Millstreet's Last Old Fashioned Rhymer Poem by Francis Duggan

I may die as I live without much to my name
To be Millstreet's last old fashioned rhymer my one claim to minor fame
The word poet never does apply to such as me
The stuff I pen born to mortality.

From the countryside by Clara I've been too long away
I would feel a stranger in Millstreet today
A stranger in Claraghatlea and Millstreet Town
Where I once did know of some local renown.

When Clara wore a hat of December snow
I left the old Parish twenty three years ago
A cold wintery wind from the mountains did blow
And Finnow in brown flood waters bank high did flow.

Through rushy fields wet after recent heavy rain
The old river swollen by dyke and by drain
In old places that often inspired me to rhyme
But that is going back a few decades in time.

The babes of the eighties into adults did grow
And in Millstreet nowadays many I would not know
From the fields he once loved far south and far away
Millstreet's last old fashioned rhymer is ageing and gray.