Memories of Arklow Rock

In my mind I see
drifting in life's purged recollections
Memories and echoes calling
down the long road of years
And I can almost taste
what my eyes then beheld
A sweep of water curling to the Hanging Stone
The pinnacle of Arklow Rock caught
in a cleaving of deep blue
And the sun's very light flowing down
in a dappled swarm of crepescular currents
And there along the slopes of the Little Rock
a breeze...warm with the promise of Summer
The sibilant chirr of the grasshoppers
in the high verges of a childhood road
And those salt laden winds from the sea
washed over the expectant faces
in the Rock School Playground
The growing childhood years
festooned with the trappings of simplicity
The yearning learning days
the hard wild stature of growing
ready for a thousand destinies
spread over hopeful future days
But I hear a mournful echo
of how the life and times once were
A time when days refused to close
and I played and played till Mother's call
brought me home
I long to walk again
those old unburnished roads turning
and feel the energy of youth
to see parents now gone to rest
and friends now grown and spread
where are you all now
the unlined and pure faces of my youth
oh those rich and sighing summers
and with forging a time of heroes
we held and ruled the wild world
of our home fields and hills
We are lost now to cold maturities calling
fraying the edges of childhood days
All you childhood friends and places
forever caught in the sacred web
of younger days and memories
And those long Summers fading away
And fading away
And now........
Forever gone