With only a month of lessons to go, the academic year is drawing to an end. You can smell the promise of summer in the air. It’s the season of skirts and sunburns, late night laughter and Martinis on the terraces. You can’t escape it.
Yet time seems to have come to a standstill. I’m stuck in the stifling concrete heat when all I want is to take the first train out of town and go gambol in the grass.
Sometimes the more you walk, the further the destination seems to be. Or is it just me?

http://justtheash.tumblr.com

Simple words are worthy signs
Of inners worlds and outer planes
And may even hold some sway
Over smooth eyes and heavy sighs,
Or at least that's what they say.
But when you weep and weave and wail
When you live and grieve and love
When there's no wind in your your sail
Words will fail

Morning. She gets up.
The shutters paint
Her face a zebra.
The curtains whisper:
It's a grey day, not a bad day,
So she sips her tea with a sigh,
A smile and a cigarette.

Songful, Soulful, Sorrowful Ireland

Some new pictures on my Flickr feed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/groovyshamrock

tonight the sky is blushing
I wonder who she loves
the sulking city below
always blue, never boring
or the maudlin mountains
their purple peaks ever in the clouds
perhaps the river and her silver circlets
falling over her knolls and groves
maybe she blushes from seeing you
shine with a brighter light

the stream

Barefoot on the banks of a stream I once knew long ago, I stared at the water, dark and blue below. What I was looking for - my face, my faith - I do not know. All I found was a bucket, brown weeds and a bottle without a message, so I slowly dipped a toe into the dew, stirring the cool calmness into a song of circlets. The stream called for my whole body. 'Swallow me' I said and I slipped naked into her bed. 'Swallow me', but she would not. She proved to be shallow.