Francis Duggan Poems

When I was a school girl in Bayswater
The nearest house was a quarter of a mile away
Around our home were farms, gums and acacias
But Bayswater is a concrete place today.
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Away from the cooler southern climates old fellows and their old dears
Move up to the Gold coast to spend their twilight years
To live out their existence by the Pacific sea
Where rainbow keets are chirping on every flowering tree.
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I've seen great sights of beauty in my travels
The gold and grey landscapes, the brown and green
But south Pacific Islands of New Zealand
Are beautiful as anywhere I've seen.
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From high paddocks of Birdsland the hills green all around
And Nature in her splendour on view from higher ground
And white backed magpie piping he's piped all through the day
And kookaburra laughing in wood across the way
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For years I knew nostalgia and my heart ruled my head
And now I am regretting the silly things I've said
Like I'd go home to Millstreet to greet the flowers of May
When wild born birds are singing in woodlands far away.
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She was nineteen and he was twenty by the bluebell patch they lay
On the rank grass by the river on a sunny Summer's day
And the wild birds chirped and whistled on the bushes and the trees
On a near to perfect sunday with the slightest freshening breeze.
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The chaffinches are singing now in the groves of Lisheen
And the fields of Gneeveguilla have never looked so green
And wildflowers bloom by the narrow road that leads to Knocknagree
And blackbird builds her mossy nest on the fork of hawthorn tree.
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With folded wings the fishing gannets plunge into the sea
And the nuggety old man with fishing rod was waiting patiently
For a fish to bite as the incoming waves splashed quite close to his feet
And each new wave it came surging in as each old wave did retreat.
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Were I a bard and had I a way with words
I'd sing a song of the apostle birds
Of how they stay together love and live
Few humans have in them such love to give.
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I don't know if I've got an enemy
Though no one is an enemy to me
I only want to live and be let live
And be thought of as one who can forgive.
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