Francis Duggan Memories Poems

When I was a young boy many decades ago
I thought babies like flowers in the gardens did grow
That's what I was told and what I did believe
Children have their innocence and are not hard to deceive.
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Happy childhood memories the best memories of all
And my younger years in Millstreet I will always recall
On evenings in Summer up to the mid Fall
In the Townpark at the West End we played gaelic football
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The clock on our lives ever ticking away
In time it only does seem like yesterday
Since to the fields of my young years i said goodbye
On looking back the Seasons how time seems to fly
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Hibernia's wild shores i may never more see
Since i have left Irelandbut Ireland has not left me
Though i have not seen it for years and from there live far away
In my visualizations i visit it often sometimes every day
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If there's a hell then I am doomed and for hell I am heading
For I drove my car when I was drunk from Connie Tarrant's wedding,
I drove my car when I was drunk and lived to tell the story
Though I don't find no pride in that and that won't bring me glory.
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The wanderlust was in them and they moved from place to place
In their horse drawn gipsy caravans but they were a happy race
Of people for they had the gift of music and they had the gift of song
And to the dispossessed of Cromwell their ancestry belong.
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Since the last time I see old Wonthaggi many weeks and months have gone by
Above the scrub by Powlett River the lark sang in the sunny sky
The country side by the old coal Town I do see when I visualize
And on the bracken clad hill of Baxter's land I see the roos box at sunrise
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In the old rushy fields close to Millstreet Town
The Finnow bank high in flood waters of brown
And in the cold chill of a November dawn
The salmon are swimming up river to spawn
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In the middle of February they always came to Annagloor
And parked their horse drawn vans by the by road the travelling Irish poor
They came for the March horse fair in Millstreet Town horses they bought and sold
And a beautiful Pinto to them was a horse worth more than gold.
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I often sat upon the dunce's stool
In the class room in Millstreet Town Primary school
My parents they could not feel proud of me
I was not the type of boy they wished me for to be.
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The familiar sounds made by the male snipe above the bog at night
With wings and tail he makes a goat like noise whilst in his courtship flight
In Spring and early Summer him i often did hear
But that was many years ago and many miles from here.
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I recall when I was a young boy in my ninth year going on ten
I heard the shy cock pheasant cucking in early Summer in the rushy glen
He was one that I did hear often though him I rarely ever did see
A memory from the mid fifties that lives on in my memory,
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The memories of boyhood years my source of joy
Slashing thistles in my uncle's fields in Lisnaboy
In changeable weather in early July
So close to the grass the barn swallows did fly
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In his day a famed Gaelic Footballer a legend around him did grow
A hero for Cork and for Millstreet but that was a long time ago
One of the best forwards in Ireland when he was in his glorious prime
He is at rest with life's departed we all become victims of time.
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The biological clock is ticking and time's not on my side
And from the one known as the Reaper not anywhere for to hide
Some five and thirty years ago I was in my life's prime
And only in the memory can one go back in time
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Tonight my mind is full of memories of the old home far away
By the Killarney Road near Millstreet Town where I first saw light of day
The male robin by the old house piped on the cypress tree
The Spring sun upon his red breast in fancy I can see
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He could tell the weather by the sky he was a wise old fellow
And he'd say tomorrow it will rain the sun has gone down yellow
And sure enough next day 'twould rain and we'd laud our forecaster
Who needed radio forecasts in those days when we had 'Pad the Master'.
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I walked with her in dim light of the moon
Along the banks of Lake of Bonnie Doon
The moon beams like gold dust on her nut brown hair
And sweet scenting the perfume she did wear.
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I have not been to my first home-place for twenty nine years
And for the what used to be i have shed my last tears
But on my flights of fancy the Claramore rill
Babbles towards Claraghatlea down the fields by the hill
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Old memories live in me as a source of joy
Of where i grew to love Nature when i was a boy
In the fields west of Millstreet in view of Clara Hill
In my memory time does seem to stand still
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The same for everyone as for you and i
Good memories stay with us till the day we do die
And our bad memories too much to our regret
Till death too with us will stay though them we would like to forget
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Her shoulder length hair it was wavy and brown
And her eyes blue as ripened sloes the Pride of Millstreet Town
In her early twenties near her physical prime
If living today she must be showing the wear of time
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I was not any use at Gaelic Football or Soccer though I played in Millstreet Townpark in the rain
And I played Soccer in Neily Duggan's Inch Field but these things I will never do again
With my young friends for us it was enjoyment but few things in life stay the same
The fire of youth in us was burning but it now is a flickering flame
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Fond memories of what was stir up nostalgic tears
You miss the old friends you have not seen for years
Some of them still live in the Hometown far away
And like you the years too have left them looking gray
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Today as I walked in the park in the rain
I thought of old fields of my past once again
In the drizzling rain birds chirped on the hedgerow
Near where the stream bank high to the river did flow.
