I Came From The Place

I came from the place where the rank rushes grow
Where Cails and Finnow meet and together they flow
On to the Blackwater en route to the sea
The place I was raised in is still home to me.

Where I grew to love Nature when I was a boy
And a walk by the river I used to enjoy
On Spring evenings when the brown trout were leaping for fly
And the nesting birds piped on the hedgerows nearby.

Where the familiar song of the dipper I first got to know
The dark brown river bird with breast white as the snow
That in the depths of Winter when the winds blow chill
Lay white on the rugged face of Clara hill.

The place where I daydreamed I might be a poet
Though no such a thing for me as literary note
Still of Nature's beauty I do love to sing
Such pleasure to me down the years she did bring.

A man from the place of the rook and grey crow
So little of Nature's ways I know that I know
Where the Cails near Liscreagh flows into the Finnow
But the past is the past we must live in the now.