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Book 2 of 2 of Prof. Harriet on Amazon or as paperback from here. Just search for John Atkinson and Prof Harriet to get your copy! Thank you.
These are some of my published works. It is always flattering when an editor feels the work is worth publishing. If you have any comments or feedback, here is a button that you can use!
Kildare Brigid is a sonnet in the classic form. This is as if St. Patrick wrote it to St. Brigid. (which is impossible from a timeline point of view). I read this at an event in Red Books to celebrate St. Brigids day of February 1st. It was very well received. Thanks to Wally in Red Books for the opportunity.
Kildare Brigid
Kildare Brigid
The first time I saw your white smile gleaming,
Put my life of wandering into pause.
There was hope in my heart to find meaning,
To give my words and nomadic life cause.
We spent our time together in a trance,
I shyly asked to hold your hand:
You were so afraid to take a chance,
Your refusal left me quite unmanned.
I had to go away to my special place;
I cried on the Reek until I was hoarse.
And after a time I could slowly retrace,
My way back to you and your four-leg’d cross.
I scribe a letter to you every day,
Your replies are true but love- they’ll not say.
Going A-Maying
Stones, and a heel, rise up to the sun
And lean, tilt, incline- out of plumb.
Modern eyes look but don’t see aught
But the distance and where they were bought.
A circle, astral, pagan, topping the rise
A card tap for twenty seven fifty grants the prize
Foot entry to the Henge. Slow smiles seek
To trace a Beltane, a like, an extra T, a geek.
It’s summer time, the tourists trek
To see what went before. Inspect
The distance, the way the stones were moved
How they did it cannot be proved.
Close your eyes, hear the bees drone
Feel the summer breeze warm the stone.
The rustle of wild summer flower stems
Imagine it through human survival lens.
Brown Earths Reward- Published Scaldy detail
Brown Earths Reward- Published Scaldy detail
Published Scaldy Detail
Brown Earth’s Reward
Loamy, brown earth, pock-marked
with plastic bags on sticks,
protecting sown seeds from hungry beaks.
Stick-like heroic boys clutching
bulky machine guns in the Third World,
protecting dictators from democracy.
Crows toes touch earth lightly,
ready for flight at any sound,
cautious of windy rustle of plastic.
A light trigger-squeeze sends
spent metal shells, winnowing,
about black, unshod feet.
Golden sun feeds heat to each seed,
quickly sprouting to full-bellied green.
Wind washes over lush growth.
Heat bakes arid earth barren,
producing nought but rusting metal jackets.
Hate multiplies in killing waves.
The last red berry shaken loose
Falls and rolls
In natures detritus
Below ground breakfast.
Its summer plumpness
Surrendered to the gym like
Machinations of the deep winter cold.
The incessant picking of morsels by
Fungus and microbe,
Each draining history.
Hitting the mulch carpet of the earth
Under-laid by a mouldy net.
Causing an air raid raising
Flock of birds to
Group dive bomb
into natures cellar.
Hoping to feast
To just be fuller for an hour.
(She is thinking slower now,
speaking slower, moving slower
as she passes from the start with nothing
nearer to the end of nothing)
A raucous outcry
as the 4 legged
long tailed rodent sits.
Sharp teeth shining,
vanishing the last coloured fruit
to oblivion.
Blinded by the winter light
it scurries off
to seek shade and shadows-
and more sustenance elsewhere.
The strong French nose
Long and classic
Could not hold the mask
As it slipped into his moustache
His ears lifted, and the mask
Slipped deeper into the dark bristles.
A smile was hidden behind as
His granddaughter bounced into sight.
He moved a step forward
Arms outstretched-
She held out her elbow to him
A modern embrace.
His elbow moved but his hand
Froze, ready to lift her into the air
As he had dreamed during lost Covid
Months of longing isolation.
She wagged her finger
Fix your mask grandpa, it is slipping
You are old and of a vulnerable age
His ears dropped, mon Enfant.
I showed my eldest son
and then his younger brother
in his turn, how to fold
the highway map of Ireland.
Each time a millisecond
memory passed over me, I
re-heard my Dad bark: let it
fall into its folds, don’t force it.
Who will they father- these game boy
electronic sons of mine? Sat nav
scans its digital feed. There are
no seams on flat incandescent screens.
We rounded the
corner
at six oh six of an
October
evening.
We must have been heading
West,
as the flares of pale yellow
burned low,
dead ahead.
He quickly flinched.
Quickly
covered his eyes.
I saw his end as clear
as black tarmac.
