A good life

Bantim roosters play on the street in Booterstown last Sunday morning.


This sailing ship is called the eendracht she hails from Holland



Well I will be back to work again soon,I would like to thank those who shared my grief.
My mother was buried a week to the day when her sister was buried.
They had great lives and I hope that we can carry on with our lives using the strong character as an example to us in the future.
Their roots go back to the people of the Blasket Islands a community of poets and writers,they fought nature and eaked out a living. Until drownings and sickness drove them to the mainland.

People will not look forward who will never look behind to their ancestors
Edmond Burke.

Here is a poem which I read years ago which places the moment in stone when you suddenly know that you are now in the front line.
It is very symbolic.(like the line which describes the dawn,under the fading lamp)

Mirror in February

by Thomas Kinsella

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed - my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy -
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.