Breadcrumbs: Hope and Other Complications

By Pat O'Doherty

Each of us has a journey to make and a story to tell, of love or loss, joy or tragedy, spring or winter. Yet the journey is always signposted by those glimpses of hope we encounter on the way, whether in the people we have known, the friendships we have cherished, the wonders of the world around us, or the many other miracles that make every day of our life.
These poems are such signposts, acknowledging the reality that hope can sometimes be frustrated, diminished, or even forlorn, but all rooted in the author's Christian faith that ultimately, as we walk on our search for God, we do not walk alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666778557

Pat O'Doherty

Patrick O’Doherty is an educationalist and was principal of Lumen Christi College in Derry, Northern Ireland from 2003 to 2016. He is the author of Searching in Circles (2021).

Book preview

Searching In Circles

We are all of us

celestial navigators,

searching in circles

to find origin and end,

and ever

equidistant

from the centre.

The Searchers

Western philosophy kept the dialectic simple.

In black and white we were

settlers or searchers.

There were always the dirt farmers

fenced by the barbs they themselves erected

and reaping only scorn,

or costumed bystanders serving liquor et al,

before fading into background,

poor penned extras lacking credit.

We aspired to identify with the other,

drifters on windswept plains,

pursuing love or desperadoes,

alien as the Indian in the badlands,

or, silent and imposing in saloons,

mixing justice with our whiskeys.

But even seekers are goal-bound,

and unearthing pearl or wisdom

merely makes the credits roll.

And then what?

Fumbling in the theatre’s silent darkness

before the light comes on again?

Or wondering when it was

that genre changed

and we became the extras in our own production,

mummified domestics and horrified professionals?

Or do we settle for the search,

for treasure or for truth,

and leave the dialectic unresolved ?

Walled City

From the city’s walls, it is tempting to look down on anonymity,

grey gridiron of terraced streets and slated roofs

vainly vying to be different in sameness,

pebbledash and double glazing taunting concrete wall and wood.

We are insidiously drawn to the different,

murals colouring corner walls and painted flagstone kerbs

where artists strive to broadcast freedom on communal canvas

but propagate still another canned conformity.

It needs a more discerning eye, though, to focus

on the children playing kerbie with the