Dan O’Brien
I am not sure where I am. I know I am on a train. That familiar clackity- clack has woken me. Looking out the rain-streaked window I do not recognise the landmarks. I can see a river running alongside. It’s a big, wide river with a strong flow. I spot a bridge coming up and an old fort on a small hill. Suddenly we are in a tunnel. Everything is dark.
The carriage has three other people in it. I start to ask the nearest when I see a reflection in the window of the train. It is the reflection of an old man with grey scraggy beard in a great grey overcoat. I see an old black beanie pulled over one hairy eyebrow. A dirty face. I look again but we are out in daylight and the reflection has vanished. I look at my legs and I see an ugly pair of battered runners. A big black toe sticks out from the remains of the right runner. I wiggle my toe and jump when I realise that is my toe. Ugh.
The smell is strong. I sniff. Urine, stale sweat, and alcohol. I wonder who it is. I realise it may be me. I pull my neck down into my coat and look at the floor. Where am I? What am I?
The train stops at a station. It is a handsome building and a pretty colour. I get up and shuffle to the doors. They hiss open and one other passenger quickly scurries away from me. I step onto the platform, and I can feel the bumps of the special sensory path through the bottom of my shoes. I see a sign. Platform One. To my right beside a pretty bunch of late summer flowers is another sign- Wexford.
‘Wexford’. Nothing comes to me. Several passengers are moving up a ramp and through the station. I follow them. They are crossing the road into a green area. It looks like a nice town. Plenty of activity. I see a sign that says Whites Hotel. That’s it, I thought. Get to a hotel, get cleaned up, get some new clothes and food. I start to salivate and realise I am hungry. I need to figure out what has happened.
I finally manage to get through the Hotel revolving door. What a fiasco. The entire lobby was staring at me. I approached the counter. “I need a room, please”. The young receptionist put his hand over his mouth, gagged, and hurried inside. His colleague, a pretty, young lady pulled on her face mask and said, “Sir, are you sure this is your hotel? Do you have a reservation?”
“I do not have a reservation. In my day, one just walked into a hotel and asked for a room”.
“Maybe so, Sir, but we are fully booked. It is a busy time of the year. Perhaps the Bed and Breakfast across the road can help you?” She pointed back through the revolving doors.
The door to the B and B is closed. It has been closed for some time. I shake my fist at the hotel and walk along the street. I pass an old building with a plaque about slavery. I see a new glass fronted building with elaborate lights in the ceiling. Further along I walk by a coffee shop with tables under red umbrellas in the street. The last table has no guests and an uneaten sandwich. I pick it up as I pass.
I eat it as I cross onto a cobble-locked street. It is quiet here. I like it. An a-board pavement sign says coffee upstairs. I look and see National Opera House over the door. I feel comforted by this. I walk in and the two girls at reception look at me with alarm. “Coffee”, I say. They point upwards, one says “There is a lift”.
I walk through and see two lifts. I hit the call button and go to the first floor. No sign of any coffee. I pull open a door. My eyes adjust to the darkness. It is a huge theatre. I burp. The sandwich must have had onions. The sound is muted and muffled in the wonderful space. I tip down a seat and my eyes can now see a wonderful deep timber finish. The stage is far below.
A spot-light snaps on and a girl walks on stage singing. A piano plays her accompanying chords. It is the most beautiful sound. What a wonderful soprano she is. She reaches for a note, but it jars. The piano stops. A male voice far below shouts, “No, no. You must hit C sharp. That’s only B. Come on, you can do it! The dress rehearsal is in two weeks.”
“He’s a tough director, that one, Luigi!”. I am startled by a husky cracked voice behind me.
“What? Who are you?” I reply.
“You can see me!”
“Yes, of course, I know it is a bit dark but”
“No one can see me”
“Why not”
“Well for a start, I am dead. I died two years ago today. Exactly today. I got up to come down here and lit my first fag of the day and that was it, I fell down dead”
I peered closely at him, “You look a bit peaky all right. I thought it was just the light, but you are quite green about the gills. What’s your name and how come you are here?”
“Jimmy, they call me Jimmy. Everyone knows me. I ran front of house for this place for years. Now I just wander around hoping to find an empty seat when the show starts. I love opera and Wexford.”
Jimmy stopped his dreaming and spoke more sharply, “Who are you? You look bloody scruffy, who let you in?”
“I don’t know who I am. I was on a train, and I am now here. Talking to a ghost. I know why she is not hitting the note”.
“You do?”
“Yes, it’s her breathing, she needs to breathe in earlier, she has too much air in her lungs, it is blocking her from hitting the note”
“Really? How do you know that when you don’t even know your name?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I wish I could tell her. She has a fabulous voice.”
