few weeks with little posting – though a fair bit of poetry and some writing, and lots of reading! But mostly just enjoying the spring, which is blooming lovely, if too dry in a lot of places.

I just spent the weekend down in Andalucia, and the heat is rising quickly there, so it’s almost summer, with swifts screaming in the skies already. On the train on the way down, it was clear many fields will give little harvest this year.

Spring is always my most distracted season and this year is no exception. or an exception to the extent that I’ve decided to spend as much time as I can just soaking it up, so I spent hours staring out the train window rather than writing or reading. Nevertheless, the words come, stored up for winter or spluttered out for a short poem.

Hope you like it.

Cherry bossoms in the park. The petals will soon strew the paths in pink.

PS, when I returned after the Easter Holidays the hydrangea was nearly dead, having been left unwatered. I gave it some and hope it will recover (it’s not mine, by the way!)

Little Victories

Well, this is a little victory in itself.

This book took a long time to get here.

I had the idea way back when I published The Soul of Adam Short, thinking about a YA novel set in Ireland, and the part of Ireland I know best is obviously South County Dublin and North Wicklow.

The problem of fires and farmers and the protection of nesting birds was something that started back then, and of course has kept going years later….

It merged with an idea I had when I was around 17….

The characters came separately, from a different inspiration.

It took a while to get the pen to paper, but my first typed document has a date of June 2015.

Then the first draft was done in 2018.

Yes. I can be 3 years on a book that’s only around 60k words!

I gave a copy of the third or fourth draft to my family – the younger ones – asking for feedback.

Crickets.

For a couple of years.

I got on with writing my long novel, Paul and the Pyramid Builders.

Then I asked my ex-publisher of Adam Short to have a look at it, and see if it was for the drawer.

She says it’s not.

So here it is. Edited and proof-read and ready for reviews.

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Here’s the blurb….

Nicky and her two new friends, Mark and Ash, spend spring racing their mountain bikes through south Dublin – both down hillsides and hitching rides from HGVs – and exploring their feelings towards one another. They’re aghast to one day find an illegal fire on the mountain, just set by a farmer. When the police say they can do nothing about it, the three determine to catch the culprit red-handed. But life is as complicated as love, and as Nicky comes to terms with this, she discovers that sometimes you have to accept whatever little victories come your way.

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It’s dedicated to my good friend Phil, no longer with us, who was a great man for the biking round south Dublin and Wicklow, though more on a road bike than mountain bike.

It’s on Pre Order now, and will be published before my birthday – Paddy’s Day to be exact.

March is when this novel kicks off, when the fires that beleaguer the Dublin and Wicklow mountains should be stopped rather than started.

Anyone who’s interested in a review copy can email me at davidjmobrienauthor@gmail.com

Happy St. David’s Day, everyone.

Don’t forget, if you see a brush fire in Ireland from today, it’s illegal.

Winter, as it Should Be

A view of the distant pyrenees, with a little snow, and a forest still sporting spots of orange, in mid December.

            Somewhat as it Should Be

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Frozen fog has shut off any sights without the vale:

Only a few fields below the road and trees along:

Ash still green but paling, poplars rising glorious 

In gold and rowan orange glowing. Goldfinches flee 

But return easily to glean seeds to fuel against the cold

Ice clad grass banks and crown clods in shaded corners.

Chilled fingers fumble at the pen with these words, so I

Turn to the house, for use in clutching logs, and later,

Thawed to type by the fire, stopping by the spring

To fill the water bottle for a dram. The flow has not

Yet been helped by the recent rain and snow, I see,

But we’ve returned, somewhat, to winter as it should be.

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I wrote this a few weeks back, when the weather was a little different. It’s clear that this Christmas is not white in much of Europe, but it’s whiteout in much of North America…. neither exactly what anyone wants…

Well, anyway, happy Christmas. Hope you’re warm wherever you are.

Some News on Novels

It’s been a while since I published a new novel.

I hope to have a YA set in Ireland out in the new year.

Meanwhile, some news: I’ll shortly be getting my copyright back on the five novels published with Tirgearr Publishing.

Once I do, I will do my best to get them back up for sale on Amazon, first as Ebooks. I am considering publishing them in print as well, and I have to admit I am in two minds – if you have an ebook, then it’s best to just download them. But if not… well, I hope there are folks out there who’d love to read them in print… I will get back to you on that. If anyone wants to comment either way, feel free.

As we see the fall of Twitter, and the fact of Meta failing and the Facebook basically falling also into disuse by at least a large proportion of folks in my friends lists, I am thinking of where to actually connect to readers and friends, apart from just here.

