Katie

The fields by the Blackwater I see them every day
And I hear the bullfinch piping on hedgerow far away
And cows are out to pasture and orange billed blackbird sing
And swallow from far country has returned with the spring.

The fields by the Blackwater have never looked so green
And bluebell flowers are blooming along the old bohreen
That leads to Katie's cottage she's long past her prime day
Has she been ageing gracefully or does she hide her gray?

The pride of old Duhallow when she was in her prime
But that was in the fifties some fifty years in time
I recall her great beauty for she had beauty rare
Of medium height and slender build blue eyes and raven hair.

She lived with her widowed father on their forty acre farm
And local young men were smitten by her beauty and her charm
But the wanderlust was in her and she answered wander's call
And she farewelled old Duhallow and her friends and dad and all.

Around the disused cottage where she once lived fifty years ago
The grass grown rank, the hedge grown wild and briers and thistles grow
And through fields where she walked as a child the ageless Blackwater flow
And how she now might look and where she now might live I've often wondered so?