“Well,” Jimmy said, “you had better not go near her. If they see you, they will call the Guards, you are just a bum, and a dirty old one at that”
“I know how I look”.
“I can leave a note for her. I do that sometimes. I scribble a note and leave it on the floor or on their dressing table.”
Jimmy wafted off and I could see a post-it note float to the ground in front of the young singer as she walked into the wings.
A torch snapped on and lit my eyes. I blinked, blinded by the strength of the light. The holder, a woman, spoke firmly, “You, I found you, what are you doing here, get out, you stink, come on, get out, don’t make me call the Guards”.
“I thought it was Jimmy again”, I replied as I stood up.
The torch lowered a bit and the voice said “Jimmy, Jimmy who? There is no Jimmy here. There used to be but no more”
“Yes, he told me, he passed away two years ago today”.
“Who are you? That’s right. Today is his anniversary. We all miss him. How do you know Jimmy, are you a friend of his?”
“No, I don’t know. That’s the problem. But I feel well here. Can you help me?”
Jimmy appeared again “That’s Phil, she is fantastic. Ask her to help you get cleaned up and to see a doctor.”
“Phil, Jimmy says you are fantastic”
The effect of my words is stunning. Phil drops the torch. Her mouth and her eyes form wide O shapes. “Who told you my name is Phil?”
“Jimmy just did”. I shrugged. I was either going to be locked up or helped.
“Is he here now?” Phil looked around nervously.
“No, he is gone again. We are trying to help the singer hit the right note”
“That’s enough now, this is ridiculous. You stink, you look like a bum. I’m going to get Mary to bring you up to Ozanam House. They can get you cleaned up and get rid of those rank clothes. Come with me, downstairs and out. Don’t use the lift. I already has to get it fumigated.”
After I was cleaned up Dr. Stephen came to see me. He examined me and found a bump on the side of my head. The hospital made some x-rays. My skull had been cracked. Further tests showed a mass inside my head. They operated and removed a long clot and some bits of damage.
I woke up in a hospital gown. I started to remember. Dan is my name. Dan O’Brien. It was such a relief. Over the next days, my memories returned. Phil came to see me. She brought me a mobile phone. In case, she said, I wanted to call someone.
After she left, I opened the browser and went to a banking website. I entered the code and password. Nervously I pressed the button to show account balances. It was enough. More than enough.
Phil had arranged for the local men’s shop to come up and fit me for some clothes. In a couple of days, I was well enough to walk a bit. Phil visited again and helped me get a room in Whites Hotel. She even got me tickets for the opera. She winked and said I would enjoy the high notes of the young singer.
I returned to Spain later that month. I never remembered how I got onto the train or where I received the head injury. Things were not good with my family, and I had just been divorced. I never reopened my singing school again.
I did one final thing. I gave a large bequest to the Wexford Opera Festival on the condition that Seat 8 in Row K of the stalls was always empty. I wanted Jimmy to have a good seat.
I love this tale and its immediate reference to Wexford and St Patrick's church, it is hard to be a writer. Here is am the opinion of a 'proper' editor. Submission feedback:
Ms Ward- I appreciate both the narrative and the visual streaks of this piece. The brevity of the sentences accumulates towards the needed tension that complements the subject. The unexpected ending comes as a surprise and despite its heavy content, the story seduces the reader's senses and subverts their expectations.
What should I do with this???
Ms Ward
Ms Ward
Ms Ward
The three men were pushing a large wooden barrow. The wheel was not round. The barrow lurched up and down. Its uneven wheel was noisy. The rough cobbles of the street did not help. The streets were filled with debris. Bits of roofs, walls, windows. Many four-pound cannonballs and the remains of metal shot lay casually on the streets.
The soldiers laughed as they walked. Doors along the street silently closed as they passed by. Latches fell and lifted again as they walked along Back Street. I peeked out the side of the door.
They didn’t care. They were on a mission to bring home plunder. The town was theirs. They had defeated it with heavy artillery and military might. My friends and neighbours were shocked and submitted. Our quiet lives had been overturned. The soldiers expected no different. They were the New Model army.
The barrow was full of clothes and silks. Coloured robes from the monks in the Friary. The soldiers had robbed all they could find. I imagined that they had found the sacred chalices and cups used in Mass. They were violent. They were prepared to use violence to find out what they wished to know.
I heard their accents. A chill ran up my back. These were not Irish, not local. They could only be Cromwell troops. Their uniforms were stained but they were red, and they wore the hated great coats. The soldiers carried muskets and short swords. I eased the door over, so it closed silently. The three Cromwellian soldiers went by.
