simple little things

 

Tea with Farmer Jones.

"My lawn mower is broken," says I.

"What's wrong with it?" wonders he.

"It froze during the winter and the engine's as dead as the dodo," explaineth I.

"You'll have to get it repaired," sez he.

"I've left it in the sunshine today," sez I, "in the hope that the engine will warm up and start for me."

"Ha, ha, ha." remarks Farmer Jones.

"You don't think it'll work?" questioneth I.

"No chance," says he.

I bless myself and say a Hail Mary prayer.

"What are you doing?" enquires the man of the soil.

"I'm asking the Blessed Virgin to intercede for me so that the lawn mower will start," says I.

Farmer Jones is a man of faith but this did not seem to him to be a sensible application of it.

"Ha, ha, ha," he said again.

And this evening after I got home, I rang him and got his answering machine.

The message I left was the sound of a lawn mower engine roaring heartily about the truth of the universe.

god enthuses

 

tatterdemalion dandelions

ragamuffin buttercups

congregating in my garden

for a rapscallion raucous celebration

 of whatever it is

they're whooping it up

in carefree acclamation

breeze blown adoration

down the line of trees

and all along the cusp

a profusion of confusion

pointless yet magnifcently purposeful

the thought comes

sweet and paradoxical

in a mystical woodlands kind of way

they are just like the famous atheist Richard Dawkins

no wait listen

 we praise God in our very being

 men and flowers

in the lecture hall

and in the bowers

sometimes in spite of ourselves

perhaps on Judgement Day

the Deity may say

"Step forward Richard Dawkins

Well done true and faithful servant"

and the great scientist might sheepishly reply

"But I denied you every day"

then God will surely smile

"Yes but you inspired James Healy

to write his fragmentary lyric about dandelions

no really

with its odd internal rhythms

careless caressing cadences of mellifluity

its almost absent rhyme scheme

and wondrous random consistent incongruity

like the irish language hummed in english

effortlessly singing

jaunty joyful praise

I love that thing"