The girl who smells of roses plays her flute
Beside her window open on the night.
From shadows and disorder in her room,
The measured notes of Bach’s partitas flow
And fall about me in the dusk beneath.
From hidden branches in the copper-beech,
The day’s last blackbird sings in counterpoint.
How still the twilight when the blackbird calls!
How still the garden where her music falls!
Given to Lucy for her 18th birthday, 1 August 1989
So softly in the summer night
Your fragile vessel has set sail,
Back through your Irish Infancy,
Bound for the Islands of the Blest.
We stand upon our adult shores
And through the curtain of our tears
Perceive at last, in all its grace,
Your loving presence in our lives.
Now comes the gathering of our years,
the harvest of our childhood days,
And in the barns of memory
We store the blessings
of your love.
For my brothers and sisters
In loving memory of our Mother 1903 – 1992
My favourite spot in the garden
Is where the strawberries grow,
Where the marguerites hang overhead
And the hungry blackbirds go.
There in the early morning,
When the grass is wet with dew,
I join the hungry blackbirds
And eat the strawberries too.
For Bessie – June 1980
I have a homing instinct for the stars 
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