It’s true that the life of a writer is always hard, and getting readers to pick up our books never easy. The social media space has made it possible for some of us to sell some of our work.

And yet, at the same time, the whole selling scape is not often our favourite space. I personally rarely go on Facebook now – and I am one of the few people on the planet who legitimately need such a space to stay in touch with all the lovely people I’ve come to know over the years in my real life travels round the world. I feel the threads tying us together getting slacker, though, thinner. And in some respects this is inevitable, It would happen faster without the internet, but eventually it will happen anyway, as the years stretch on and we all get older.

In other respects, writing is something I will do regardless of who reads the work, and I will do it (am doing it because of constraints of real life) in my own time, despite the marketing mantra of getting new books out in front of folks’ eyes and having series to pull them in.

If anyone reads my poems you’ll see that it is out in the real world of Nature that I am happiest, and the writing comes when I am not there, from ideas I get while I am.

Those writings will come, as long as I live, and if the history of art has taught us anything, it’s that fame and life are not necessarily concurrent. We can only enjoy the work, and worry about everything else after. Nor is financial return any indication of merit.

I will continue to post my blogposts to Facebook, but you’ll not find me there much otherwise, so if you want to get in touch the best is to comment on these posts here on WordPress, and to write me at davidjmobrienauthor@gmail.com

For when Twitter dies, I have joined Mastedon, and I here’s my page for anyone to follow: @David_J_OBrien@mastodon.ie

Meanwhile, here’s a poem I wrote a few years back. I think I might have posted it before, but it came to mind while writing this.

Enjoy

            Threads

As we walk our world, we weave

A kind of tapestry about us:

Threads spread out, linking our lives 

With those we meet.

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Wonderful, a wheel of whirling strands

Swirling about us like glinting gossamer

Whipped on morning breeze across sunlit fields;

The thoughts and talks and memories

Shared and cared for across continents 

Over centuries.

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But ultimately bitter-sweet,

For they inevitably wear thin over time,

We often fail to keep all attended to

To stop them breaking,

Trailing, frail, forgotten in the tangle,

And even the strongest spun silk can snap:

Stretched taut across landscapes,

When we walk too far.

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Those we best attend to, too,

Weaken, and fade to invisibility

Eventually, severed, taken from us 

When their own weaver leaves this ether.

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How long will our own cloth survive,

When we’re not here to hold it?

As those that know us no longer 

Hold memory of what we told them,

About our many connections, never

Mind our own names, and actions,

Faint after just a generation.

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No wonder some strive to stencil

Their names in stone set into cathedrals,

Or indelibly upon a novel, poem or play

Which will carry on without us

When we’ve gone upon our way.

Glorious

This is a shot I took in a different place than I had the inspiration, when I had the time to stop and shoot it. It’s not quite as glorious, but it’s damn lovely all the same. Autumn took a while to arrive, but it’s great to see it.

            And It’s Glorious

The storm has eased, eventually.

Though cold, trees still, dripping yet,

Leaves left, strewn upon the street:

Sheets of gold and ochre. Streams of

Sticks and twigs clog the gutters,

Grown to spreading pools, reflecting 

Gorgeous tempest survivors overhead.

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And it’s glorious: a rare, raw, glimpse 

Of our world without the concrete.

At least until the sweepers resume,

Scouring nature with their plastic brooms.

A Few Seconds of Eternity

            A few Seconds of Eternity

A hubbub surrounds several idling cars:

Kids running between house and driveway

As the gang gets ready to leave on Sunday,

Carrying bags and banging shutters closed.

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Asking, “Have we left anything behind?”

“Well, here it stays till next weekend,” replied,

For we’ve baths and dinners to have this evening

If we ever get on the road home.

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Eventually, the door locked and all packed in,

Bar me, standing in the garden as the cars

Reverse out, waiting to close the gate, taking in

The scene surrounding us as every evening:

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Silence settling o’er the vale as the breeze

Slows to swing round from afternoon heat

On the southern plains beyond the hills,

Set in scarlet, under clouds tinged pink.

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The sparrows have ceased squabbling

In the hedges for roosting spots, chirping

Softly as crickets; the sky turquoise east,

Glowing golden west; the oaks go on growing

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Under Saturn and early stars starting to shine,

As they have for eons, breathing in, quietly,

As the gate squeaks shut; all is mine,

For a few seconds, immersed in an eternity.

Often ‘Tis the little moments that make this life wonderful.

