Just click on Teeth in the link above (2019, December).
Don’t forget to turn your sound on!
By all means copy and send to friends.
More to come. I hope.
Happy New Year.
Aging
Story Slam — Teeth
Story Slam — Teeth
One of my short stories, broadcast in a podcast out of Vancouver.
Just click on Teeth in the link above. Turn up your volume.
By all means, copy and send to your friends.
Grandpa
Grandpa
Going back in time,
to a better time,
an innocent time,
when we believed
in frost and rime,
and Santa Claus
and Christmas.
Stockings hung
with hope and joy
and filled with
tiny things and toys,
an apple, an orange,
a chocolate bar,
small things
brought in
from afar.
My grandpa, who
had not been good,
with a carrot,
an onion, coal,
and wood,
but a smile
on his face
and his red
underwear.
I often see him
standing there,
beside the fire,
beneath the tree.
He still means
oh so much to me.
Ephemera
Ephemera
‘The day I was born, I took my first step on the path to death.’ Thus spoke Francisco de Quevedo, the Spanish poet born in 1580, died in 1645. “Am I going to die, Father?” “We’re all going to die, Patrick. We just don’t know how, where, or when.” This from the Sharpe’s Rifles Series. I can’t remember which show, but I remember the scene.
Ephemera / ephemeral: butterflies on a rock, on a flower, in a summer garden, blown away in a puff of wind. And that’s what we all are. “For whether we last the night, or no, / I’m sure is only touch and go.” Dylan Thomas: Under Milkwood. Or under Idlewood, Island View, as I like to rewrite it.
“Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” / “Where are lost year’s snows?” François Villon. “No hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño” / “There are no birds in last year’s nests.” Miguel de Cervantes.
One of my friends, twenty-five years younger than me, wrote to me today speaking of how fragile he felt. Another friend wrote me last week, mid-forties, going into another round of cancer. How long do we have? How do we face our individual end? How do we pass through that door that opens for us, and each one of us alone? I have no answers. I remember pushing my father in a wheelchair around the cancer ward. I remember sitting with my mother, needles inserted in her arm, her arm a sunset of bruises.
Where do we go? What will become of us? What will we do when the dandelion clock runs down and that last puff of wind bows us into eternity? Horas non numero nisi serenas / I count only the happy hours. These words come from the old Roman sundial. I first read them in a children’s book: The Puppy Who Lost his Wag. Does anyone remember that book? Or was it just an ephemeral publication, lost in the tides of time? Villon, Cervantes, and anonymous author … pobres poetas de hoy: polvo seco de tesis doctoral / today’s poor poets: dry dust of a doctoral thesis. (José María Valverde, a very good friend).
Et ego in Arcadia vixi / and I in Arcadia have lived. It is, and has been, a wonderful life. I feel the sands of time trickling though my fingers. I feel the waters running dry in Antonio Machado’s clepsidra / his water clock. And I am not afraid. I rejoice in who I am and what I have been. My puppy dog life has regained its wag and the sun shines on my sundial.
Let it snow ….
Let it snow …
A New Year, a new snowblower, and the same beautiful handy-person. Luckily I can cook, so when the hard work is done, that handy-person can sit down to hot tea and buttered crumpets. Oh the joys of retirement. Some never retire, though, and a handy-person’s work is never done. Mind you, cooking, for me, is a joy, not a chore, so I don’t ever think of it as ‘work’, that nasty, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon four-letter word. In fact, come to think of it, teaching and research were joys, never chores. As a result, I have never done a day’s work in my life. Nor did I ever want to.
And that’s what I wish you all for the New Year: brave blossoms that stand out against a snowy background, joys that make each day a pleasure and never a grind, happiness that drowns out the daily sorrows of this Vale of Tears through which we are passing, and a clock without hands, so that you never have to count the hours as the days tick slowly by.
May each morning fill you with joy, happiness, and a sense of adventure. And may the evening sky fill you with peace and contentment for a day well lived.
The Yfory* Tower
The Yfory* Tower
“Tomorrow never comes,” they told me,
because, by the time it gets here,
it’s already today.
All my tomorrows are woven into today’s
threads of mist that weave silk scarves
around the open-mouthed trees,
ensuring their silence
Silence, save for click of cat’s claws,
slither of pen over page, tapping of keys,
letters turned into words, words that worm
their way over the page, soundless, into my head.
Geese fly high, arrowing their way to the south.
Autumn is on the wing as days shorten.
Cold weather will be here tomorrow
even though they tell me that tomorrow never comes.
Beethoven rewrites the Fifth. I refuse to open the door
when the postmen knocks, bearing his fatal message.
