Catalina - a review

review

Catalina available at Amazon.

It is

here
Catalina

or you can go into a bookshop and order it
Catalina
by Danny Fahey
published by Dragonfall Press
ISBN 978-0-9852517-2-7

go on - you know you want to - and it would be fantastic for my publisher - a wonderful independant company from W.A.

Go on.

John Lennon

Imagine

Catalina

To celebrate having a copy of Catalina in my hand here is

Moullinex


Catalina

Catalina paperback

So I have the proof in my hand. Catalina is now a paperback!

Lee, the cover is brilliant.

Just need to give it a read for a final approval and then its off to the best seller list surely....

It's a great feeling, holding the book in your hand, smells like a newborn babe, weighs about seven years of your time - it becomes real.

Evolution

I crossed them proverbial tracks,

walked the bridge, swam the divide,

left the wrong side and sought shelter

in the place of plenty and light.

The cost casts shadows still -

it seems the new home is no home at all;

inside the boy crawls to a corner

and watches shadows play upon the wall,

remembers his beginnings on that side,

hears the screams and feels the hard hand

or the taunts and bullying tricks

of his brothers and school friends – fear makes a terrible bed partner;

works its way into your psyche like urine

trickling across the sheets.

There were the nights when father chased someone

around the entire block, a brother or sister, hitting their ear,

or other nights lying in bed listening to the brewing overspill

of alcohol and far too long working hours.

I crossed over

but the secrets remain and draw patterns

I can never escape

no matter how far I run

but my children

have had no such nights, never felt the belt,

the tongue lash or had to walk a night street

searching for a sister to the sound

of crinkling venetian blinds as neighbours

drank their fill of some other poor sucker’s misery.

My children have no bridge to cross,

no tracks to bother with -

they are the success

despite all my accumulated failures,

they are the proof the climb out of the pit,

despite the scars and injuries, is worth the effort.

Stirring the pot of memories

The jasmine returns, white faced, blush of pink,

the tendrils lacing through my mind,

reaching back into the dark bin of years -

walking along the dirt track in Blackburn,

heading towards the lake – I was

a student of Drama, a  stumbling writer of poetry,

wearing the white cotton shirt, with the three buttons

and large collar, that I dearly loved

and lost, like so many things,

one drunken night somewhere, with someone -

Most likely I woke in the morning and it was gone

without a memory of where or how

as I said

like so many things -

It was the 70’s or perhaps

it was fresh-faced 1980 and drugs were freely shared

without the desperation there appears to be nowadays

or was it just

that I was so much younger then and unaware

of the desperation, thinking it

was just the normal state of being, as if my feet

were always in rich loam, fed

by the rain of new experiences and the feel

of new hands to hold, like roots gripping the earth?

We shared a house in Laburnum,

it had Jasmine -

that’s the trigger, the scent, the pink flowers that haven’t opened,

the ones that have, and your face somewhere,

wrapped in all those tendrils,

the words lost but the ache

throbs still, verdant even after all these years.

We may grow old and we may grow weary

but our memories

are forever ours and, like scent,

remind us of all the chances lost,

the way our lives, like the jasmine’s creeping tendrils,

take us always in search of the light

but, mistakenly, away from it also.