I was afraid of these men. For days the cannon on the hill and on the gunboat in the harbour had launched four-pound balls at the town. The sound oozed destruction. The balls hit the flimsy house walls. They were not up to the task and crumbled. Holes appeared where there was solid wall. Rooms that were sanctuaries became useless. Roofs collapsed and thatch fell onto open fires. The flames consumed the meagre treasures.
A crowd were running away from shots in the Bullring. I could see them splitting into different mobs. Outside the corn market some were running towards Westgate. Others came up the hill to me and towards what remained of the churches. Most headed straight for the Friary just outside the town walls.
The three soldiers stopped. One dropped to his knees and the other two laid their guns on his shoulders. More soldiers ran up and took their firing positions. As the mob ran towards them, they fired. Several fell. With trained precision they rotated, reloaded, kneeled, and fired again. More fell. The second barrage made many of the fleeing mob turn back. Others stopped and froze on the spot. They were too frightened to move. The third salvo dropped many of them, those still alive ran back towards the Cornmarket.
A woman pushing a bike kept coming towards the soldiers. The front wheel was just a rim. It was buckled and turned unevenly. She panted as she struggled with the weight. Her dead boy, Tomas, was draped across the handlebars and crossbars. I knew her and her no dead son. She was my neighbour, Mrs Rose Taggerty. She was a beautiful singer in Mass.
The three soldiers stood up and reloaded. “What have we here?”. I could hear one say as I looked from the crack of my front door. Rose kept coming, her voice keening like a wounded animal. She somehow moved though the pile of bodies. I could do nothing.
One soldier stepped forward and drove his sword into her chest. Her mouth and eyes made an O shape as she cried “ow”, “ow”, “ow”. He lifted her light body on the end of his sword like it was a doll. The other soldier stepped up and swung his sword with a scythe-like arc. The blade must have been blunt as Roses head fell to one side but did not drop off. He swung twice more. Her head thumped to the ground. The first soldier swung her around on his sword. He offered her to his partner like a tasty morsel at a fire. Reaching in under her blouse, the second soldier found her crucifix and pulled it off her. He held their plunder up and the other soldiers laughed. Rose slid off the sword into a crumpled heap on the ground.
The bike fell over and Tomas’s head caught somehow on the handlebar and brake lever. It was propped up. One cheek was still scrubbed clean. Rose always sent her children out scrubbed clean. The white skin showed up his young pale blue eyes.
The soldier swung the short sword blade. It made a scything sound through the air. Tomas’s young head fell. The clean white skin somehow landing up in the grime and waste of the cobbled street.
Reaching under the shirt the soldier yanked out a golden cross. I gasped. I remember it had been brought home by his uncle, Fr. Tom. Fr Tom had just been made a priest in Rome. Young Tomas had proudly worn the cross outside his shirt for his communion a fortnight before. Holding the cross up the soldier sneered- “this one even has a gold chain”. It vanished into his bulging pocket.
I slid to the floor with my back to the door. It clicked closed. The family of my neighbour was dead. Fr. Tom was slaughtered with a Friar and hundreds of others in the Bullring days before. The corpses were still piled high. Rose must have gone to bring young Tomas home for burial.
The door exploded above my head and the shot deafened me. I heard the timber shatter as it was hacked away above my head. The hall was suddenly light, and I noticed a new damp patch on the floor. My hand reached instinctively for the three gold medallions around my neck. They had belonged to my mother and my aunts.
My hair was grabbed, and I was pulled bodily through the now shattered front door of my home. I glimpsed a red coat as I heard a scything sound.
The drone buzzed into the air. Young Tommy was on the controls. They had discussed the plan the evening before. The graveyard in the ruins of St Patricks church was supposed to have two mass graves. One from the slaughter in the Bullring by Cromwell. The other allegedly contained a flying regiment from North Cork killed in the 1798 Irish rebel uprising.
The summer of 2022 had been hot, and the earth had dried out. These were perfect conditions to find things buried in shallow ground. The Eire warning signs around the cliffs of Ireland from the second world war were found that way.
Dr. Stephen Hazelbrook from the University in Dublin hoped they could see the edges of the mass graves using the drone and its two cameras. One camera was infrared to detect different temperature levels and one was like a radar to penetrate the ground. Disturbed soil had a different temperature and texture to undisturbed soil. Soil with a lot of organic matter was warmer than other soil. Very old mass graves would still have a great deal of organic matter. This is what they were hoping to find. A clear edge between the two soil types. An edge, large enough to be a mass grave.
