Rage, Rage
21
A yellow-bellied
sapsucker hops over
syrup-sticky squares.
His hand-carved
chess board
glistens
as feasting flies
swarm, dark,
beneath the sun.
My thoughts
are deeply rooted.
They branch out,
walk wordless
through stark
realities.
I raise my hands
But hear only silence.
The answers to my questions
tumble from the tree
and lay their leaves to rest
in the restless foliage
shuffled at tree foot
by the wind.
Rage, Rage
20
Words emerge
from the silence
of blood and bone.
They break that silence
the day they are born.
Silence, once broken,
cannot be repaired
and a word once spoken
cannot be recalled.
The greatest gifts –
knowing how and when
to sink into silence,
knowing how to be alone
in the middle of a crowd,
So many word-worlds
smothered at birth
and those worlds, dismissed,
forgotten, still-born,
their names never spoken.
Comment:
So, are you paying attention? Did you notice anything? Has something gone missing? Moo tells me that he doesn’t think anyone will notice what I have. Can you prove him wrong? Good question! Whatever, as they say, or “So what?” as Miles Davies plays. Or, as Buddy Holly once sang “I guess it doesn’t matter any more.”
Moo wants me to tell you that he painted this painting last night. He calls it No More Blues. Guess what? There are no blue shades in it. Cunning, eh? And daylight hours are back up to 9:30 – 9.5 hours sunlight on this cold, wintry day. And it is cold at -14C. On the other hand, Moo’s painting is toasty warm and you can hold up your chilled fingers and warm them on his painted fires.
As for me, I am having great fun preparing my writing for competitions that I never win. I am also paying to enter them. But I choose carefully nowadays – so many publications and competitions want so much money just for sending them a manuscript they will possibly never read and probably (nay, almost certainly) reject. I am so happy that I do not have to live off my earnings. I have 17 books on KDP Amazon and guess what? I received $3.61 in earnings in 2025. And I must declare it on my tax forms. I hope it doesn’t send me up a tax bracket!
I guess it’s a case of Fly me to the stars and let me see what writing pays on Jupiter and Mars. Not much probably. I bet they don’t read poetry in any of those Mars Bars I am always reading about. That said, I wonder what language Mars Barmen speak? And do they have Mars Bar Flies, like we have Bar Flies here on earth? Oh the wonders of language and the Joy of Words. The Joy of Six, as well – and that’s Sex in Latin. Get the joke? Oh, to be multilingual, now that spring’s a coming. Easy now. Don’t get too excited. And look at all those little white angels flying in Moo’s painting.
Ice Storm
This month and my life
are nearly done.
Sun strengthens in the sky
but birds ice up
in spite of feathers,
fluffed like eider downs.
Man alone,
within warm walls,
can bravely laugh
at winter’s squalls.
But oh, if the power fails,
if wires are tumbled
by winter’s gusting gales,
man’s heart no longer
fills with ease.
He sits at home
in the cold and dark
while all around him,
ice covers the land
and even fire dogs
freeze.
Rage, Rage
18
I nod off again and dream
of a summer beach,
burning sand, tide way out,
sparkling waves, clouds moving,
inaudible, as they drift by.
I dream of my beginning
and find a forlorn formlessness
that sought the solace of sound
only to discover waves and wind
as I drifted on an amniotic sea.
The wind of change has blown.
I awake and pick up my book.
Voltaire –
“Si jeunesse savait,
si vieillesse pouvait.”
“If youth knew,
if age were able to.”
Comment:
The wind of change has blown and, by all accounts, it is still blowing. A Nor’ Easter here, swinging down from the Arctic and bringing us cold weather, ice, and more snow. Driving isn’t too bad, for the roads are cleared regularly, especially when schools are in. Most enterprises have cleaned, salted, and sanded their premises. Some haven’t. Yesterday, it took two people to move my shopping cart from the shop to the car, a matter of about thirty yards. The wind was so strong. It tussled and tugged, drove me where I didn’t want to go, and two people stepped in to help me. Then I discovered an undug doorway. I parked my car at a sharp upward angle, on the snow. A man offered me his arm. I said no, but he stood beside me, hands held out to help, just in case. Leaving that same shop, I was accompanied by a young lady who insisted on carrying my bags, taking my arm, and leading me to my car. The dangers of falling on down hill ice were even greater than going uphill.
