Just Reminiscing

'Tis that time of year when nesting birds are singing and the hawthorns are cloaked in their fragile white flowers
And the raindrops on the grass in the sunshine are sparkling and the Landscape looking greener after a recent shower
Of drizzly Spring rain and the dipper is singing his familiar song in the old mountain rill
That babbles it's way downland towards the big river along by the hedgerow in the field by the hill.

O'er the fields of Cloghoula the skylark is carolling and Nature's wild flowers in their billions are now in full bloom
In the fields and by ditches and hedges and the grassy margins by the road out of Millstreet that leads to Macroom
On a leafy birch tree his orange coloured breast puffed up the robin sings his territorial song
As a warning to his own kind he proclaims his borders this acre to him and his partner belong.

Nineteen Springs have passed since I've seen that old Parish and since a new generation into adults have grown
Perhaps there now I would be seen as a stranger even by those who once see me as one of their own
But Mother Nature lives on she is an immortal though people like the Seasons they come and they go
And still the old Finnow his old song he is singing as on through the fields by Millstreet Town he flow.

Above the old hill of Clara in Millstreet in Duhallow I first heard the lark carolling in the sky
On a sunday morning in May something I still remember he seemed to shrink to a small speck as upwards he did fly
I am just reminiscing of a life that I once knew but that in the past and the past it is gone
And songbirds now sing in the woods and on the hedgerows and life without me in the old Parish goes on.