Poetry Essay - Geranium Pots and Keys and One Poem by Margaret Kiernan

 

Voice for the Wolf

-First person POV

 

Desolation, measured odds

wind cries through ravines

spring floods gain impetus, echo

to the city markets

Eco banter

with Hedge funds.

 

Hunted fleeces long-ago

when men got mine put down

 our odds of survival

were estimated

 now rising heat and melted floes

leave out consent.

They are afraid to wear my coat.

 

Going higher above the canopy

to my abode

I contemplate

centuries of extinction

it runs back to now.

Survive to fail is not my call

fur traders have gone home

 to their Gods

yet the axe persists.

It is a pen.

 

Whooshing eagles fly up mountains

wavering in flight

like weary commuters going home

their feathered wings carry

above the wrung-out

sedition of governments

 uncoordinated’

with natures choirs.

Essay Poetry

Geranium Pots and Keys

by Margaret Kiernan

 

Those days long gone of un-locked front doors and keys left beneath the Geranium pots are now almost forgot. People would say they never happened. Not in their country anyhow. They hadn’t a front door.

As children we did call unannounced to say howdy to our unrelated Grandmothers at their houses. We brought them news. Asked questions. Were noisy too.

Those days before families took their aged and placed them with strangers. Taken out and placed in residential uncaring homes. No outsiders allowed in to mingle without a hullabaloo of paperwork to say who you are, checks and balances or police permit requirements. Are they locked in or are we locked out? Can we get her out, that lady that sits forlorn beside the window and looks at walkers move along the river path? Have her closer?

Remember the age of Myths and Druids. Living out silence into grey stone walls. When people knew God from within. The memory of knowing and its peace. Then bushes thrived, wedged into rocky soil. Beauty may have started with nature, or not. Humankind being part of it, chipped into the balance, arrived at Power, while ethics was gone on a sabbatical to somewhere. Perhaps loaned out. Tensions on shifting grounds.

That piece of land with road frontage became the demand. Raged about in brown envelopes and in the road-train to Bally-go-lightly. Sheltered in the Corporate Tents.

Where had beauty gone, why did it leave, now it was all curlicues, that bitter turned down mouth without a smile. Politicians and small-bit players  standing hours in the  rain, queue to meet the dead, at least say hello to the next of kin.

In 2019’ the plague arrived to assist the career politicians, for then they could leave condolences on- line, keep the two-metre distance, no handshakes. Before the vaccination card show-down. Before the leak of mica from cement. Keep that distance, things are tumbling down.

History comes in layers, colour coded to separate. Remembering remains a faulty thing. What gets left out, or what’s put in?

Days of climate retribution have arrived. Collaboration and mutual assistance are the currency of survival. Butter mountains will drop away, there will be those that say they never were such mountains. Butter found in ancient bogs is well documented.

Housing estates on water-planes ought not be allowed those directives are now saying. Stamped in official legalese and twenty- seven E U  stars. The bogs are to be preserved. Water must find its own level.

The sun will allow us warm through. Storytellers will speak their truths. Glimpse the dawn and rest our elbows upon a gate, gaze at pastures full of flowers. Take time to live, reflect on who we are. The resistance has passed. Now the mood is let us get to the task. The beat of the Heart never more pro-found.

 

Margaret Kiernan is an Irish author and a Best of The Net Nominee for Creative Non-Fiction Award, 2021 and, 2022. She writes fiction, creative non-fiction, essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in hard back, in e-book and, on-line, also, in literary journals and magazines. She has multiple short stories and poems in anthology collections and cultural publications.

The Arts Council of Ireland awarded her a Professional Development Bursary, with Westmeath County Council Arts Office, 2021.

The following lists the places she is published in:

 

Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review.

The Galway Review, Wildfire Words/Frosted Fire, The Irish Literary Times,

Tim Saunders Publishing, Black-lion Press/Cathal Bùi/Belcoo Poet,

The Blue Nib Literary Journal, Writing In a Woman’s Voice Journal.

