Category Archives: memories

My Friend Fionnuala

On a dark day some years ago now I asked my friend Fionnuala to pray for me and my family who were suffering from the effects of alcohol addiction. She laughed. “Well now,” she said,” I’m not great at the praying but I could clean my cooker for you. “I hate cleaning the cooker,” she continued. “I could offer that up.”
Domestic violence, child sexual abuse and abuse of the elderly are commonplace.
Closed in together as families are now is like a tinder box waiting to ignited or a pressure cooker waiting to explode.
Action speaks louder than words, they say.
If praying words is not your thing, could I ask you to tackle a chore or task you have been putting off and offer it up that the hands and feet that abuse be stilled this Easter Day.
Gemma Hill April 2020

THE LAST BREATH

Six months ago my husband died from pneumonia. For 6 days and 6 nights he fought for every breath.
At the dawn of a new day he drew his last breath. It was a Tuesday. We were all there with him.
Someone somewhere is dying alone today.
I ask at some time each day would you take a quiet, calm breath and offer it to someone who is dying breathless without family and friends.
Your breath and your thoughts will be there with them. They will not die alone.
Gemma Hill

Lazy Snow

image courtesy of Joe Canning
We peer from behind our window blinds
Lazy snow falling soft and slow
Like individual exquisite works of design
Just when we thought it was safe to forecast
The days are stretching
It nearly spring
Lazy snow soft and slow
Like small individual exquisite works of design
Bites us on the ass
And smiles
A wee present of snow and slippery ice
To let the child in you escape
Embrace the memories of the times
With socks for gloves
And feet like blocks of ice you dragged the sledge
Over the glittering ground
And fought your fear as you took your turn
G C Hill©

J is for joy of new decade new year
A is for always being thankful for what I hold dear
N is for nourishment for my soul from good people I meet
U is for unfriending those that bring me pain and grief
A is for acceptance of things  I cannot change
R is for risk-taking and living through my  fears
Y is for yielding to the 365 days to come and living and cherishing each and every one
GC Hill 2020©

2020

The final days of December dawn
2019

Called in the time
Hurried us towards the finish line
When we wanted to linger cling on
To Life in all its imperfect forms

Dark December days at last
Give way slowly to January light
Stretched further to lighten the dark
The light at tunnel end not yet in sight
But Hope eternal will survive

When one door closes
Open your eyes
Open your heart
To the open threshold yet to come
GC Hill 2019 ©

Fashionable Times

The Singer sewing machine hummed
Sets free the toil of the spinning wheel
Then the sixties ushered in the factories girls.
Outfits for every contingency
Psychedelic colours and loud designs

Now bless my soul it steals my sight
Clothes piled like works of art
Abseiling from chairs like birds in flight
Or hanging rejected
Shop mannequins on the backs of doors
Buyer’s remorse
Never worn

Along with the Botox and fake tan
A new outfit every turn round
No best kept for Sunday prayer
And the lament on an invitation out
“There’s not a stitch in the wardrobe to wear.”
And that is just the men!

God be with the days I say
When folks had fever clothes to wear
And fewer flimsy pieces of tartles to
Dance and fling themselves about
Outrageous attention-seeking scraps of underwear
As the rotary does a circle of the yard
The viewing public to entertain
GC Hill ©

The Forge

  Poem and image  taken from  A Treasure of Irish Verse (2002 – 2007 – 2012)
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

TO WALK on THE HILL OF CROGHAN

credit to Harry walking Croghan Hill Co Donegal

To walk the hill of Croghan
Is a childhood dream of old
Tis said its purple heather
A fairy playground to behold
And far below
The Birdstown Lane
And my grandfather’s two green fields
And the cottage by burndale stream
Trundling merrily to the Deele
It’s a strange thing
This call in me
To sit below the cairn
That dominates the hill
And dream of past
Invaders
Buried deep below its soil
the hand of history
Inprinted in the mystery
Of this place

With childhood long gone
I still think to walk upon
Some day I will
And still the yearning
That burns within my soul
Gemma Hill © 2019

Battle hardened

Image courtesy via internet

The scars of battle and conflict make us territorial
Clings to us like an invisible second skin
Makes us fearful and suspicious
Of those we perceive to be
Different from ourselves
Violence and injustice against us narrows
Our vision and blind us
The experiences of our past
Superimposes themselves on
Our present and steal away
Our future
Gemma Hill June 2019 ©

Can You Hear: By Pheme Glass

Can you hear the drumming?
Fast drumming
Marching music

Can you hear that Celidh band?
Feet tapping
Dancing music

Can you hear that?
Marching and dancing
Down the street
Toa single beat

The sun is shining
And St Patrick is smiling

This poem by Pheme Glass , Omagh,  was first published in  Shared Space A collection of Poetry 2012