Francis Duggan Poems

The biological clock on our lives it is ticking and ticking and ticking away
The brown haired young lad of the forties is the gray haired old man of today
He wonders where the years have gone to on looking back time went so fast
His boyhood and prime went so quickly few things ever do seem to last
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It has been a few years since her I did see
Yet none quite so kind or as lovely as she
A grandmother to John Gregory son of Melissa and her son John
The years ticking by but she keeps keeping on.
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I've no reason to be happy but why be sad anyway
On my life the clock is ticking on another wasted day
Nothing to show for my existence don't have anything to smile about
Though I know I'm but one of many whose mind is ravaged by self doubt
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Bill Regan gone from Ballydaly he died at ninety four
He will never more be seen cycling on the roadway towards Rathmore
On his way home from Millstreet Town his was a well known face
And in the minds of family and friends he will always have a place.
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In his dreams he hears the big waves roll by his Hometown by the sea
And in the coastal park the magpie lark is calling out pee wee
And the strong smell of sea weed and kelp that on the white beach lay
He is not an outback sort of bloke his home is far away
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I know I can become an Aussie on paper but an Aussie on paper is all I would be
For a paper on it to say I am an Aussie would surely not make an Aussie out of me
I'm just an ageing migrant who came from Ireland though in Ireland I well may not live my last day
It well may be in this great Southern Country that my last remains are to forever lay
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Those who judge people by their colour or their creed or their race
The spirit of the fair go could never embrace
But eventually the reality they have to face
That in the twenty first century for their sort of thinking there isn't a place.
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The sun blazing bright in the blue and gray sky
And the blackbird he pipes in the parkland nearby
His music does take me to places far away
To cooler and breezy weather in the northern May.
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What hair he has left on his balding head with age whiter than gray
And clearly he has seen a far better day
His sight it is failing and yet he does write
And at the Local his poems he does recite.
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As a poet greatness of him one ought not to deny
Yet he is one who is hard to classify
Not a bush poet or modernist or a man of rhyme
One can't say of him he was one of his time.
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