Duhallow In Late October

The fields by the Blackwater River from overnight frost looking gray And heavy low clouds tell rain not far away The salmon are swimming up river to spawn In the chilly silence of an October dawn Though Winter to Duhallow is drawing near The weather quite chilly for the time of year The storm water gurgling in the roadside drain Duhallow could do with four months without rain In the wet fields in view of Clara hardly any grass at all The cattle will be in sheds early this Fall Six months at the least till near prime of the Spring Till the nesting songbirds will whistle and sing And the swallows will fly o'er the old fields again But till then weeks of frost and snow and storm driven rain.