Angels

Springle Dance

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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.

Beach Heat

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Beach Heat

This is the beach at Goran Haven, with Clare, on the sands, trying not to lose her engagement ring. It’s still with us, in spite of having left it in a washroom on the 401. When one of the support columns of the solitaire broke, we found the stone lying on the floor of the car … that was another close call. As for the poem, well, I suppose it is one of mine.

The enlightened may recognize its structure as belonging to The Book of Good Love / El Libro de Buen Amor, written in the 14th Century (1330-1343, according to some, though it may be a little later, 1347?), by Juan Ruiz, El Arcipreste de Hita. This early verse imitates the rhythms and sequences of Juan Ruiz’s poem: In praise of small women. Not that Clare is small: she is taller than me, and always has been. She is also younger than me and hasn’t manage to catch me up yet. She is cleverer too, but don’t ever tell her that I told you that. Life might become unbearable. Not admitting that little secret is what keeps me going.

I take it you can read my handwriting. If not, ask politely, and I will add a typed version that is more understandable. Ask nicely, mind! None of that “yore ‘andritin’ is atrooshus’ stuff, sort of, loike.”

PS: I didn’t have a very good camera in those days. As for my current cameras: wow! How the world has changed. As we have changed with it.

PPS: Indeed I have received comments, not very complimentary, on my handwriting. Oh dear. Don’t worry I can’t always decipher it myself, even with my glasses on. Thank you all my friends and anonymous correspondents. So, here comes the translation into print.

A diamond shines brightly
for all men to see
the best sweetness comes
from the wee honeybee

There is nothing so hot
as the female desire
like the cool of the beach
it burns you with fire

 

Angels

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Angels

So easy to believe in them when you see them dance, at midnight, when stars sparkle and the world seems dark. They light up everything you know, turn your world inside out, make you believe in things you never thought you would believe in.

So many people can no longer see them. For all too many, the angels have fled, have abandoned the world, leaving it in darkness. Where are they, where have they gone? They are still here, my friends, they are still with us. It’s a question of vision and belief, above all, belief.

So, what is holding you back? Why can’t you see them when they are there, before your eyes, dancing on moonbeams, sunbeams, fluttering before you, begging you to believe, to open your eyes, to seize them as they flit to and fro. Look at them, gathered on that pinhead, on the button of your blouse. They love you, they want you, they need you … and you need them, you know you do.

So hold out your hands, open your heart, let the sun shine in, let moonlight bless and caress you, and may all your dreams be filled, not with shadows, but with the bright light of angels.

 

 

Bubbles

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Bubbles

Count them. Each day she was here, a bubble. Little did I know as I saw them floating in the sun across the porch against a background of leafy trees that they would so soon burst and vanish, one by one.

Lost now, her voice, gone her footsteps from the stairs, no more the scrape of her chair as she climbs up beside me, calling my name. When I wake in the morning, I wait for her joyful call. How she loved to bounce on my bed. Knees up, but no Mother Brown this, just my grand-daughter, four years old.

And now she is gone.

Full House

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Full House

Full house: echoing footsteps, shadows,
everywhere, a litter of toys, crayons,
colored pages, jigsaw puzzles, Barbie
and Ken found at the back of a shelf.

Memories: pinned to the fridge, found
in strange places, an almond on my chair,
a drawing in my notebook, a message,
unintelligible, scrawled on shopping lists.

That peremptory voice calls my name
and I drag myself from sleep, only to know
it was a dream, netted up from slumber’s
dark midnight sea. I drift off again and

see her again, opening the bedroom door,
calling, calling, ever present in voice,
song, and dervish dance, such energy,
round and round, bouncing on my bed,

rolling the exercise ball across the floor,
oblivious to danger, harm, the perils of
unbalancing, stumbling, slipping, falling,
aware of the need for sticking plaster

comforts littering thighs, knees, calves,
feet arms, elbows, where ever instant
attention calls for instant, urgent treatment.
I will always remember the ambushes

that rolled off the tongue, phrases way
beyond the skills of a four-year old. What
if her mother is a lawyer, the youngster
shouldn’t control that sort of language.

She remembered so much from her last
visit. We thought she would have forgotten
us, but no, she remembered where almost
everything was hidden, out of sight but

no longer out of reach. Just a little bit taller,
stronger, more determined, faster, so fast
and loud we could not keep up. This morning
I awoke to the silence of an empty house.

Alphabet

Chaos

Alphabet

So everything is now as yellow as the yellow alphabet.
Bellow below cello, above fellow, saying “Hello,” jello,
always yellow, nobody eats orange jello, mellow, sello
or sellotape, tellow, as in “Tell old salt …” pronounced
“tellow salt” … so many verbal adventures, scales falling
from young eyes, and old ones as wello,
and the melody of music in tone,
on tongue, wonder in the eyes of everyone,
golden yellow, hair high-lighted in the early morning sun.

Commentary:

An endless jumble of words, all joined together rhythmically and linking one thought to another in a succession of jumps that wander from here to there and back again. Team tag: each one of us chosen for a moment, teased, played with, abandoned, picked up again, delight in each adventure.
My party tricks are e-cards, typing on the computer, her name, my name, the alphabet, her mother’ name, another name, and then another. Coloring is my trick too, and finding empty pages that can be followed with color and scrawl and everything that turns the blank page from a wilderness to a new world covered in endless manufactures of meaningful, meaningless scratches.
Joy in small things.  Albert Camus’s theory of the absurd present in almost every moment of the day. Moments that stretch into eternities, eternities seen in a grain of sand. Dw i mwynhau … what do I enjoy? These timeless moments, these glimpses back into my family’s past, Dych chi mind am dro? … these walks into my DNA’s future. Nach ydw: no, I will not be here. But tiny segments of my existence, words and phrases of my Welsh grandfather’s DNA and language, they will be here. Recycled. Again and again. Somehow. Somewhere. Forever. What more could I ask?

Yellow

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Yellow

Sunshine and daffodils: my grand-daughter
paddles in the kitchen sink. Her mother
washes feet and dishes. “Sit,” Finley says,
and “stand,” following the words with actions.

“Yellow,” she says, “yellow,” as daffodils
fill the computer screen to shine in that
far-off kitchen five hundred miles away
by road, but immediate by I-Pad.

“Yellow,” Finley repeats, “yellow.” Soon
in that distant province where spring arrives
so much earlier than here, she will see
daffodils dancing their warm weather dance,

tossing their heads to gold and yellow trumpets,
fresh, alive, and young in the soft spring breeze.

Commentary: Not a large vocabulary, back then … yellow … yellow hair, yellow jello, yellow dog, yellow cat, yellow daffodils, well, we got that one right anyway. So, she is here now, yet again, with an enlarged vocabulary and two feet taller. She comes shopping with me, swings on the shopping cart, runs everywhere, will not sit still, slips and slides like stones in a slate quarry. She takes my cane, I call it a walking stick, and thwacks it in the air, a danger to sundry and all. Knows what she wants: not this, not that, no, yes, THIS … and points with a sticky finger at whatever it is that has caught her fancy.

She runs away from me, and I cannot catch her. I stand there quietly, waiting for her to return. And she does, with a squeal and a shriek and cries of joy after even a brief absence. We talk magic. I say I am invisible, and she cannot see me. She says she is invisible, but I poke her in the ribs with my index finger and she squeals again. Magic, she says, you can do real magic. I nod. Me too, she says. And she is the real magician for she is four years old and has me bewitched.