Last Dance

            The Dance of the Gnats

In slanting sunlight along hedges warmed

Hordes of gnats amass in glittering swarms

Like plumes of dust thrust up

From the ground burst open, abounding,

In an ultimate race to lay eggs ere autumn:

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A bountiful sign summer rests on last legs,

Yet, at least, as the flourishing knots

Feed the gathering flocks of swallows

Ere their exodus, fill lizards left lying on

Stone even cooling, fatten bats come twilight,

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An indication our Earth brims, still:

Life resides, ready to thrive when we let it.

While they fly I will delight

In the dance as long as lasts this light.

Autumn has finally arrived, with a storm, some rain and wind and now chilly foggy mornings. And very happy we are to see it, and the flies dying as they should to be born again next spring…

The Last Cabaret

            Final Fiesta

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Dancing giants and their marching musicians, with the public in train, a caravan of prams…

Marching bands and ballerinas

Parade the street, pulling public,

Producing impromptu dances

Around pushchairs and infants

Held aloft; cheering and chants

And stampings, stampeding

Children screaming gleefully

Gobbling up potato chips, fried

Calamari, scampi and such snacks

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Washed with beer and wine,

Vermouth and gin and an ever-

Growing list of sin, resisted

Until the wee hours under stars,

Revelling unrelenting. Renewed

As sunlight reveals debris and

Blinkered vision revolves to 

Another village, a different festival,

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Of a reencountered countryside

Ready for recreation after a year

Of restraint and restriction. See

A need for sun burning, but

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Another urge underneath fuels 

This seeming endless summer:

A sense of a September looming

Despite peaceful scenes.

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Heat will resist yet, bringing

Only waves of pain. Winter comes

Indeed, but carries no snow,

Nor silent ice-glazed stasis,

Only storms. The wars await,

Worse than after a former August

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And this is our last cabaret, 

Held under a hammer cocked,

A trigger primed, and all

Staggering at the tipping-point.

This guy is having a beer, using his other, smaller mouth in the throat, taking a break from bonking children on the head with that sponge.

We were finishing up the festival of San Fermin Txikito, or little San Fermin, last weekend, which was kind of the last festival of the summer – one which had the youths going to as many festivals in as many villages round Pamplona as they could get to, after the two years they missed out on because of the Covid restrictions. And I just said to myself – good luck to them. They’ll have shit shovelled out in front of them soon enough. We have had a terrible summer in terms of exacerbated “natural” disasters, but as the weather gets cooler, we can only look forward to a winter, if not of discontent, then of a realisation of how bad things are going to get (in the privileged west where it hasn’t actually started yet unlike many other places) on our current global trajectory. We just have to turn down the thermostat here, and shorten the shower times, while in other places they’re kinda sorta fucked, as it were.

After I’d written this poem, someone on twitter, commenting on the current fiasco in the UK compared it to Weimar economics, and look how that ended up – suggesting we have a final cabaret.

So it’s not just me, of course…

I have few photos to illustrate this poem for obvious reasons…. who wants their photo on the internet with a pile of beer bottles etc. round them? I wouldn’t! But no judgement if you’re enjoying yourself – a drink before the war, as Sinéad sang…

September Still acts like Autumn after all

We have finally got some decent days of rain – and who’d have thought we’d be saying such words even a couple of decades ago?

September has returned, and the swimming pools have closed – an important part of the end of summer even in this cooler part of Spain.

So here’s a short poem inspired by the last dip a couple of weeks ago…

These clouds didn’t produce any wanted rain, but a few days later we got some good wet days to soak the soil, and the heat has gone from afternoon.

            September Again

Chill seeps through skin and up 

Legs creating a repelling shiver

Shaken off at last, reluctant leap,

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Sweeping sweat away in one

Stroking refreshing lengths of

The clear water, vibrant, energized,

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Once out, heat resting upon

The village becomes welcome again.

Soaking afternoon sun

Seems summer holds yet

Tight to the terrain. Still

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Leaves left lying upon pool tiles

Tell a different tale:

September has returned;

Trees not dry of drought turn,

Blackberries shrivelled on brambles

Sloes fallen from thorns, walnuts

Weakly cling to limp twigs;

Chestnut spikes lie scattered

On forest floor, surprisingly, as if

We’d somehow forgotten 

Autumn would come, and

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Somewhat disconcerting,

At first, as evening chill envelops – 

Our inertia preferring to ignore it.

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Yet, when jumpers dug out of drawers,

We’ll embrace the breeze:

As bracing as this latest bathe.

Here the trees yet green, flowers yet in bloom, though bracken has been harvested in some of those fields for winter and chestnuts (small this year) are on the forest floor.