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After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Bellaghy, Castledawson, Death and dying, Dennis O'Driscoll, Derry, Dispatch from the Diaspora, FInal wishes, Funeral, Grieving, Keeping Going, Loss, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Postscript, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
P.S. Seamus Heaney and a Grave Situation
When I returned to Bellaghy this summer, I visited Seamus Heaney's grave again. This time, a simple wooden cross stood in the dirt. This time, I was a widow, changed and contemplative, convinced that cosmic strings keep us connected. This time, I wondered about the spiritual space in which both men might move. Where are they?
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Language of Cancer, Leontia Flynn, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood
the lovely uselessness of poetry
For World Poetry Day 2015. The freedom and the lovely uselessness of poetry is its whole point. ~ Leontia Flynn My parents were raised in rural County Derry, Heaney country, where they learned to be thrifty and resourceful, and also – when all else failed – to believe in the mystical powers of “folk healers,” those individuals uniquely gifted with…
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Act Two, Castledawson, Family, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Rites of passage, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
my mother’s day dance
In Ireland, it is Mother’s Day. In Arizona, it is just another Sunday that finds me thinking about my mother – ma – in Castledawson, County Derry, a great armful of sheets rescued from the clothes-line before the rain begins to fall. Then, the folding, a precise ritual, and my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation to the next.…
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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Blackberry Picking, Clearances, Family, Feminism, nikki giovanni, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Poetry, removing training wheels, Rites of passage, Rituals, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Themes of childhood, Time, Wheels within Wheels
a year since you left us ~ noli timere
“Bicycles: because love requires trust and balance.” NIKKI GIOVANNI “The first grip I ever got on things Was when I learnt the art of pedalling (By hand) a bike turned upside down, and drove Its back wheel preternaturally fast.” ~ from Wheels within Wheels by SEAMUS HEANEY Ah, Seamus, I sometimes think you could have scored my life with your…
