Colours of the North

 

 

 

Images repeat through my mind like songs
sung in old, dark beamed bars where toucans

deck cream coloured stones.  Here are lakes;

misted mountains; glimmer of after rain;

snatches of rainbows. Yet Ireland’s North
seems a patchwork of Union Jacks and Tricolours.
The green as natural as leaves and grass, to me,
the red like blood on Belfast and Derry streets.

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

wonderful image making ////dana

[Donald Meikle]

To paint with words is sometimes easy, to paint with feelings? It takes a soft full brush that shows the pulse

[Ed Hart]

You and Sel, heart and soul in tune with a land, and monitors of its ticking time, historians of now, have in your blood a country, a land we anemic and Hollywood soaked Americans do not know...

[Sel Whiteley]

What a powerful poem. In a truly admirable economy of words you're able to capture the scenes of the North and to juxtapose the beauty and the horror, the natural Republicanism and the oppressive, often violent, Loyalism. Beautiful.