Francis Duggan Poems

Since I first started writing verse back in late nineteen seventy three
I've written many pieces over six thousand five hundred maybe
Of people and of Nature and of the wild and free
But my rhymes are just not good enough or so 'twould seem to me.
...

life's so called losers hardly matter that's what Government
ministers think
The poor bloke found dead on the park bench was addicted to alcoholic drink
His remains discovered by a jogger but they never told us why
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It had been a few years since I last heard from Jimmy Sullivan a friend of mine who lives in Millstreet Town
But very lately early in the morning he gave me a ring for to give me the run down
Of the recent happenings in my old home Parish where I took leave of many years ago
Going by what he had said the changes have been happening and if I returned to there now the place I'd hardly know.
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I met them in the lake park whilst out walking the Universisty Professor and his wife
In their late fifties or maybe early sixties one might say they had seen a bit of life
As we were walking in the same direction we began to chat as we sauntered along
On a warm and breezy morning in December the magpie on the wattle was in song.
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Snowball the white silky bantam rooster he does the things all roosters like to do
Amongst his hens in Steve's and Annie's garden he utters forth his cock a doodle doo
The bigger hens they don't seem to respect him though that fact Snowball does not seem to rue
He sticks close to his white silky bantams each to his own so happens to be true.
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So many so called love poems have been written it's so easy for to say that I love you
But few loves last until death do us part and when I say that I mean very few
How many marriages have ended in the divorce courts and how many loves have foundered in a year?
And only bitterness where once were hugs and kisses another love song I do not wish to hear.
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The valley that he came from it may seem far away
But he vows he'll be back there to greet the flowers of May
When dark brown dipper with the snow white breast is singing in the rill
And the little brown lark is carolling above the sunlit hill.
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The huge bush fires in the blue mountains fire fighters struggle to control
And on wild born creatures the flames have taken toll
Many roos, wallabies, koalas, wombats and possums have met with a painful death
These anti Nature arsonists may they live to regret
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He was the great poet who sung of Gougane Barra
And the rill from the hills that flowed straight and narrow
To grow to river Lee as it flow to the ocean
His musical verse is sheer poetry in motion.
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The wanderlust was in my heart and I had dreams to follow
And I am one who has ventured far from my old home in Duhallow
But each time I hear the blackbird pipe my thoughts afar go winging
To the high wood by Clara hill where I heard his kin bird singing.
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