I guess he’ll be back tomorrow, although they tell me
that tomorrow never comes.
Yfory*:
Yfory, the Ivory Tower, means tomorrow in Welsh.
So Sweet
So Sweet
Withered I am
and soon will perish
I cherish this brief
last leaf-light bright
on tree and pond
Stark the flooded
trunks of beaver-
gnawed trees
their sails no
longer leaf-clad
Fall’s canvas
a paradise
for lost and lonely
philosopher-poets
tree-bright their light
Stored sunshine
aged in maple
birch forest oak
soaked up
in summer life
so brief so sweet
Sheep
Sheep
I wear the hide of the sheep
they slaughtered for me
twenty-three years ago
in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Like a sheep led to slaughter
I wait in the waiting room
along with other willing victims.
Heads down, silent, we clutch
open magazines, but do not
lift our heads or make eye contact.
In World War One, French troops
bleated like sheep as they marched
in tight columns towards Verdun.
They were disciplined and decimated,
one in ten shot for cowardice.
Is it cowardly to sit here, shivering,
glum faced, as we await
bad news and an uncertain fate?
I hate this uncertainty,
this inability to know what
is happening to my body.
Knowledge I can face, but
not doubt’s shadow dancing
like a will-o’-the wisp, and
leading who knows where,
keeping me awake as it did,
last night, stoking my fears
into this red-hot furnace
filled with burning coals
of fierce, fired-up doubt.
True bravery is to know fear,
to face it, and to face it down,
and to laugh in its face even
though your heart is breaking
and your gut tells you to run,
now, before it’s too late.
On Editing
On Editing
Some editors are really very good. They take the initial idea of the artist and polish it, turning what was an average piece into a great one. Others are not so good and turn an average piece into an automatic rejection.
On my kitchen wall hangs a line-painting by Geoff Slater representing one of last year’s hollyhocks from my garden. He gave it to us as a Christmas present, and I am very proud of it. Finley loved it too. She followed with great glee the white line that starts and ends Geoff’s painting. Then she stared at me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m writing a story.”
“What’s it about?”
“A thin red line.”
“Oh!”
A little bit later, I saw my pens and pencils strewn across the table. My sketch book lay open and I noticed that an editor had edited some of my work. My thin red line had morphed from illusion to reality and there it lay, twisting in and out of the tangled web I had created the day before. Clearly, my average creation needed the touch of a four year old editor and apprentice line-drawer to move from average to genius.
Oh the joy and creativity of a four year old! It took Picasso nearly fifty years to learn to draw like that again. And here’s another painting by this prodigious four year old. I got this one for Christmas last year, too. Alas, it is not signed.
“Don’t you want to add some more?” My daughter asked her daughter.
“No. It’s finished.”
And so have I.
Springle Dance
Springle Dance
I guess the title comes from Tolkien where the Hobbits begin an energetic dance at Bilbo’s Party. Or something like that. Mine is a Fall Girl Dance. The hand on the right points to the poor misshapen heart as it moves between fall leaves and colorful dancing sprites and spirits that help it on its way. Where is it going? Who knows where the autumn leaves go once they leave the tree? The bodies fall to the ground, obviously. We rake them into dry, crisp piles and our children and grand-children dive into those leaf-piles, scattering them everywhere so we have to rake them up again. Think of them, the children, as forming leaf angels, a bit like snow angels, but, like the broken heart, a great deal more fragmented.
Try as I might with camera and photo shop, the colors are never quite what they were when I splashed them haphazardly, like September rain and wind-blown leaves, across the page. But life is like that: memories are discolored and distorted, old photos turn sepia, old folk turn white and grey and wrinkled and fragile, like withered leaves from the tree of life. And this is life, real life. We live it every day. Each dream, a flower, each moment a leaf, and every moment the only one we ever truly experience.
So savor those moments, both the good and the bad. They are yours and nobody else’s. Your like is what happens to you. Sometimes it is bitter with salt and vinegar and lemon juice. Sometimes it is toxic and poisonous. But it is yours. It is your chalice to drain as you stand in the garden, feeling betrayed. Like it or not, this is you. Then there are the dream moments: sugar and spice and everything nice. On those days, when the sun shines, it’s away with slugs and snails, and puppy-dog tails and hello hollow world, I see you for what you are and I welcome you for what you are. And yes, you can meet with triumph and disaster, and you can treat those two impostors just the same. You are more powerful than the forces around you. Centre yourself. Find yourself. Heal your broken heart as it wanders among the springle dancers sent to bring you peace and comfort.
Look for your self. Find your self. Be your self. You and your self are stronger than any woes that may beset you. Seek the light … and you will find it.
rogermoorepoet 