I Would Need Five Thousand Dollars

For years I knew nostalgia and my heart ruled my head And now I am regretting the silly things I've said Like I'd go home to Millstreet to greet the flowers of May When wild born birds are singing in woodlands far away. And though I'd love to see old Claraghatlea it will not be this year For I don't have much money and flight tickets are dear I'd need five thousand dollars that seems a big amount I only have three hundred left in my bank account. I got over nostalgia and now for Ireland I don't pine And I love this big Country of birdsong and sunshine Of huge gums and acacias and paddocks wide and brown One hundred miles in places to the nearest country town The mountain ash of Sherbrooke reach upwards towards the sky And crimson rosellas chirping in small flocks as they fly And under the cloak of darkness you hear the boobook cry And bickering possums hissing on garden tree nearby. A Land of rugged beauty for want of a better name Of droughts and storms and bushfires but a great Land just the same And when currawongs the crow sized birds pipe welcome to the rain Places quite brown for months on end are looking green again. And though I can't afford flight ticket in some ways I'm not poor For I still have vivid memories of the fields of Annagloor In the coolness of the morning the meadow pipit sing And robin on flowering hawthorn tree pipes his melodies of Spring. O'er wet and rushes places the curlew flies around And pleasant sounds his fluting above his breeding ground And o'er the lush green meadows swallows fly to and fro And the dipper he is singing where the stream rapids flow. The sheep are high on Clara hill tomorrow will be fine Another day or maybe more of beautiful sunshine The Winter wet and frosty and the fields were often gray But we may get a fine Summer let's hope so anyway. I've overcome nostalgia and I've left my past behind And in this wide brown Country happiness I did find And though the landscape may seem blackened where the bushfires have been through You will notice some greenery within a month or two I would love to visit Millstreet for I still have good friends there But flight tickets too expensive and I do not have the fare I would need five thousand dollars that seems a big amount And I only have three hundred left in my bank account.