Sun slips behind a cloud
morning dewy coldness
envelopes my ankles
above the grassy green
I’m taken back to Eire
Where white dots are sheep
on MacGillycuddy’s Reek
Salty spray and chilly fog
mix and move
up the sward of green
Spring tempest
shoves gulls and rooks
across canvass of heavy surf
in Dingle Bay.
Time and place
Past and present
Again, a heavy sigh –
another tune for Ireland.
Michael
Cheer up, Mike! At least St. Pat’s is nearly here.
Sigh…
Rob
That’s a nice thought and yes it’s a fine sunny morning here in the Emerald Isle and I’m looking out my office window across a green field with lots of little sculptured cowpats! No gulls but there’s the odd rook flying out.
Sward of brown?
One thing I miss about Dear Old Erin is the constant companionship of the gentle bovine.
Rob
Flutered wrote:
there’s the odd rook flying out.
Thanks. I knew they weren’t crows, but I didn’t know what they were called.
Rob wrote:
One thing I miss about Dear Old Erin is the constant companionship of the gentle bovine.
My wife’s parents raise cattle outside Limerick, and during this trip, I managed to befriend one of the creatures one morning out behind the house. She greeted me with warm eyes and a splat of pat upon the cement paddock.
“Lovely,” I told her. “Thank you for that.”
A lovely mixture of smells mixing together there. The silage, the dung and the peat smoke fluttered about.
I had a great trip this year. I visited Tony, a C&F-er, in Tralee, and played a few tunes with him accompanying me on piano; traveled to Cork City, Kilkenny, Dingle and Glennbeigh in search of pottery connections and enjoyed experiencing Spring in Ireland for the first time. I played a few tunes for Aunt Eiiti and Uncle Finbar in Cobh, outside Cork City, and Finbar told me a story of being stranded off the coast of Florida in a freighter, strapped to a chair next to the radio. The ship kept its bow pointed into the storm for three days as Finbar maintained contact with Florida, and later the crew received a letter of commendation from the U.S. government for their assistance. I learned a couple of new phrases, one from Aunt Etti: “Pardon me for cutting across ye (interrupting)” and one from my wife’s brother, Mike: “He was so lazy, if there was work in bed, he’d sleep on the floor.” I didn’t make it to any sessions, but we did manage to attend a class on set dancing in Cappamore, where we met the mother of an Irish lad who just recently married a friend of mine from Greensboro, NC, who was happening to be playing with her band, “The Carolina Chocolate Drops,” in Dublin the night before we left. My last afternoon Ireland, I drove to Glennbeigh to meet a mold maker, got there early and took a tiny road to the right up the side of a steep hill. There was just enough room for one vehicle and as I drove up with my window down, I passed a farmer piling silage into his tiny metal wheelbarrow. He pulled the one-wheeled cart to the side so I could pass.
“Good Day,” he said with a smile.
I think the trip will help focus my playing around St. Pat’s Day this year. Hopefully, my next trip will be a more extended trip, traveling the western coast of Ireland selling pottery that I’ve created at the National Sculpture Factory in Cork City, where artists can rent space and use the facility to work for up to a year.
Michael
Holler next time you’re traveling through Kentucky. I’ll hook you up. They’re all just starting to calve and the little guys are positively frolicsome in the March wind. 
(Let’s hope the cowpats don’t follow suit)
frolicsome cowpats? now is just wrong!.. and scary…
be well,
jim
naw, the cow pats just lay there…it’s the calves that frolic. 
If you pat the cows just right, they’ll frolic too! This is all far too bucolic!
However, brings to mind two things -
first, the last verse of a song (The Saucy Sailor Lad), thus:
I am frolicsome, I am easy,
Good tempered and free;
And I don’t give a single pin, my boys,
What the world thinks of me.
second, a tune I wrote a few years back entitled Yr Anner Gorniog which is Welsh for The Horny Heifer (well, “horned”, really) which reminded me in its figures of the way young cattle will mount each other regardless of gender… (Odd, what a tune can conjure up!)
I posted a clip including it here on the Clips Thread last Autumn, and here’s the abc.
X:9
T:Yr Anner Gorniog/The Horny Heifer
R:Jig
C:Jem Hammond (5/10/2002)
N:Written to provide a new 48 bar jig in a Welsh idiom for use with Welsh
N:dances/dancers
N:Guitar chords by Meri Lawes
O:Wales
Z:Jem Hammond 22/2/2006
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:DIon
“A”~e3 efd | cdB A2G | "D"FAd "G"GBe | "A"cea "D"fed | “A”~e3 efd | cdB
A2B | "D"AGF "G"Ged | "A"cBc "D"d3 
|: "A"cde ecA | "D"fdA "A"ecA | "D"FGA "Bm"Bdf | "Em"edc "(D)"dcB | "A"c
de ecA |“D” FED FGA | "Em"Eed Ged |"A"cBc "D"d3
|: "A"e2d ecA | "Bm"f2e fdA | "C#m"g2e "(D)"fga | "Em"efd cBA | "A"e2d e
cA | "Bm"fdA gec | "C#m"AGF "(D)"Ged |“A” cBc "D"d3 :|]
Well, between the wind gusts and the rain today, I’m thinking I did spy a flying pie or two – though it could have just been an exceptionally bedraggled hen, poor things.
By midafternoon, even the calves had given up and taken shelter behind their mothers who in turn clustered on the lee sides of round bales (basically haystacks, only rolled and tightly packed).
Ah, March.
Now the wind has slowed but the rain’s switching over to snow.
Did I say “Ah, March” yet? 
OK, back to the previous discussion; sorry about the ramble. Off to throw some more hay …
“I never saw a flying cow,
I never thought I’d see one,
But I can tell you, here and now,
I’d rather see than be one.”
A. Nonymous
Well, you wouldn’t be too far off with crows - that’s what your average farmer round here would call them - ‘them blasted crows’!