Skip to main content

What Side of the Road?


Continuing my deluge of poems in advance for the launch of Hedge Songs next week, here is another piece written for last week's "Wonderful Wander."

It was great that my mate and fellow poet Jim Deeds was able to be back wandering with us this year, though we retained the services of Dr. Mylie Brennan to keep our facts straight and the average age down!

As the three of us talked over the route in advance it was again interesting to note the different and similar perspectives of our city between Jim and me, him being brought up in the west as a Catholic and me an east Belfast Prod. Both our households got our "lemonade" from the "Maine Man" (see yesterday's poem), but as we talked about the Ormeau Road where we would come out of the Gasworks, he reminded me that in various parts of the city, including at this junction, in the "bad old days" the side of the road you walked on led to a presumption of whether you were a catholic of a protestant, and thus put you at risk of attack. It happened to me once at the Mountpottinger junction, and to Jim on the Stewartstown Road. 

Another thing that might have prompted undue attention in days gone by, and sadly possibly still in parts of our city, is whether you had an ash cross on your forehead on Ash Wednesday. You certainly didn't see them much in our part of the city. But last year it was a joy to share in the annual ecumenical Ash Wednesday Service in a church on the Shankill Road, another place such crosses would have been rarely seen in the past and would have marked you out as being from the "other side". As part of the service it was really moving to place an ash cross on the forehead of my fellow wanderer Jim.

This year the service is in our local Methodist Church in the Agape Centre, on the Lisburn Road at 7.30pm and you would be very welcome, whatever side of the road you walk on...

Those stories prompted this...


What foot do you kick with or dig turf with?

What school did you go to?

What football team do you support?

How do you spell your name?

Is that an Aitch or a Haitch?

What side of the road do you walk on,

And if you saw someone from the other side

Would you continue to walk by?  


What foot did the Samaritans kick with?

And what football team did they support?

What tell tale signs did they give off

To the highly trained eye

that they were not one of us?

Not to be trusted...

Selah


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Psalm for Harvest Sunday

A short responsive psalm for us as a call to worship on Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday, and given that it was pouring with rain as I headed into church this morning the first line is an important remembrance that the rain we moan about is an important component of the fruitfulness of the land we live in: You tend the land and water it And the earth produces its abundance. You crown each year with your bounty, and our storehouses overflow with your goodness. The mountain meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are filled with corn; Your people celebrate your boundless grace They shout for joy and sing. from Psalm 65
3 comments
Read more

Living under the Empire... (2) Where is Babylon?

We were driving back from school last week, talking about books that we had been reading and my younger son, Ciaran, asked me "Where is Babylon?" I have to confess that my history is better than my geography, and I said that it no longer exists as an inhabited city, but its ruins were to the north west of the current capital of Iraq, Baghdad. When I checked however, I discovered that it is actually about 50 miles south of Baghdad and the modern town is the administrative centre of the province of Babil... But just as the modern city is but a shadow of the historic capital of 2 ancient empires, first under Hammurabi in the 18th century BCE and then the "Neo-Babylonian" empire (under Nebuchadnezzar etc) in the 6th century BCE, so the earthly Babylonian empire/s was/were fleeting in comparison to the enduring metaphorical idea of Babylon. The original Empire under Hammurabi was probably the ultimate origin of some of the early Biblical stories, including the ...
2 comments
Read more

A Woman of no Distinction

Don't often post other people's stuff here... But I found this so powerful that I thought I should. It's a performance poem based on John 4: 4-30, and I have attached the original YouTube video below. A word for women, and men, everywhere... "to be known is to be loved, and to be loved is to be known." I am a woman of no distinction of little importance. I am a women of no reputation save that which is bad. You whisper as I pass by and cast judgmental glances, Though you don’t really take the time to look at me, Or even get to know me. For to be known is to be loved, And to be loved is to be known. Otherwise what’s the point in doing either one of them in the first place? I WANT TO BE KNOWN. I want someone to look at my face And not just see two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears; But to see all that I am, and could be all my hopes, loves and fears. But that’s too much to hope for, to wish for, or pray for So I don’t, not anymore. Now I keep to myself And by that ...
2 comments
Read more