A poem for your wedding day

…

Reminders memories

here then now

sounds made by children’s feet

legacies you say well there are many

taking you out at night time

a small child walking through mountain fields

showing you path lines walkways

closed eyes, eyes askance to scan

what lies behind beyond

one eye closed one eye opened

close the other one open again

examine the change of shape

from one to the other and then

walking in darkness not being afraid

a way of looking a way of seeing

beyond and much more

listening to sound not just words

knowing the name of things

a flowers name told in a story

plants trees flowers fields

rocks hills and mountains meaning

and the magic returns.

…

©robcullen15092021

…

Teaching a child to see in the dark is the first lesson in seeing that there is so much more to learn about the world that surrounds us. And not be afraid, be determined and fearless. Seeing in the dark is the first step.

…

…

Waking up long ago

…

My father wasn’t what you would call

in today’s patois a woke man

but he had his moments all the same

…

my father would talk about Sir Walter Raleigh,

or Rowley, with some disdain

another plantation owner

…

who’d taken over Irish estates and lands,

it came as a surprise to find Ireland once called

by the name “Isle of the Woods”

…

and the desecration paid out by the Elizabethans

of the destruction of all the green forests

of all the woods throughout Ireland’s lands

…

The payment for resistance to colonialism

brutality, enslavement and plantations

people woke up to some things long ago

but how the story was told depended

on whether you were rich or poor

had the money or the power or still do not.

…

“And we have been silenced, our history lost words

and our future is silent and will never be told.

Silenced from the hour, silenced from all our days.

Silenced from the years, silenced from all that might have been.”

…

Final stanza from my poem “Bitter Limp Fruit” as a response to The Aberfan Disaster published in Resistance Poetry at an earlier date with a similar theme that working class history and colonial history are not taught in our schools and are edited out. Working class and colonial history chime with one another. in this way.

…

©robcullen25102021