Wilderness House Literary Review and Press.

Pendemic.ie Journal-covid nineteen collection,- archived at University College Dublin.

Poet-Head.Wordpress.com.( Collection in Women Poet’s in Ireland, Live archive at The National Library of Ireland Dublin 2 and at University College Dublin, Bellfield, Dublin )  

The Write Life Literary Magazine, Arc Magazine. India, Outlookindia.com,

Red Fern Review. Civic Leicester poetry, Corncrake Literary Magazine.

The Burrow Literary Journal & publishing press, Brave  New World,

Visual Verse, Bath Flash Fiction, Dragonfly Haiku Poetry Journal.

The Daily Haiku, Sand Journal Magazine, Vox Galvia, Galway Advertiser broadsheet.

A New Ulster, Literary Press.

 

Margaret writes with Over the Edge on Thursdays advanced poetry workshop/reading group at Galway Arts Centre. Facilitated by Mr Kevin Higgins, Poet.

She is a member of Ox Mountain Poets, Sligo.

She is listed in the Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020.

She holds a Degree in Arts in Humanities in Advocacy from Sligo Institute of Technology.

An International Degree in Business Management, from Sheffield University and Technological University of the Shannon.

Her background is in Advocacy in Human and Social Rights. She is a Democracy activist.

Margaret has completed courses and workshops in writing, for prose and poetry. Tutors in poetry include,

Annemarie Ni Churainn, Martin Dyer, Colm Keegan, Monica Corish, Moyra Donaldson, Anne McMaster, Noel Monahan (Master Series), Kevin Higgins, Dr Arthur Broomfield.

Tutors in prose includes, Jan Carson, Claire Allan, Anne McMaster, Conor Kostick, Carlo Gebler, Malacai O’Doherty, Lynda Kirby, Ciara Doorley and, Susan Millar Dumars.

Margaret has four grown-up children. She lives in Westmeath with her dog Molly.

She paints in Watercolours and acrylics and has the following interests. Nature, philosophy, astrology, gardening, music, spirituality, archaeology, and historical heritage.

Two Creative Non-Fiction Essays by Margaret Kiernan

 

Essay-on- Love - Creative Non-Fiction

 

As I walk down the road I’m thinking about those Greeks, and their eight types of love.

I remember too that  I am of another age. Less scoped, freer.

One thing I agree with them, love is high frequency, not ever low. Traditional people may have viewed it as a one -on-one feeling state, without resistance.

I kick a stray stone off the road. Watch it lodge in a bunch of dead grasses. Alone, without any resistance. It is.

I watch a Kingfisher dip and dive from the blackthorn tree beside the staid canal. Flashing blue colour, intent on catching its supper.

Love is a state of being. Heart full in flow, receiving and giving.

Lived fully it will arrive at joy. I see it in the battered blue metal jug once used to fill blue-stone mix, into a copper drum. I watch it in Ox-eye daisies weaving in the sun haze

I hear it in the music of Yo-Yo Ma. Or a trumpet player in a jazz bar. It catches in my throat breathless, as I fight with tears that want to fall bitter-sweet.

Or a sunset spreading liquid gold, letting go the light, yearning, I swallow it too.

Or Venus rising as dusk evens-out the bare spots of land, blending.

If hate is hell surely love is Heaven.

Perceptions of Peace - Creative Non-Fiction Essay

New-Earth

 

What possibilities exist to share our planet more lovingly, and with each other?

The man on the street corner might say anything is possible. And it is true to say, things are possible, something always works. Does it work for every man and woman in humankind? There was a time perhaps, when it did. Before the before.

The binary highway of Left and Right thinking became established and used to organise society. A Colonial organiser’s dream. A perception of Otherness was created.

Elitism arrived as an aspect of reactionary ideology and, autocracy.

There had been the highway of ancient knowing, food and health knowledge, flora and fauna, original caretakers, oral truths and storytelling with myths, mutual governance. Solace, and learned solutions. Navigation by original caretakers. Indigenous sciences. Voiced for the tribe. By the tribe, the children were considered and protected. No guardian ad. litem needed.

