WORLD NOMADS TRAVEL COMP ENTRY

      "There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner." GK Chesterton.

 We can roam to each and every corner of the globe and find many stark differences but essentially we are all the same. We are life, I am life. I bring it everywhere with me and to everything I do. It courses around my body and keeps me moving forward. I was created as a result of the desire that my parents shared to create life and as a result of life's longing for itself, perhaps. My earliest memories of them both is how hard they both worked in our pub in the Republic of Ireland. It was a place that teemed with life- I’d watch on from behind the counter, still too young to participate fully but always immersed. That place taught me some of life’s earliest and most important lessons- listen to people, be kind to them, be curious, travel far and wide and have as much fun as you possibly can. The years rolled on and life’s ups and downs came and went. I went to college, got a teaching degree and life felt mapped out. Life was safe. I had a loving boyfriend whom I thought I would marry, a pensionable job, a little car and I felt fiercely protected but there was a problem - I was unhappy. I wanted adventure! I had a lot to entice me to stay but I didn’t really want any of it at the time. It was too soon and I was too young. I wanted to be free. In one grand swoop I pulled the rug from under my feet and in what felt like the blinking of an eye I found myself on a one way flight to Sydney… and petrified. I will always remember the beautiful guy sitting beside me, on that my first flight into the unknown. He had just left the wilds of rural Galway (and the only life he'd ever known) to begin a solo adventure in New Zealand, one way ticket also. He looked as nervous as I felt. His strong, tanned arm touched mine as we shared an armrest. It was too close for comfort considering we were perfect strangers but we didn’t readjust. We both needed to feel it. I had to stop myself from lifting his arm and wrapping it around me just to feel that comfort again… We didn’t talk at length- no need.  When we stopped over in Singapore for our connecting flights we hugged for longer than strangers should. “Best of luck with everything, now”, he whispered and walked to his gate. I took a long deep breath in and took lead to mine. It was 2005 and I was alone now for the first time and living this unforgettable thing we call life.

                                                                                ***

I have taken many more flights since that momentous one to Australia in 2005. I have worked and/or travelled to Asia, Africa and Central America. Each place is well remembered in my mind and now on the walls of my new little home as treasured framed photos. These places however have become so much more than just coloured pieces of squared paper thoughtfully placed in a hallway. They have become part of who I now am. I've had so much fun and could write many stories about the people I've encountered: Solomon Maverick the guy who brought me back to life (romantically!)in Thailand, Nepalese families making me rice wine up the Himalayas during a knee trembling storm, Big Jim, the hallucinogenic cane toads and the crazy Russian in Costa Rica, Michael Jackson tribute act in the remote villages of Kenya's Rift Valley, losing every single last thing I owned in New Zealand and giving away every single thing I owned to a stranger in Cambodia, dancing and romancing in rooftop pools in Sydney. The fun journeys take you, the challenging ones make you. Holding a dying baby in Africa changes you forever. Of course, there are also moments that I will just keep to myself, in my own heart to help me remember what true strength really is, moments where I felt as close to whatever God, Buddha or other that may be out there in the firmament. Almost on some sort of neuro molecular level a little  piece of each place I've roamed to  has been added to the essence of me. The sounds, smells, colours, tastes and above all the people have created new links in my head that are easily plucked from the recesses of my consciousness by simply taking time to remember them. So what would it mean to me if I won this opportunity? It would add to my very existence and enrich my mind, body and spirit. And in turn using the best and most evocative words I can muster up I will  try my best to enrich the lives of those who read my tales.

Why should I be chosen you ask? I should be chosen because I have come to understand and live life in two ways. I live it once in the moment and again on paper. I will spend the rest of my days doing that regardless. But to be given the opportunity to help others understand life, by reading about how others live it, in different faraway places, around this globe, would be a memory for which there would be no frame big enough.

Our Father’s Love

Some humans yell from rooftops on high

Of the great love they feel for a precious new child.

Any why not?

Let them declare it, if the feelings be so.

Shout it out loud and let the universe know.

Some take pen and paper to hand

To write of deep fondness- the type speech can’t command.

Others find it too hard to say

Those three words I love you- it is just not their  way.

Your love for your children was shy but true

And this is what we’ll remember of you.

You’ve soared away now

To that “haven of rest”

Over Cork’s charming hills

In “the land of the west.”