I dream of my beginning, more and more often nowadays and now-a-nights. I know, spell check underlined that word. A neologism, not a proper word. But I like it, for though I dream by day, nodding suddenly into a shallow sleep, it is by night that I really do my dreaming.
At night, I find I can roam a world that has become hostile in the light of day. I can, and do, dream of my childhood on the Gower Peninsula. The fields are still there. My grandmother walks among the bluebells, and together we tell the time by the old dandelion clock. The larks still rise on Bishopston Common and Bluebells, Cowslips, and Primroses still hide beneath the trees. The sands at Brandy Cove are still clean. There is no pollution in my dreams and no oilers clear their tanks in the pristine waters of the Severn Estuary. There is no industrial haze and, on a clear day, I can still see, from the steps of the bungalow, Ilfracombe, across the bay.
And the people – my family and friends are still there. My uncles and aunts, my cousins, all young still, my parents and my grandparents … and all my dogs return, one by one, from their canine adventures. At night the cows can be heard crunching grass, and wheezing in my dreams. I met one, once, on a night trip to the outhouse – we had no indoor plumbing. And, on one memorable night, I stepped into a wet, warm cow patty, left like an anti-personal landmine, just outside the back door. I still shiver as I think of that warmth creeping up between my toes. No amount of wiping has ever really removed it. It haunts like the ghosts of summers past that drift at midnight round my room. waiting to be plucked from the air.
Rage, Rage
16
I doze in my chair.
The book I am reading
tumbles to the floor.
I fumble with my claw
and its metal hand
pincers the book,
then raises it.
The cat needs feeding.
I pick up her bowl
with my claw
but scatter her kibble
on the floor.
I can’t remember
where I put
the garden kneeler –
I just leave the kibble
where it lies.
Icing on the cake,
I pop my pills and now
I’ll feel less pain
for an hour or two.
17
On my own.
Outwitting old age,
accepting its growing limitations
with as much grace and humor
as I can and must.
Trying to feel no bitterness.
That aspirin this morning,
falling into my shirt,
then appearing on the floor
a moment before
I sat on the loo.
A blue-eyed, mini-aspirin
winking at me quite happily.
I reached for my claw,
picked the pill up
and swallowed it,
washing it down with a smile,
and a draught of laughter.
Comments:
I doze in my chair. Just about sums it up. I remember playing darts in the Red Lion, Knowle, Bristol. When I threw an occasional good dart, the locals would whisper “Dozy, dozy.” To them it meant “lucky, lucky.” After a bit, I began to play better. One of the professionals made me my own darts set. Hand made. Adjusted to how I throw. I got better and better. One night, playing 301, double in, double out, I needed 131 to finish. I made it in a three dart finish – 57 (treble 19) – 42 (treble 14) – 32 (double 16). This was the only three dart finish, over 100, that I ever made!
I left the darts there. “Weed the board,” they shouted – meaning – clear the board of wasted darts so the next player could throw. “Check!” I countered, meaning I wanted them to check that I had won the game. “Dozy, dozy,” they cried. And, if I went back there, more than sixty years later, those who survived, and remembered, would still call me Dozy.
So, I sit here and doze about my life. The good days, the bad days, the in-between days. Faces drift in and out – [that’s why Moo painted me the picture] – and sometimes I can put names to them and sometimes not. And that’s life. A collection of personal memories – very vivid – and a selection of faces that we can no longer name and names to whom we can no longer fit a face.
My life – A blue-eyed, mini-aspirin winking at me quite happily.
Rage, Rage
14
As for you, my love,
one moment you were with me,
at the airport,
the next, you were not.
I turned away for a second,
and, when I looked again,
you had walked
through the boarding gate,
and passed out of my life.
Now, I can’t think straight.
Hair leaks from my head
like straw from a scarecrow.