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In old Claraghatlea where I was born and raised
I grew to love Nature and by her beauty was amazed
The dipper with breast white as snow and mostly darkish brown
Sang in the stream a mile west of Millstreet Town
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From Baxters Land I may be a long drive away
But in my flights of fancy I am back there today
And the magpie he pipes from his silvery bill
And the gray roos through the bracken do bound up the hill
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The songs of the old poet I remember from the Land of the gray hooded crow
A man who had seen many Seasons and of Nature's ways much he did know
His rhymes had far more depth in them than jingles and his words with me do remain
And his songs in my heart are singing they take me to past times again.
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Back there in the fields by the old stream I daydreamed I would be a poet
That I would become very famous a literary person of note
But daydreams as we know are daydreams and daydreams do seldom come true
And life it has formed the habit of giving us what we are due.
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In the nineteen sixties changing times in Ireland became a cultural loss
The Irish Travelers no longer parked their horse drawn Romany vans at the Shannaknock Cross
Before the March and the September Millstreet Town horse fair
Back when there was not any gray in my hair
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A long way from here to the far away town
Where the narrow road by the mountains does wind up and down
Where no factory smoke is to be seen in the sky
And the big dark brown weerloos do call as they fly
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In fancy i see Clara in fogs of rain
And i hear the frogs croak in the watery drain
And i see Finnow bank high in flood waters of brown
Flowing bank high in the old fields close to Millstreet Town
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I was never much use at Gaelic Football
And at Hurling and Soccer i was of little or no use at all
And at running i always was well off of the pace
In any race i never finished in a place
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A changed Country Ireland the Ireland of today
Since the young Jeoffrey O' Sullivan traveled with his mother and siblings by donkey cart to Tubrid in May
The spring well of devotion near the Town of Millstreet
A short walk through Matty Owens bog to where the rivers do meet
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Perhaps i will never see Clara again
And hear the birds sing in the wind and the rain
When Spring in the old fields is spreading her green
And bluebells are blooming on ditch of the bohreen
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He came to Melbourne in his late teens at the threshold of his prime
Forty two years in Australia that does seem a long time
Mick Kelleher is a young grandfather but time does not stand still
It has been awhile he will tell you since he last climbed Clara Hill
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Good memories of the past we like to retain and from the mind them do not wish to sever
But the past as we know is in the past and in the past forever
But some like to stay in the past they do fear the tomorrow
From happier times they have lived through some mind happiness they borrow
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The cattle in the farm shed bellowing for silage or hay
On a cold and wet dawn by the hills far away
The silent fields cloaked in the fog damp and gray
On a wintery start to a December day,
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Their sort often honoured in story and song
Those men who worked for Cunningham and Kelleher on the pipeline in Buninyong
Back in the late eighties a long time ago
Since then time on them has become their foe
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A pretty looking woman in her mid fifties maybe
One i had not seen before quite a stranger to me
With shoulder length wavy hair dyed blond for to disguise her gray
Smiled at me in passing and bid me good day
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Our memories will die with us when life from us has gone
And though some may remember us life as usual will go on
This is how it is and it was and how it will always be
The one who swings the scythe of death is greater far than you or me
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On my flights of fancy i walk up and down
The familiar sidewalks of old Millstreet Town
A gem by the mountains that is known far and wide
Beyond the borders of Duhallow's green countryside
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Only memories of what was with me does remain
And perhaps i will never see Clara again
Or stand on it's slopes on an evening in July
Above me the lark singing in the gray sky
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I logged trees by Mushera when the hills wore hats of snow
And the cold winds of February up the high ground did blow
Then in my late thirties time becoming my foe
But that is going back twenty five years ago
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I was born and raised in Claraghatlea to Millstreet Town near
In distance thousands of sky miles north of here
Where to many today mine would be a stranger's face
Most migrants become strangers in their first home-place
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When memories come to you of the long gone years
Do you have to struggle for to contain the tears
That bubbles within you and yearns to flow
For faces and places that you used to know
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Fond memories of Birdsland with me does remain
And often in fancy i walk around the lakes again
With black and white Jedder my deceased canine friend
I will remember her till my own life's journey will end
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The memories remain with me of the places i have been
And the people i have met and the beauty i have seen
We physically age every year past our prime
But the best of good memories live on in time
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In my memory i can scent the new mowed hay
And i can hear and see the robin on a warm Summer's day
Singing on a high branch of a sunlit birch tree
And Nature in bloom everywhere around me
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Financially wise i have never done well
And of adventures i do not have many stories to tell
But i have heard the brown lark singing in the gray sky
As i eat whortleberries on Clara on an evening in July
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