Contents.

 Quaker Corner Contents

1. One day nearer
2. Death in a time of plague 
3. Now and at the hour of our death
4. Look at their lives
5. I travelled far
6. We toss a coin
7. May our Kingdom Come
8. Memories
9. Seventy
10. When
11. Five a.m.
12. V is for Volvo
13. Sun tan lotion
14. Meaning
15. The Dead 
16. Falling then rising 
17. Brexiteer lies
18. Forgive me
19. Easter Ceremonies. 
20. Summer Holidays
21. Rain
22. Covid Corner 
23. His past
24. His past
25. Time
26. Pilgrim
27. Srebenica’s children
28. Mid-June
29. Down the lane
30. Fiddling, fiddling
31. July ferry
32. Listening not seeing
33. Seventy - the eighth decade
34. The end of times
35. The limpid light
36. Leaving Kabul
37. Dear August
38. What long lessons
39. Sitting on the garden swing
40. Tuskar Lighthouse.  
41. Too young to die
42. Autumn
43. Credo 
44. The Centre cannot hold
45. She relaxed
46. Trails in the sky. 
47. Soft misty Sunday
48. Bishop John Shelby Spong
49. He thought his love
50. His universe
51. West Wind
52. The last day in September. 
53. Where has 2020 gone?
54. Please spare my verses
55. Only the good die early
56. The man who wasn’t sure
57. We are walking towards Winter
58. Deliciously cool
59. Sound of silence
60. Fishing for souls
61. Collector of lost causes
62. October delivered November 
63. The first of November
64. The low Autumn sun
65. Covog
66. The time will come
67. Hope for the best
68. In the precious hours 
69. We’ll have another. 
70. Sunday morning strollers 
71. Morning ferry clouds
72. Johnstown Castle 
73. What my father gave me
74. Book escapes
75. J Peter Andrews
76. Bray Brrrr
77. Greystones Marina
78. Four o’clock sunset
79. December 15th 
80. Omicron over
81. Baby in a bassinet. 
82. The gap
83. Erin go brágh
84. The old bar stool
85. Glenageary. Gleann na gCaorach 
86. Lust for life
87. It’s just not cricket. 
88. When we go
89. Aisling Murphy tribute
90. We are the great adapters
91. The birds
92. One year on
93. Mourning my old faith
94. A smile
95. Staying close
96. He slept soundly
97. Me olvidé de vivir
98. The sound of the sea
99. Weep not for me
100. My back 
101. Juliska Revesz (Julia)
102. Our Gods haven’t met
103. Kyiv 24/2/22
104. Our neutral status. 
105. It was five in the morning
106. I celebrate a man
107. Prayers for peace
108. Everything’s fine
109. Wishing well
110. Pebble beach
111. This is my ground
112. People taken from us

Simply said

 Simple stuff 

We revel in the simple

We salute the word ‘enough’

For joy is found in free things

Not in gold or sparkly stuff. 

We can mine some goodness

In the bottom of our garden 

Warmth can be found sunny corners

More effective than drafty corridors

Our sights are focused on the present

For the future looks compromised 

Plans and projects are abandoned

For the sweetness of the here and now. 

We can stop and stare at life

We can embrace the very now

We will kiss and hug the moment 

We will milk the present somehow. 

Great people speak of decades

To change our lives and save the world 

But if like me you don’t believe 

The well intentioned commentary. 

To stoop beneath the gates of history 

To slip outside the wedding tent now free

To forge a path less traveled and less worn

Perchance to meet a pilgrim on the road. 

We mark the end of Quaker Corner

As we reach the end of Covid road

Our focus now on golden spires  

As Ukraine strikes out for one and all. 

Now it’s time to change the guard

For every chapter must have its close

And so a new one opens 

Un hora menos now takes over. 

Hasta La vista! 

29th April 2022. 

Ozymandias

 Ozymandias

The king looked across the ravaged country

And heard the cries that carried on the wind

Of peoples once proud and worried only

For their Spanish villas and their French weekends. 

They have lived beyond their means for half a century

Heedless of good luck and thinking it hard work

While millions famished in the Horn of Africa

Not seeing millions toiling in the Philippines. 

The only question is why it took so long

For the tottering pyramid to come tumbling down

How gravity was suspended for five decades

How the party lasted onto the  dreary dawn?

Look around and see the wasteland now

The soil degraded by the stuff at home

Once bought, forgotten and discarded

If we could only throw the dice again. 

The sun goes down on broken buildings

With shattered glass that housed the business center

No longer needed when the crops don’t grow

Survival is the only game they know. 

Son of man, don’t be sad

Just be grateful that it lasted

All good things will have an ending

Enjoy this journey while you can. 

79

 Seventy nine and a bit

I arise today to eat my porridge and bran

If I am what I eat I’ll become a healthy man

Banished like serpents are wine and the crisps

And in their old place are the tea and the biscuits.  

Gone is the chocolate, in with the apples 

Gone are the dentists, nowhere to be seen

I’ll fill up my plate with lettuce and cabbage

Like a true Irishman I’ll eat all my greens. 

I’ll silence the Twitter now Elon’s in charge

I’ll leave Facebook til August perhaps even later

Saving the hours and with the spare time 

I’ll write poems  and verse that occasionally rhyme. 

With a blast from the past when I bend over

To the sound of knees creaking and everything leaking

All the pills marshaled on the bright breakfast table

Counted and swallowed as fast as I’m able. 

With less teeth to manage and less hair to brush

Nothing is urgent that merits a rush

It’s a wonderful life, a marvelous time

To reach the old age of seventy nine. 

Easter Story

  Easter Story

The greatest story ever told 

And yet the most imprecise

With conflicting details

From the very start. 

However from the distance 

Of twenty centuries we can deduce

Something quite magnificent

That turned all history upside down. 

For me the story is quite simple

That following his death we learned

His presence and his teaching still remained

Overcoming both the shame and pain. 

And so his death does not define his life

His words ring clear across the seas

Across the decades and the centuries 

Without agenda and without mystery. 

Easter happens every day we read his tale

Every time we listen at his feet

Free to those who choose to follow

Truth is timeless and complete

Limited offer

 Somewhere along the line

Somewhere along the line the message got confused

Good news for all became time limited 

The offer now reduced to believers, 

Belongers, followers and subscribers. 

What was free to all became rather small

And the unlimited became conditional

The God who counted every hair now counting points 

All applications required in triplicate. 

The prison of the promised people

Extended east and west

But still remained a place

By invitation only.  

Old habits die so hard

In the beauty of the desert

The habits of two thousand years

Refused to go, we know. 

If there is a God, it’s for everyone

Especially agnostics and unbelievers 

If there is a heaven, it will be full

Of those who never stood in chapel. 

Heaven will be another earth

Where the undeserving live

Cheek by jowl with holy ones

Just like the Prodigal Sons

Running.

 Running, running

Running, running from the soldiers

In East Ukraine and elsewhere

Women and children flee for their lives

Escaping from death and from despair. 

Running, running in the playground yard

The five year olds enjoy their play

Happy lives lie straight ahead

Laughter rings this joyous day. 

Running, running up the ladder 

Of the business world

Making contacts, playing golf, 

Making hay while time permits. 

Running, running in the airport hall

To greet the daughter who returns 

Tattooed and tanned from foreign lands

Tears of joy and relief hand in hand. 

Running, running is what we do

Running from grief, heading towards life

Movement the heart and very soul 

Of sadness and laughter, hope and belief.