The water tribes of Ecuador had enough savvy to keep the water flowing cleanly. But time brings change, transforms un-thought of situations and things. Before a moth becomes a butterfly, it is happy- out, I guess. It doesn’t know it will become an exotic butterfly.

Then international global autocratic organisations began to behave and operate like owners of the planet. Texaco came to south America, amongst other places. Other businesses arrived there too. Then  the voice of the people was not listened to and, eco-disasters that were beyond  horrific nightmares, happened.

There were river sludges, the trees cried, and natives died. But that is fore- telling. I must return to the past. Back to the calendar of the middle eighteen hundred.

That time, a change came. Selected families and oriented persons decided to create industries on a big scale. It coincided with worldwide white ascendency.

The natural fear of difference may have contributed. To a them and us division, or not. A colonial fascism on a binary path.

Elitism triumphed, and a new order created to last hundreds of years. Families became super-rich and beheld a sense of entitlement.

Powerful because of their cash. They could influence world events, politics, kings and queens, stock-markets trading, land-prices, territories, and outer space.

Even life?

Fortunes made by the few and shipped out.

Over time the system would become a neo-liberal arena with innovative technology and power. Capitalism in a spirit of fascism where trade unions tamed or bought out. The perception of “otherness” remaining, you were either an ally or a threat.

At the turn if the twenty first century there were rumbles of change in society. People on the street had appeared to have arrived at a knowing of discrepancies in the world. Clear eyed seeing of a worldwide ascendency of white nationalism and ultra-right-wing movements. A global financial collapse. Fascism was again evident and renewed. Polarity created a very heavy energy among the peoples, and they spoke about it. On the world-wide web, in the street and elsewhere.

Attitudes and behaviours were informing a different type of person. Who were these waking people? In the morning who was the Self they met. Did they love falling apple blossoms or horseradish sauce. Did Yo-Yo Ma fill a void?

They spoke of galactic beings and native sciences. The endless possibilities for solutions in health, education and, in the language of spirit, art, earth society. No business models, just selves and souls getting on together. Solace. Believing you are me and I am you.

No borders and therefore no passports. No dominant religions. The ecology of the earth and the individual being the same thing. Spirit and soul. Consciousness.

A living wage for each person. A home and time to talk to the trees and lie on the ground, earthing. Ancient places and sacred sites gathering the people to watch the stars. To the music of babbling brooks, the birds will sing. All in harmony of pulsing earth life.

To speak to the Venus star in a dew drenched morning and wait for her reply.

A famous man once said, “I have a dream.”

That a dream is sweet to hold. To bring alive.

Our dreaming so precious we dare to visualise. I have a dream of that peace too,

the endless springtime of hope giving way to summer.

Margaret Kiernan - nominated for Best of the Net in 2021, writes fiction, non-fiction essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in e-book, in anthology collections, and literary journals and magazines - including, Black-lion Press, Pendemic.ie journal-C19 collection , archived at University College Dublin, The Blue Nib Lit - Journal, The Write Life Magazine, Unity Global Festival, Vox Galvia at the Galway Advertiser, A New Ulster Literary Press, The Burrow Lit. Journal, Poet-Head.Wordpress.com, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Galway Review and The Irish Canadian Cultural Newsmagazine, New Brunswick.

She writes with Over the Edge, Thursday writing/reading group at Galway Arts Centre, and, Ox Mountain Poets, Sligo. She is listed in the Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020. She holds several Educational qualifications, Including a Degree in Arts in Humanities, from Sligo IT.

Her background is in Advocacy in Human and Social Rights. Margaret has completed numerous courses and workshops in writing, for prose and poetry.

Margaret has four grown-up children. She lives in Westmeath with her dog Molly. She is a landscape painter. Is into Nature, walking, gardening, music, and heritage. She is working towards a First collection in Poetry.

Social Media-

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