Reminiscence

Sitting in the garden,

love of sun persistent,

memories are teased out 

in the warm lull of an Autumn sun.

 

The thrill of a blackbird 

shatters the ripened air,

stirs free the images buried,

in a sediment of past lives, until then

shallow-oared past.

 

remember it here, remember it real,

remember it now, or all is undone.

 

Prickly travelling rugs,

beneath skinny brown legs, new parents

and first feel of an earnest love closely inspected

behind the orphan’s shield.

 

remember it here, remember it real,

remember it now, or all is undone.

 

 

Their garden started with potatoes,

then onions and garlic -

his softened country hands passing

bulbs one by one, like his father before him,

and  on to his children,

and the children that followed.

 

remember it here, remember it real,

remember it now, or all is undone.

 

Children played, capricious as a butterfly’s flight,

but where do they hide now? Where do they play?

Down by the apple tree, where the brambles grow,

Down there, where no one now goes.

 

remember it here, remember it real,

remember it now, or all is undone.

 

Now she sits with her memories,

of all she has made, and all she has done,

and the blackbird sings loudly:

remember it here, remember it real,

remember it now, or all is undone.

© niall oconnor 2015/24