Poem – Crashing Waves and Images from the Waterford coast line ….
Images from the coast
County Waterford
November 2020
Nigel Borrington
Crashing Waves
Coming through the dreaming and the real years
I will be the waves and you will be a strange shore
I shall roll on and on, and break upon your lap with laughter
And no one in the world will know where we both are.
I will be like the breeze on the ocean waves
Drinking from the breasts of the ocean deep
Dew from the glistening morning weep
And each of its longing that daybreak craves.
From side to side grows each tubular wave
Each thinking that they catch me in its worth
They allow me to completely forget
What hour comes after this instant in time.
For painful is the oceans every wave
As it doesn’t let me to sit in peace
For the days which I have taken as lease
Are passing by and leaving me alone.
Weeping clouds drifting its moments in tears
I turn to face the dark black sea to mourn
From where I find no water to save
My soul from the sound of crashing waves.
Only in my illusory freedom amidst the universal chorus
The sun shining moods that flows around its spell
Why do human souls not sing as does the sea
Why does the east wind sigh?
From the earth up to the highest stars
Unanswered is my question to this very day
A voice lamenting in the wilderness
Leaves my soul protesting despairingly.
Connemara, Co. Galway, Ireland – The Landscape of Poetry – Poems by Mary O’Malley
Connemara
county Galway
Ireland
Nigel Borrington
2019
Connemara, Co. Galway
Mary O’Malley is truly the person who has written Connemara, her writing laced with the fierce beauty of the landscape, and the sounds of the sea. In ‘Porpoises’ she sends our minds out to sea from the most westerly point of the county:
The sky is close.
Out from the once manned rock
White electric light
Arcs over the Water
Difficult not to agree with her when she states that the sea is “just the place from which all things make sense”.
Pierce Hutchinson, also writing on Connemara, said:
There are chinks between
the neat stones to let the wind through safe,
You can see the blue sun through them.
But coming eastward in the same county,
the walls grow higher, dark grey;
an ugly grey. And the chinks disappear:
through those walls you can see nothing.
Perhaps our poetic landscapes remind us of that – to keep our hearts alert for experiences of water, wind and wonder.
A Dream sunset, Cardigan bay, Wales. A Poem : Ode By Arthur O’Shaughnessy
A Dream sunset Cardigan bay
Wales
August 2017 Nigel Borrington
We are like the Dreamer …….
Ode
By Arthur O’Shaughnessy
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Monday Poetry, The Water Replies – Luke Kennard
The Water Replies
Waterford Coastline, Sunrise to Sunset
Nigel Borrington
Luke Kennard
The Water Replies
Maybe we have washed our hands
and drunk deep and swam
and think we know her,
but water’s reputation goes before her like a flood:
she does not suffer fools or gadflies.
Therefore I have prepared some questions.
Where do you get your ideas & your tide from?
Don’t say the moon – that’s really pretentious.
But as I clamber down the coast
I lose my footing and spend our allotted time
tossed around in her backwash,
pummelled by tiny stones.
When I am baptised I ask the water
Where have the demons gone?
Were they hiding behind the H, the 2 or the O?
I emerge finally able to see that I have not changed,
that I can of myself do nothing, that water decides.
On the towpath behind the church
I wring out my jacket. I ask the water:
Will you convey these thoughts away?
These itching hatreds, toothache of jealousy,
These squalid appetites and dog thirsts?
Just as far as the next city will do.
The ripples of the moon’s tablature.
When was the last time you cried, and why?
I ask the water. I ask the water:
Do you have plans later?
Mountain Poetry, Ride the foothills by : Denel Kessler
Foothills of Slievenamon
Irish Landscape images
Nigel Borrington
Denel Kessler
Chinook Skies
cobalt rain
rides the foothills
mountains conspire
in malevolent
cloud lairs
beneath gray waters
she treads
the warming sea
in constant current
scaled desire
burnished crimson
silver sleek
with ripened need
she lives to die
upstream
House By The Sea – Poem by N Nobu
House By The Sea – Poem by N Nobu
They lived
in a house by the sea
he and she.
Where sun sheltered
from the waning moon
myriads of stars
and the lightning beams.
They lived
in a house by the sea
he and she.
Where fireflies lit the sky
crickets sang nearby
and gentle waves kissed
the golden sands goodbye.
They lived
in a house by the sea
he and she.
Fought a little, talked a lot
danced with the breeze
cherishing moment of
bliss and peace.
They lived
in a house by the sea
he and she
.
She stooped a little
he antiqued a bit
there vision dimmed
with every passing cloud.
She died
In a house by the sea.
Mermaids tell he never cried
for he knew
Lovers never die
and she awaits otherside
where sea meets the sky…..
Like the waves , Poem by Cyrille Octaviano
Like the waves
Cyrille Octaviano
clashing against one another
Struggling to keep up,
but aware of the power
Rising up,
streaming drown
rushing and hurdling
coming ashore
As the sun radiates
illuminating the water,
I can see crystal clear
there is hope.
The River, a Poem By : Sara Teasdale
Irish rivers
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
The River
I came from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.
I came at last to the ocean
And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
“Be kind and take me back!”
.
But the thirsty tide ran inland,
And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
Am bitter as the sea.
Sara Teasdale :
Nigel Borrington 
Artist Introduction, Paul Walls – A painter of motion
Grey Day, Muckross Head, County Donegal, By Walls, Paul
I first came across the paintings of Artist Paul Walls at an exhibition called “Currents”, held in the old friary building in Callan, County Kilkenny 2004, and instantly fell in love with his painting style and the resulting art works he produces.
I think it would be fair to say that Paul uses paint in a very loose and direct way on the canvas, I like this style very much!. Paul is one of those artists who’s work you actual need to see face to face to get a true feeling for their paintings and with Paul the depth and movement that each brush stroke has.
I feel that this style of painting is perfect for the subjects Paul captures, (Irish coastlines and countryside) on wet and windy days, days that we do so often get here.
Even when its not raining in Ireland its often windy and the above painting captures this mood so very well, Paul’s use of paint in the trees above the boats I feel captures the movement in a typical Irish day.
There will always be people who like different types of painting styles, some loving very photo realistic landscapes , others love abstract work, personally what I love most about Paul’s work is the overwhelming sense that he has captures a very active landscape and worked with it in a very pro-active fashion.
When viewing Paul’s painting you feel like you have first hand experience of the rain and the cliffs and the stormy sea.
This is the link to Paul Walls web site : Artists Paul walls
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February 28, 2017 | Categories: artists, Comment, Gallery, Landscape, Nigel Borrington, painter, Paul Walls | Tags: art, art review, Artist, irish art, Irish landscape painting, Irish Landscapes, Landscape, Nigel Borrington, painter, Paul Walls, sea, weather | 1 Comment