My teddy bear brain
has morphed from sawdust
into a mess of lonely grey jelly.
15
Memories deceive me
with their flickering
shadow shows.
Shapes shift with a click
of the magician’s fingers.
What magic lantern
now slips its subtle slides
across night’s screen?
Desperate, I lap,
like a wild Alpine goat,
at salt-licks
that increase my thirst
and drive me
deeper into thick,
black clouds
of want and need.
Comments:
Shapes shift with a click of the magician’s fingers. Indeed, they do. I love the shape-shifting nature of snow. One day, the ash tree stands stark against dark pines. The next, the garden is winter white and the trees are dressed in their fine wedding garments. The table is no longer a table, though I do not know exactly what it has turned into. The distant trees seem to lean in close. The railings lose their summer dirt and snow turns everything inside out and upside down.
It reminds me of Pete Seeger – “Snow, snow, falling down, covering up this dirty little town.” Except the garden isn’t dirty, just a little abandoned in winter until the snow arrives, or, even better, the ice storm, followed by sun, when we suddenly seem to live in the heart of an icy diamond, looking out.
Rage, Rage
12
So many solitudes,
each of us alone in our minds,
isolated by our memories.
You, my love,
have your own solitude now,
far away, with them in Ottawa.
I am in my own solitude,
here in Island View,
alone with the cat.
You call me on Skype,
and as we chat,
the cat hears your voice,
delicate, distant,
and, running to the sound,
jumps up onto the table.
She sniffs the screen,
but finds no trace
of your familiar smell.
13
She sees shadows,
moving shapes
that flow back and forth
on the computer screen.
You call her
by her favourite names
and her muscles tense,
her whiskers bristle.
Now she refuses to eat
her food and hisses
if I come too close.
She won’t sleep by night or day.
She just stalks the house
moving from room to room
desperately seeking you.
She vomits in my chair
to tell me how she feels
about being left alone with me.
Whatever will I do with her
while you’re away?
Comment:
Old age and solitude. A terrible combination. Old age is not for Sissies. Indeed it isn’t. First there’s the loneliness. Then there’s the aches and pains – Aix-les-Bains, as we used to call them. The occasional confusion – did I take my tablets, or not? How many? Did I double up on my diuretics?
Diuretics – now that’s another question. What did Shakespeare write, in Hamlet? Ah yes, I remember now! “To pee or not to pee – that is the questions.” Now was that a voiced “B” or an unvoiced “P”? And that’s another question. One we have to live with on a daily basis. Daily? Hourly? Every fifteen minutes when the diuretics kick in.
“To be or not to be?” Well, quite simply, I am very happy to be. To be myself, to be left alone, to still be here, to still be on the green side of the grass – though it was pretty brown last year with all that drought and doubt.
Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not mine to see. Alas, it is sometimes mine to clean up afterwards. And ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies!
Rage, Rage
11
In one room in my head
my mother’s mother
sits at the kitchen table,
with me on her knee,
playing patience.
In another room,
I stand on a stool in the kitchen
helping my father’s mother
to mix the cake she’ll bake
in her coal-fired oven.
My mother’s father
sits before the television,
leaning back in the chair,
raising his foot so he can’t see
the adverts on the screen,
putting his fingers in his ears
so he can’t hear them.
My father’s father lies in bed,
his dog beside him.
The dog licks his hand,
waiting, like all of us,
for the death that threatened
since he was gassed
in World War One.
I sit at the computer,
following the figures
that track the latest pandemic
singing softly to myself
“¡Qué será, será!”
Comments:
Brightlands – 1956 – we sat behind the goal posts, watching the soccer First XI playing. A dream of Doris Day drifted down to us and we sang this song as we watched the game. Strange how a moment in time can suddenly reappear in full clarity and grace us with its remembered presence. Beside us, the River Severn, Sabrina, in Latin – flowed out to the sea. Then the tide turned. The river ceased to flow, and the Severn Bore swept everything before it as we gazed in amazement at the rolling clash of river and tide.
