Raymond Friel

We are the dawn sniffers, the motley few, This morning snuffling at the lateness Of the only service this side of midday. Does it still exist? Is it late enough To risk a common ground with coded quips Regarding ‘leaves’, or some such dreary mot?

The plaque inside the cedar-scented bothy Tells of how this elevated halt Was saved from nettly dereliction By Betjeman’s verses...

With his ‘shopping list’, my son makes us stop At choice hedges, a particular weed. He does not share my anticipation. In the long shadows, a man tends a grave With brisk affection, his jacket folded Inside out, specs high on his balding head.

The white horse, behind us on its hillside, Is summoning the nerve for a great leap. Outside St Michael’s, the...

Unbearably buoyant the night before My return to Blairs, I’d be brought back down To earth by Dad’s Polonius routine. He’d been there in the black and white Forties, And had to leave, he said, only because ...

Now, in the grey-skied secular Nineties, Home with a girlfriend who’s not a Catholic, I psych myself for one of our wee talks. A curt ‘she’s...