I Don't Talk To Others

I don't talk to others of my boyhood experiences though sometimes in paper I do write them down
When I was a young lad of the fifties and by my old home near Millstreet Town
In mid May in green old Duhallow the hawthorns were cloaked in blooms white as snow
And in the rank grass by the hedgerows the male pheasants did cuck and crow..

I learned to respect Mother Nature and the names of some of her wild creatures I got to know
The brown trout for flies they were jumping in pools where Finnow waters flow
And skylark above the rank rushes looked like a speck in the grey sky
His pleasant song one could hear plainly though out of sight the bird did fly.

The male chaffinch sang on the alder his partner on her nest nearby
Their young would be fully fledged by mid June and well able to fly by July
What I talk about to some doesn't seem important their interests one might say elsewhere
And such people could not tell you the difference between a rabbit and a hare.

I don't talk to others of my young years my stories them would not interest
I would not bore them with the story of how the blackbirds build their nest
Or of how the sparrows under the house eaves make their nests of feathers and hay
But if all were alike life would be boring and each to their own as they say.

I don't talk to others about Nature for talk of Nature would them only bore
They don't want to hear how in early spring the swallows leave a distant shore
For to return to the place they were born in that does not interest them at all
So stories of my young years and Nature to others I do not recall.