Time to write

I'm just home from a fabulous two weeks visiting my brothers in Canada with my mum. This was the trip I won last year in the Irish Times Generation Emigration Flying Visit competition. I promised myself over the two weeks I was going to write and write and write. Although I did a lot of reading, I wrote exactly 17 words. On the back of a receipt. This didn't disturb me because the summer still stretches out in front of me and some thinking time is good. Enjoying my brothers' hospitality, inevitably I thought of the good times growing up in our too often mad home and how our wicked sense of humour, penchant for a colourful vocabulary and utter love from and for our mum sustained us then and continues to keep us strong.

So, home, my theme this six months really. I've spent some time away and am returned to it now, rested and recharged. I sat down to write yesterday and read more; the latest Crannog, the latest Spontaneity, a few papers I'd missed when I was away, checked out what submission opportunities are open. Somewhere in the midst of that I typed the 17 words and you know a poem followed. A few drafts later, but still brand new, here it is:

 Antidote 

There was living too

voices rising, sweary banter and food,

endless tables of food, second helpings, second sittings

and laughter, there was laughter,

the good of it rose in us and we carried it like light.

I know it in the bearing now, here

in this late night chat and breaking out in song:

new belief in the fact of survival, in love.

Chasidy, me, Brian, Peter, Aidan, Mum, John in Canmore, Alberta