The End of the Rainbow…

Peter and the Little People republished!

And a poem that the Little People would understand from a longer term perspective than humans seem able to take…

I hope summer is going well for everyone and the new (for us fifth) wave of infections is not affecting you.

I have some news: I have republished my children’s novel, Peter and the Little People, since the original publishers have sadly closed recently. I took the opportunity to re-edit it, so it reads a lot smoother, especially in the first chapters.

It’s available on pre-order now, and will download automatically onto your kindles etc. on the publication date which will be August 15th!

AND it is available in Paperback! So you can pre-order it now and it will pop in the post for you, too.

Till then, here’s a poem that was inspired by a different book written and set in Ireland.

Children of the Rainbow is a book from decades ago, but it’s well worth reading if you have any connection with the Island.

At the same time, I was reading Barry Lopez’s Horizon, which was quite impactful, too.

So the poem that came out is not quite as hopeful as Peter and the Little People regarding our planet. But I hope it’s still beautiful.

For there is yet beauty all around us if only we appreciate it and preserve it.

            The Fading of the Rainbow

.

Our grandparents grew up under the bow of wonder

Shades of beauty forty-fold and more, so vivid 

The colours were within reach, like the hand of God,

Life bursting out of every bud and bloom, butterflies

And bees humming just one tune in Nature’s symphony

.

But today, we stare across a broad sweep of fields, all

Furrowed into one with faint lines left where once

Grew hedgerows; rooks caws accompany cows now,

Gone the curlew call and corncrake, cuckoo only

Heard on distant hills: a sound of childhood, half

Remembered. The skylark leaves a faint line upon

The heart where before flew nightingales and chorus

Of dawn songbirds, silenced like the wolf and other

Wild animals swept away before the sheep browsing.

.

Now even that centrepiece of pristineness, poster

Child of evolution in isolation and archipelagos lies

Lessened, the frenzy of breeding becoming bare as

Feral goats graze the spare seedlings, dogs attack

Basking iguanas, cats and rats run riot, into ruin 

One of the last remaining untouched outposts upon

.

The vast planet, pinched a little smaller each season,

Swept into sameness, as only colonisers cling to barren

Land. If these distant places are as doomed as our city

Streets, what place has hope this side of the rainbow;

Faded, bleached, and ragged, can it even hold any

Hidden at the end, like a crock of leprechaun gold?

Kids and stuff

   

So it’s been a while…

School is back, so that’s been interesting. Ears need the weekend to recover from the mask wearing. Infection rates steadily climbing again and probably looking at a lockdown soon enough, though school should still stay open, even as the classes empty, and we have to sub classes for our sick colleagues…

I am fine, so far. Had a antibody test as part of the at risk teacher cohort but it came back negative. My own kids are grand, haven’t missed class yet. Even extra curricular activities are on, though it’s harder to get a spot…

But they finish earlier this year and afternoons are occupied with keeping them active. We went to the allotment yesterday, where my son sought out lizards to pet and take home and keep in a tank so the cats can’t kill them, and found a stick for them to hide under. Since they seemed to be hibernating already, he determined we have to go back on the first day of summer. All of which reminded me of this poem I wrote during the summer.

Kite flying in the village before school started.

         For His Fifth Birthday

For his fifth birthday, my youngest son requests:

A lion, a zebra, hyenas and a herd of elephants;

A blue whale, hammerhead, a puffer fish and dolphin;

A crocodile, a kangaroo, a hedgehog and a snake;

A forest full of monkeys, jaguars and parrots;

A toucan, antelope, stick insects and bats;

Penguins, orcas, and a pod of narwhals.

He tells me this in innocence and bliss,

And I smile and nod: granting all,

Saying, I shall arrange them in place,

Each appropriate to their needs,

Where they may await the day

He makes the trek to greet them.

I sincerely hope we will have all those animals when he grows up and we can see them outside of books…

As my new novella, set in 2081, states, we need these species to feel completely human.

But in the meantime, I hope everyone is well and keeping themselves as such by staying away from all the superfluous people and wearing masks as we clasp our friends.

A Poems about Farms and Wildlife

 

They don’t have to be mutually exclusive…. an orchard with flowers underfoot.

 

But sometimes farmers feel that they have to plough every patch their tractors fit into, for fear those flowers take energy away from the apples and nuts.

 

Thoughts on seeing a recently-cleaned water pond on Saint Patrick’s Day

 

On a Sunday, the seventeenth, I went for a walk in the countryside about the village.

I walked along the hedges, trimmed now in March before the birds came come along and put a fly in a farmer’s plans.

I paused over an old walled water pond, for the vegetable plot, to perhaps look upon a frog, or salamander.

It was scrubbed clean. The concrete pale below the clear water reflecting the crystal blue.

Not a boatman stroked across the surface, ne’er a leaf lay upon the bottom to hide a frog or newt.

For what would a farmer do with silt? A streamlined machine these fields, these springs,

And cleanliness is next to godliness, of course. The wild world was sterilised of sprits in favour of clean sheets.

The dragons were already gone before Saint Patrick stepped upon a snake.

A day will come when none of us will see one, no matter where we seek.

 

Of course, the day seems to be coming faster than we feared, with the new  UN report about to come out today, Monday, declaring that a million species are about to go extinct if we don’t turn this shit, sorry ship, around toot sweet, as they say.

Which is terribly hard to tell your kids when they ask at the age of eight.

I didn’t take a photo of the empty pond, but I did help this lad across the road a few days later after some long-awaited rain.

 

 

Dog’s might in fact go to heaven. And my poem’s reduntant…

I posted this poem just a month ago…

Dogs don’t go to Heaven

They told me dogs don’t go to Heaven.

If so, then much less the wolf,
Nor would the fleet deer flee.
If there are no dogs allowed,
Then neither birds nor bumblebees
Enter, I’m sure. Who visits flowers, then?
None need, for they are also absent.
Mountains there are equally bare
Of the forest that covers the one before me.
When they tell me of Heaven, I can hardly
Imagine how the water flows and falls there,
Or why one would swim in the wide blue sea
Without a fish to see.
They tell me
Dogs don’t go to heaven, so I’ve decided
That’s not somewhere I’d for ever want to be.

But there goes Pope Francisco changing the catholic church and its dogma under our feet…

Seems dogs just might get to slip through the bars of the pearly gates, like all dogs sneak into our gardens – at least those little jack russell gits and their ilk.

Good on him. Not sure how the theology of it will work out, but who cares?