But before you departed

As I kissed your pale brow

A realisation emerged

That still stays with me now:

Each father’s love uses a different  colour,

And no one canvas dyes better than the other.


x

Henry’s First Holiday

 

 Chocolate eyes,

Almost good enough to chew,

Hidden only to sleep or play peek-a-boo!

Eyelashes curling toward the night sky,

Like brushes, they could paint a star,

Will you ever know how wondrous you are?

 

Clapping and laughing,

Gazing at passers- by

They go round the corner,

You follow with open eyes.

“Round and round the garden like a teddy bear, one step , two steps and a tick-a-ly under there..”

 

Sandy toes and a fine snotty nose

Screeching seagulls overhead

A salty plate of grilled sardines

And then its’ off to bed.

 

The barking of the bow wow

The dazzle of the sand

You walk with glee on cobbled streets

But still need a helping hand

 

The splashing of the water-  so much fun!

A lone trawler glides home under a setting sun

You cuddle to your mother's breast 

Cooing like a dove
 

Oh, Little baby Henry

You teach me how to love.

 

 

 

                                       Babies of the Lost Generation

 
Not even the wise can predict the day,

When a life may change in most violent a way.

A storm howls in amid gusts of fear,

And makes loud each din in a small child's ear.

Those hateful winds; they rise and soar,

Until the path is clear no more.

But cry not wee child and do not fear,

For after the wild the calm shall appear.

I hope that at your journey’s end

These words you might hear from a neighbouring friend:

“Just breathe- you’ll be OK,
 
And hold my hand throughout this day.”

For laps of kindness will line the shore,

And your worries will be no more.

Each wave will gather speed,

Just as day follows night- bringing you safely to land and holding you tight.

 

For the lost generations of innocent refugee children in the world.

                     Henry

                                                          Born on the Nineteenth day of April, 2015

 

                                        Sent from above,

                                       And born into love

                                    With potential abound.

                                    We do not know you,

                                     Yet we already do.

 

                                     You are perfect,

                                      You are small,

                                You need us to do it all.

                             Perfect skin, soft and clear

                                    Eyes wide open,

                                   You sense us near.

 

                             We love you beyond compare

                      From your big man feet to your head of hair!

                        Loving child, you’ve brought such joy.

                          Behold oh world---our little boy!

 

"Mid pleasures and places, though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home." ¬ John Howard Payne

Up, up,up and away! A little bubble, perfectly formed, takes flight from it’s home in the warm familiarity of my brand new kitchen sink. An unremarkable event but my eyes catch it and it distracts me from my fairy liquid induced state of mind. I’m not sure why this little escapee makes me notice but as I follow it's journey upward I am suddenly motionless...

 It is quite a perfect thing, is a bubble. The delicate film of iridescent colour invites me in to the perfect airy world inside, a sanctuary from outside forces and with the long forgotten enthusiasm of a child I begin to will it on, on its’ journey, wishing for it not to burst. I watch and wait for it to explode and vanish into thin air, any second now, any second, just wait, but no.......it floats- like hope. For what seems like an age I follow this bubble as it dances this way and that before it gently begins its’ downward descent to its’ final resting place, proudly atop the sudsy capped mountain from which it left. Then suddenly PLINK !- gone.

There is a very particular feeling of child-like glee one feels, or at least should feel when watching a bubble rise and soar. I remember this feeling as a little girl and how I never wanted my bubble to burst. I too have glided and travelled to many beautiful places and I have loved and lost but I am very glad to say that my hope still floats and my bubble still dances with this wonderful delicate thing we call life. My hot and tingling hands beckon me back to the task at hand and I finish cleaning my dirty dishes.

It’s Sunday morning and I am very much at home.

                                                                            All I ask of Love

For my treasured brother and his wife to be.

 

To ask too much from Love, I dare not

Nor hinder its’ destined way

Remembering always its’ ebb and flow

It is to Love that I give myself today

 

I shall not want the world from it

But serve as best I know

Never to crave or neglect what is mine.

Just nourish, listen, grow.

 

Love’s fatherly hand we take this day

To lead us on a way

The destination as yet unknown

Our future- a face to us not shown.

 

And when this earthly dusk draws in

And our story here be told

The promise I made to Love today

To other worlds shall surely go

 

To care – we must

To dream – we dare

To laugh, to seek and be bold

Yet, it is to Love that I give myself

To keep, to have and to hold.