I Don'T Talk To Others

I don't talk to others of my boyhood experiences though sometimes in paper I do write them down When I was a young lad of the fifties and by my old home near Millstreet Town In mid May in green old Duhallow the hawthorns were cloaked in blooms white as snow And in the rank grass by the hedgerows the male pheasants did cuck and crow.. I learned to respect Mother Nature and the names of some of her wild creatures I got to know The brown trout for flies they were jumping in pools where Finnow waters flow And skylark above the rank rushes looked like a speck in the grey sky His pleasant song one could hear plainly though out of sight the bird did fly. The male chaffinch sang on the alder his partner on her nest nearby Their young would be fully fledged by mid June and well able to fly by July What I talk about to some doesn't seem important their interests one might say elsewhere And such people could not tell you the difference between a rabbit and a hare. I don't talk to others of my young years my stories them would not interest I would not bore them with the story of how the blackbirds build their nest Or of how the sparrows under the house eaves make their nests of feathers and hay But if all were alike life would be boring and each to their own as they say. I don't talk to others about Nature for talk of Nature would them only bore They don't want to hear how in early Spring the swallows leave a distant shore For to return to the place they were born in that does not interest them at all So stories of my young years and Nature to others I do not recall.