One of the most beautiful things about Summer are the roadside verges, bursting, overflowing with growth and texture and colour: the light greens and bright oranges of the mont bretia, the dark greens and carmine and scarlet of the fucshia, yellow flowers of buttercups, lotus and gorse, honey-white clouds of meadow-sweet, rambling roses, all purple and pink, so many more…
Colour verge
Roadside colour-haze:
swathes of rosy willowbay
sway, shimmeringly.
(30/08/10)
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Is there anything better (as Ratty used to say!) than simply messing about in boats? In this case, kayaks. The world floating by, serene and calm, your own world reduced (expanded?) to the space between the river banks, dragonflies filckering past, swallows swooping around you, a kingfisher darting off in a dead straight line somehwere fast, leaving only a memory of iridescence and a mental echo of his metallic “tnnnk”……….
Quoile River
Cupped lily flowers
overflow with golden light.
Herons stalk the banks.
*****
Grey abbey ruins
exude peace and ageless calm.
Fork-tailed kite soars high.
(23/08/10)
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A page from my notebook, walking along the magnificent Giant’s Causeway Coastal Cliffs in Co.Antrim in glorious weather: the Mull of Kintyre and Islay so close you could almost reach out and touch them; the Paps of Jura, the mountains of Arran visible behind them; Ailsa Craig, with its gannet-whitened tops glistening in the sun, blending with the turbulent blue of the Sea of Moyle where the children of Lir spent three hundred tough years….
Clochán an Aifir
I bhfiacla an ghaoth
giortáileann na failleanna
cholúna’ iad féin.
[In the gale’s white teeth,
the columned cliffs gird themselves,
tightening tendons.]
(16/08/10)
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Ahh, at last, Summer reappears (however briefly!) the heat quite intense, evenings to sit, watch the birds swoop and nibble grass seeds and sip wine (that is, I’m sipping the wine, not the birds!!)
Heat
Swallows buzz the ash.
The dense green, fly-buzzing shade
attracts panting sheep.
(09/08/10)
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August, gloriously bursting with fecundity! Everything lush and full, hidden, filled with birdsong and unknown rustlings, roads overshadowed, verges and hedges overgrown, flower-filled, seedpod-bursting; Reclaiming Nature.
Backyard
Riot of brambles
climbs low-tide-rippled tin-roof.
A cat tiptoes by.
(02/08/10)