Tag Archives: Memories

St. Joseph’s

A new poem remembering my school days at St. Joseph’s, Carrickmacross

St. Joseph’s

If I was to play
a melody

of childhood songs
it would not place me

in the benches. The school
bells sound from the hill
but other children follow them
and there is no chalk dust in the air.

There is a little boy
sitting on the wall

but my mother is not slipping
him buttered mariettas
through the gap.

There are no short pants
or marbles rolling in the clay
as the days draw their curtains down.

I cannot smell the polish
as my feet paced the corridor
towards the magic organ,

The Christmas tunes
from the Master’s fingers are gone

like yesterday’s breaths.

If I was to play a melody
it would reach out to the dead

and plead for another final day
to tease, scream, sing and cry

and when the spell would die
that I would hold tighter

Like the daisy in my clasped hand.