Poems and prayers and promises

My old friend Lola has connected me with a friend of hers who plans to visit Ireland next year. Her friend is a poet and I’ve become increasingly aware of how prevalent poetry is in life here. I’ve recently mentioned the lecture by Fintan O’Toole dedicated to Northern Irish poet John Hewitt. Then there were the poems read at the lecture about trees last weekend. And yesterday I was reading the brochure about a series of events tied to the Weeping Window installation. Here’s one:
“In each of Michael Longley’s eleven poetry collections he has written about the First World War and, in particular, his father’s experience of it as a boy soldier. He will read and talk about those poems, as well as sharing work by some of the combatants.” I will endeavour to go to that. Some time in the distant past I wrote about the NPR show On Belief being taped here doing an interview with Longley. It was a wonderful evening.

My title above is from a John Denver song that I loved growing up. I thought Denver was a wonderful poet. In this song, he spoke of sitting around the fire with friends and “my old lady" talking of “poems and prayers and promises, and things that we believe it. How sweet it is to love someone, how right it is to care. How long it’s been since yesterday. What about tomorrow? What about our dreams and all the memories we share?” His songs stayed with me through adolescence and my 20s. When I think of them now I just have a warm feeling, like remembering a lost loved one. I remember hearing Aye Calypso on the radio while driving a year or so ago and I started crying. I think I wrote a post about it, sharing lyrics that conveyed his love and passion for the natural world and his distress over its abuse.
10-19