The Firebreak Files #15

Today is the 23rd anniversary of my lovely Mum's death. So here is my favourite pic of her, taken by her sister, I think, in one of the summers of the later 1940s, when they were walking together on Arran:

And here is the poem which I discovered while browsing the shelves of a bookshop in Ireland the summer after she died, and which always reminds me of this picture. And her:

"I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday -
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle - '
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life -
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us - eternally"

Patrick Kavagnah  'In Memory of My Mother'