Fred Ward, the local librarian, and historian was with them. He had poured cold water on their quest. He did not believe the stories of mass graves. He had some good points about why. The University team were familiar with them.
The first was that the ground was extremely rocky. When the Opera house was being constructed heavy duty rock breakers were on site for weeks. The rock was near the surface and hard, hard as diamonds. The Opera house was only a hundred metres from the old graveyard. Fred’s second point was that the few surviving people of the town were all women and terrorised by the trauma of the time. The men had fled, had been captured and sent away as slaves, or had been butchered by Cromwell’s troops. The bodies had been around for days. The harbour wall then was where the Bank of Ireland is now. The water was deep. It was October and the tides were high. The harbour had two other seafaring sailing ships as well as the English gunboat. Most importantly it was only a few yards downhill from the Bullring. The church and its graveyard were half a mile away- and uphill.
“Think about it”, Fred said. “You have a pile of rotting bodies in the Bullring. Are you going to drag them uphill, dig a hole with primitive tools in rocky ground, and bury them? Or are you going to slide them downhill on wet cobbles into the harbour and let the tides take them out to sea? Wexford was a big port then. Burial at sea was acceptable and not at all unusual.”
The searchers heard him and listened, but had to ask, “what about all the history, the stories handed down generation after generation?” Fred just shrugged his shoulders, “Exactly!” he said, “stories”. Fred Ward made a good point, but secretly he hoped to find some ancestorial DNA if it was true. His research indicated that his family were residents on Back Street for generations.
Spring- Published by Scaldy Detail
Spring- Published by Scaldy Detail
Spring
Large, liquid dew drops lying
Loosely on a lovely leaf, lime green and
Limp as its stem.
Waiting for less than a breeze to
Lean over and lopside the drop
To the ground with a plop.
Semi spherical
like an
Upturned egg on a plate.
Rising from a thin layer and
Ending in a dome in the middle.
Surface tension tremble.
The outer
Skin shines
as it shimmers and sways
In the light and wind as it
Energises and tries to last longer than
A single blink.
{Her eyes are like that. Liquid, large, shiny,
Aqueous, bright and warm full
Of loving as they linger longer on the longing}
As the leaf leans the dew drop drains a
damp trail as it uses its very
Essence to cling to the edge before
It dribbles to the ground.
Can several single dew drops tip over and form
A cascade to start a stream?
Does it scream
As it plunges to the overgreen of the earth
Where it is soaked away and stored
For another misty green spring day.
Breathe Deep (published by Wingless Dreamer July 2023)
Breathe Deep (published by Wingless Dreamer July 2023)
The smell of the pine
warm, aromatic, head
clearing. A mixture of heat
and life perfuming the air,
as only they can. Unique to
that moment, that day, that weather,
that rain in spring, that mulch
underfoot, that cold winter night.
The wind at that gentle summer speed
blowing from the NE lifting that scent
off the leaves and sharing it; generously.
Short few lines to capture a moment on the the Île d’Oléron on the way home after a 50k bike ride. Then this smell hit me and made me smile through the tiredness, muscle pain, and hunger. (c) June 2023
The OLD GOAT- (Published by Quibble Feb 2023)
The Old GOAT
The Old GOAT
(Greatest of all Time)
The number ten passed the ball
of black pentagons and white hexagons
Onto the bright branded toe. Pumped
hard by an old Goat with failing eyes,
it scurried on the double along the
clipped green thatch of grass
and synthetic inserts.
(Fake- like the old Goat crown on the
vain skipper from yesteryear.
He who returned from Turkey with
hair soft and fluffy like goose down.
Scraped from his inside leg and
implanted in his shiny, talc-dusted pate;
his cloudy eyes delight in the minimal
regrowth. He combs over reflections
of time past. He endures his assigned tasks
of ground and ball keeper. He feasted
for a decade on the day that he won).
Dribbled by the receiver goal-wards
across the white painted lines
tightened and limed over again
to cover up the wandering, meandering
traces of the old Goat. Passed back to ten,
the new charging goat struck a horn-hard strike
that whacked the middle of the crossbar
and spun suspended, while tens of thousands
slurped the air out of the stadium.
The outrushing roar echoed and rebounded
longer than the shake in the shape shifting net.
The old Goat sat back and sad smiled,
touching the softness of his down,
until he was lifted shoulder high and presented
to the newest in the line of heroes.
He could hear his final whistle blowing
as he passed on the glory crown.
Yesterday’s old Goats appear seldom
as the distance to their years grows.
Meanwhile, the future secretly
prepares another new kid.
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