Above, I have posted five memories, each taken from a small room in my head, and turned into words. “In my father’s house, there are many mansions.” And I can say the same of the memories that crowd my head. Some as bright as the bright lands where our school played their school, some as raging as the fight between the river and the sea, as witnessed by the tidal bore, and some as dark as the mist and fog that always fell with the change of river and tide.
So – what about your memories? Does a word here or a word there, a phrase or a metaphor, make you stop for a moment and explore the Olde Curiositie Shop that thrives in the attic in your own mind? I do hope so. For that is what I would like to think, that my words are stirings that jerk the puppets of memory that dwell in each of our minds. I would be so happy to know that a thought of mine has set your own mind dancing to tunes of its own.
Never mind. “¡Qué será, será!” Whatever will be, will be.
Rage, Rage
10
My body’s house
has many rooms
and you, my love,
are present in them all.
I glimpse your shadow
in the mirror, and your breath
brushes my cheek
when I open the door.
Where have you gone?
I walk from room to room,
but when I seek,
I no longer find
and nothing opens
when I knock.
Afraid, sometimes,
to enter a room,
I am sure
you are in there.
I hear your footsteps.
Sometimes your voice
breaks the silence
when you whisper my name
in the same old way.
Comment:
Rage, Rage – and still I rage against the dying of the light and, like Dylan Thomas, ask the ageing of this world not to go gentle into that dark night. Yet, as my beloved and I age, we watch day’s shadows growing longer, and night stealing steadily along. What can we do?
Well, since the winter solstice, we can start counting the minutes as each day adds a minute or two and gifts some more light and strength to the sun. Sunrise today – 8:03 AM. Sunset today – 5:09 PM. That means 9 hours and 6 minutes of sunlight. Well, it would, if it weren’t cloudy, with a cold wind, and a dropping temperature. My guess is that it will get dark much before it ought to. And that’s not nice – no respect!
Of course, my beloved is a sun bunny and a Leo, and she perishes in these shortened days. I was born in them and they don’t affect me as badly as they do her. But I can still Rage, Rage, because there is so much to rage about – icy streets, the usual potholes, roads that hide ice beneath a thin covering of snow, some strange drivers who don’t seem to have bought winter tires. Oh yes, I love them. One came twisting and turning down the same side of the road as me only this morning. Luckily he hit the snow bank before he hit me. But, I ask you, what was he thinking?
So there’s Rage, and Rage Rage, and also Road Rage. Way to go! I think we should call a national rage day and all stay home for 24 hours, just to cool us all down for a bit. Oh dear, that might lead to cabin fever – and that would be an out–Rage.
1
The Day Before
My Birthday
Warm air.
Cold snow.
Grey ghosts of memory
drift beneath the trees.
If it were fall …
… if the sun were to shine …
rainbows would grace
the spun webs of spiders
clinging to the trees.
If, if, if …
A warm winter day,
or so they say,
snow diminishing,
a wind from the south,
up from Florida,
rain on its way.
My birthday tomorrow.
The temperature to fall
way below the date.
-16C on January 16.
My fate
to be a winter baby,
to never know
what the weather
will be like
on that date.
2
My Birthday
I won’t sit here
with head in hands
fearing the future
or brooding on the past.
Every day I survive
is a bonus now,
each sunrise
a celestial celebration.
I welcome daylight
with open arms and now,
on my birthday,
I will accept
all gifts with joy.
Sunshine floods through me.
It fills me with hope.
Its beacon beams .
A full tide of love
overflows in my heart.
Comment:
Bilbo Baggins gave away presents on his birthday. Today it is my birthday and I have joined with Moo to give away two poems, the first written yesterday, and the second today. Moo painted the picture, as always, and presented it to me for my birthday. A nice gift. Thank you, Moo.
I got some other nice gifts too. In the local superstore I discovered Polvorones. I have never seen them there before. It is a long time since I have seen them here in New Brunswick. So, what a lovey find that was. Tengo polvorones.
I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. That’s why I never break them. That said, I do intend, and Moo agrees with me, to start posting regularly once more. So hang on to your hats – and let’s see how long that intention lasts.
rogermoorepoet 