The Milltown area is home to several published writers and poets, including Tim Doyle who wrote about his adventures in the Guards, Bill Hearne who writes children’s stories and Patrick V. O’Sullivan, author of “I heard the Wild Bird Sing – A Kerry Childhood” published by Anvil books. Patrick lives in Callinafercy and the following poem shows his great love of the area. There also follows a poem by local writer and musician Thomas O’Sullivan on Milltown’s Abha Solais river, which was once

Callinafercy

The trees are fresh and green in Callinafercy
The small birds sing sweetly their joy to proclaim,
It’s there I would be happy, with soft winds to caress me,
And my heart forever to dance to the blackbirds refrain.

Around the old schoolhouse, the robins gather near,
They came to holly boughs and fill the day with song.
It was there the children played in the springtime of the year,
When the daffodils displayed and cold winter days were gone.

The trees are fresh and green in Callinafercy,
Among the leafy groves the thrushes love to sing.
And in the still of evening, with happy thoughts to bless me,
I’d watch the golden sun, dip behind Sliabh Mish again.

Down the old boreen, in memory I stray,
I see again the Reeks, rimmed with snow across the sky.
I hear the curlews call in the gleaming of the bay,
And the winds that softly blow, play a gentle lullaby

The trees are fresh and green in Callinafercy,
The oak tree and the beech, the berried rowan too.
In the glowing of the fall, their beauty impress me,
When the leaves embrace again, their red and russet hue.

The lapwings take flight and twinkle in the sun.
The swans are swimming proudly down the river Maine.
Homeward in the evenings the fishermen would come,
Their boats low in the water with the salmon once again.

The trees are fresh and green in Callinafercy.
The rooks are winging low in Marshall’s demesne,
Then, thinking of the fort, it’s there I’d go directly,
And watch the Kerry cows grazing in the rain.

We’d sit beside the fire and revisit scenes we knew,
The making of the hay, the threshers merry hum.
We’d have songs of olden times and of regattas too.
The fiddlers with their tunes would gladden everyone.

The trees are fresh and green in Callinafercy,
When the cuckoo calls she brings the summer home,
The russet fox at dawn, his bearing so majestic –
IfI could wander back, I never more would roam.

The trees are fresh and green in Callinafercy,
The small birds sing sweetly their joy to proclaim.
It’s there I could be happy, with soft winds to caress me,
And my heart forever to dance to the blackbirds refrain.

Patrick V. O’Sullivan

Abha Solais

sprung from the groin of Nauntinaun bog:
fathered by the sweet mists of Farrannamanagh,
weaned-off the soft rains of Ballyvirrane –
from spring-new life i babble eagerly westward
to the sandstone peaks of Sliabh Mish
kindled by a dawning over the Paps of Anu.

i dwell the idle days under
furze, elder and birch-laden banks –
with the ‘sile ragaidh’ in alder shadowed pools
stalking minnow and eel from the Sargasso;
with ghostly figments of ‘jack-the-lantern’, the badger
and the skulking fox’s sup at nightfall.

in vigorous youth – forcefed into
alien turbine, cog and concrete crush,
a transmutation into candlepower one hundredfold
aiding the deft flick of ace and deuce
on a sandscrubbed kitchen table –
the camaraderie of winter nights long.

love-matched in Lyre with ‘Caol’ – slender and virile –
journeying together as we flow as one
flaunting troughs gouged deep in the bridal bed;
sentinels of bogoak lanterns illuminate the
cutting, carding, bleaching of flax and white linen
loomed to grace the tables of Spain;
I, the willing slave of MacCrohan,
Bear a bustling town on the ford –
‘Ath Solais’ – the gateway to Iveragh.

i bid adieu to the bedlam of commerce,
life’s labours lent to the dreamtime – ‘the fulton stone’;
i lounge in the new demesne
‘planted’ luscious in exotic fruits and
Bamboo from far-fetced continents.
hark! The cacophony of horn, hound, hoof and huntsman
running riot thro’ elm, chestnut, ash and
oak groves of the Albanagh.

the sea breeze beckons fro Dingle Bay,
i amble past White Church’s sombre gravestones
and languish in marshes of ‘gilcoch’ and rush;
the curlew’s cry and plainsong fomr Killaha’s cloister
augurs hollow…dark night descending,
the sun squats on Amergin – the moons’ over Macgillycuddy,
I flow to the Maine – the final cadence –
To the great Ocean, mother of all rivers.

“I am the River Of Light”
rejuvenated, risen –
again...again…again…

Thomas O’Sullivan