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Aine MacAodha
I was was a runner up in the Brian Moore Short Story Contest, and was awarded a
Bursary for The Tyrone Guthrie Artist centre by Omagh District council. I am
currently in the final stages of preparing a first collection of poetry, Whispers
from the Sperrins. I was interviewed by Radio Ulster and BBC TV in relation
to the Raw campaign.
MOTHER I
seek you in the lakes of Tyrone the
less known ones whose beauty remain
unblemished by progress. In
the curling streams at war with
the elements and whose very
existence is threatened by housing
developments. I
look for you as summer coughs up It’s
last songs of the season, I
seek your words in her breath. In
the secrets of motherhood asleep
in the elderly, yearning recall
once again. I
seek it too in the faces of youth in
the songs they sing from the
concrete forests they live in. I
also seek it in me when
dark clouds gather
up a storm. LUNA Losing
shadows that follow from
these troubled acres is
hard going at times. When
it’s them same shadows you
seek to understand what
it all came down to. Three
in the morning brings relief nature
is more calmer and cools to
a creaking lullaby Some
birds sleep sound. The
urban ones blether
through the night. The
moon solemnly gives orders to
orchestrate the night crawlers on
missions. She casts shadows in
dimly lit corners of the globe. She’ll
never be the sun blitzing
the crops, warming the
shadows. But
she’ll always be the catalyst calling
you back to the past.
LONELINESS Loneliness
has a bite. Not
a nibble but
a razor sharp bite. Morning
flounces openly showing
off its tie dyed light. The
hills beyond my window glazed
by the mist blown
in off the Atlantic, fusing
Donegal, Sligo and Tyrone in
a painters paradise of shade. The
starlings argue for space on
the corrugated garage roof, unnerved
by the chatter on the floor-court. They’ve
made a tiny field on the roof green
as the hills. Loneliness
has a bite, razor sharp and
I need it like the views I see. It
calls me back to nature makes
me more aware of the innocence and
beauty of the forgotten. WHISPERINGS
Our
ancient bloodlines are
calling to us interrogating
us with
wisps of insight. They
are turning in
their boggy graves surfaced
over time. They
rise out from small
lakes hidden on
the land. Through
dreams at night
and ponderings of
the daylight, Among
glens and forests, and
from branches of the Thorn
and Elder. From
the anglers rod cast
on rivers. On Salmon longing
for the open seas. In
tales, myths and poetry their
marks will not fade like
snapshots in the sun. Our
lands are piled high
and low deep and wide with
blue prints of a time, when spoken
signals were the headlines. Our
ancestors are turning in
their graves. OAK
LAKE, COUNTY TYRONE It’s
easy to imagine these
scooped out hollows, were
once filled with ice, melting
as the did stamping kettle
holes on the landscape. The
lake waltzes to and fro like
a child mesmerized by
magical stories voiced by
an old teller of tales. Its
edges flanked with an audience of Purple
moss, pink Cranberry flower, and
the burnt Orange of summer gorse, all
paying homage by showiness. A
clump of rushes move slightly, I
think of childhood tales, the
watershee, luring one off to
the silver world of faeries. The
light of the day now slipping ever
so peacefully behind the peaks
of the Sperrins, I shall go now and
take its essence with me, to
sooth my night quests ahead.
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