Maureen Sheridan - Issue 34

Maureen Sheridan was born and raised in a small farming community just outside the village of Portglenone in Co. Antrim, N.Ireland. Life in the early nineteen fifties in that close-knit rural community was very different from the thrust and frenzy of today.

Having studied English Language and Literature at Queen’s University Belfast, in the late nineteen seventies, I went on to spend the next forty years in teaching in the south of England. My final position was as Principal of a secondary school in Reading, Berkshire from which I retired in 2012.

I moved back to N. Ireland with my husband Geoff in 2014 and we settled near Randalstown in another rural community, not far from where I grew up. We divide ourselves between there and our coastal holiday home in Ballycastle.

Not surprisingly perhaps these two place- types reflect strongly on the person I am. I have always loved nature and the sea-the rural and the coastal, and how these are portrayed in poetry, prose, art and music.

In retirement, I have developed a love of gardening and a fascination with the seasonal movement of things. I have also joined a small, local writing group and begun to experiment in prose and poetry. I find great satisfaction in playing with the nuances and the sounds of language and the evocative power of strong imagery.

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Summer Visitor

There you were in broad daylight

Clinging strong- footed to the mesh of the feeder

Upright, regal, stout-beaked,

Head jabbing

Gorging

Hammer-drill in black and white

Red undertail patch adorning your creamy chest 

I watched in admiration

Fascination

Honoured that you chose my garden

Proud of your ravenous approval

Of the feed on the big sycamore tree

Before your swift undulating exit

To the top of the high conifers

For two whole weeks you fed and fetched

For chicks secure in their cavity

Excavated by sheer endeavour

Until the day of fledging

What tender beauty nature shared

When you brought your babies to the table

And taught them how to feed

And to survive

Lowering your moustachioed head

Easing the peanut pulp into wide-eager beaks

Teaching them to cling, to swivel

To use their long, strong tails

For balance and anchor

To reverse-shimmy down the trunk

To ‘freeze’ and play dead if danger is near

To rule supreme at the peanut feeder

Sharp dirk with your stiletto- beak,

Repelling others that dared to approach

So fly on my sleek woodpecker

And your band of immatures

I’ll miss your games of hide and seek

Black, white, cream and red

The hours of fun and joy you brought

To crown an Irish summer.