Blessings

Mindfulness

Mindfulness

Gardens of Mindfulness

What is it about generic greens, their power of growth,
renewal, resurgence? In the Auberge, Moncton’s Hospice
for cancer patients, sufferers wore green clothes, shirts,
blouses, skirts, trousers. Green for recovery, for hope,
for the persistent belief that nature mattered, more,
that nature could be omnipotent, ubiquitous, everywhere
around us. The patients planted a small garden, almost
an allotment. They walked in it, sat beside it, watched
the flowers grow, grew their own cells anew, hoped.

Exercises are easier, more fulfilling, when done in green
surroundings. Go green for improved moods, better self-
esteem, growth beyond the muscles of cold iron pumped
indoors by hot, sweating bodies. Never underestimate
the healing power of walking barefoot on grass, your toes
curling into the early-morning coolness of fresh, new dew.

Focus your attention on the here and now. Forget the past.
Let the future take care of itself. Your most important
therapeutic tool is this moment of awareness when you
and your world are one. Erase loneliness and isolation.
Don’t pander to the pandemic. Talk to your plants. You
may not think they’re listening, but they are. And you
must listen to them too. Learn the languages of tree and
shrub, of butterfly and bee, of Coneheads and Cape Daisies.
Bask in beauty: sunflowers, hollyhocks. All will be well.

“Verde, que te quiero verde. / Green, how I love you green.”
Federico García Lorca (!898-1936).

Comment: I have been discussing Mindfulness with several people recently. Whether it be the Covid-19 outbreaks or the necessity of staying apart from friends and family, some of my seem to have become more isolated and more introverted over the last couple of years. As a result, the theme of mindfulness has arisen, often spontaneously. So, this poem is dedicated to all of us who feel the need to live in the moment and to concentrate on the development of our inner growth and being. It is taken from my book The Nature of Art nd the Art of Nature (pp. 134-35), soon to be available on Amazon and at Cyberwit.net

Click on the link to hear Roger’s reading.
Gardens of Mindfulness

The Nature of Art

The Nature of Art

It’s here and it looks beautiful. The photo does not do the cover justice as Geoff Slater’s painting is just phenomenal. The book holder wishes to announce that the photo does not do him justice either. He is much more good-looking in real life. I don’t have the Amazon / Kindle details yet, but I’ll post them as soon as they arrive. meanwhile, you will all have to make do with one poem. But remember: “A poetry book is a dream you hold in your hands.”

Still Life with Hollyhock
Geoff Slater

How do you frame this beaver pond,
those paths, those woods? How do you
know what to leave, what to choose?
Where does light begin and darkness end?

Up and down: two dimensions. Easy.
But where does depth come from?
Or the tactility, the energy, water’s
flow, that rush of breathless movement
that transcends the painting’s stillness?

So many questions, so few answers.
The hollyhock that blooms in my kitchen
is not a real hollyhock. It is the painting
of a photo of a genuine flower that once
upon a time flourished in my garden.

A still life, then, a nature morte, a dead
nature, portrayed in paint and hung alive,
on display in this coffin’s wooden frame.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Still Life with Hollyhock

When I Paint

Meditations on Messiaen
Insights from Beyond

When I paint

I choose at random a brush and a color.
Then I stroke bright lines across a white page.
Fresh snow waiting for tracks and footprints.

“I draw meaning out of shape and color,”
Henri Matisse with scissors and cut outs.
And I am here with brushes and tubes of paint,
totally clueless, waiting for inspiration to descend.

But it doesn’t. Just these lies, these colors, these shapes
that define my life and elaborate a destiny
that I never planned nor wished for.

Colors, so vibrant. Anger. Energy. Tranquility. Rebirth.
Thoughtfulness. Meaningful. Moments held
in the mind’s eye, clasped between fingers,
dripping off the ends of a brush,
mixed and mingling in the unconscious mind’s eye
that contemplates, yet never judges, the colors
that unfold subtle, untold meanings, across the page.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
When I Paint

Welcome Guests

Welcome Guests

They arrived last night, late.
Bright moonlight. Soft silence.
I neither heard nor saw them.

I awoke to moonlight on snow.
Shimmering stars. Orion
proud among prancing planets
sparkling in frosted air.

I looked out. Nothing there.
White wilderness of snow,
unmarked, but shadowed.

Dawn. An anxious child
on Christmas Day, I peeped
under the tree, and yes,
I cried out, “He’s been.”
I remember brightly
wrapped packets of gifts.

Today’s gifts: hoof prints
emerging from dark woods,
circling beneath the ash tree,
leading to the bird feeders,
and back into empty woods.

“Yes!” I said aloud. “At Last.”
And joy filled my heart.

Click on this link to hear Roger’s reading.
Welcome Guests

Comment:

Reading the poem aloud, I changed some of the word order to the rhythm of my speaking voice. It’s reading before an audience and hearing their reaction that tells me when a poem is right or needs retouching. Alas, those live readings are gone for now. Anchor, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, and this blog are good, but not quite the same. But, for a rhythm and voice poet, who loves live readings and welcomes a live audience, they are better than that midnight silence under dark trees.

Normality

Normality

In spite of grey skies,
blueish snow and early-
morning, under-cloud-
light combine to color
my garden several shifting
shades of blue-grey.

Light grows and the garden
starts to whiten. No deer as yet,
but they aren’t far away.

Two big ginger cats,
I think at first they are foxes,
stalk their marmalade path
through the trees towards the road.
I have never seen them
before. New neighbors?

One crosses the road
but the other hesitates, then flees,
as flashing school-bus lights
bring normality back to my early
-morning dream-filled world.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Normality

First Snow

First Snow

Fell softly, quietly, soundless, in the night.
I knew it was there. A lightness in the air,
a subtle change in the quality of light.
Now everything has changed: yesterday’s bare
trees wear their winter dresses, frilly tresses
garnished with garlands of snow.

The deer will arrive, sooner or later.
They always do. They troop from right
to left, west to east, as day turns to night,
then troop back, east to west, in morning light.
They step dark and diligent, flitting shadows
beneath snowy trees, one after another,
forging a single passage from yard to road,
crossing it, then vanishing into dark woods.

I saw them one night in a midnight dream.
They stood on their hindlegs underneath
the mountain ash and danced, so delicate,
reaching up with long, black tongues,
to steal bright berries from lower branches.
They danced in a full moon’s spotlight
and filled my heart with joy and pain.
How I long to see them dance again.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
First Snow

In Love with Love

Meditations on Machado and Mairena
In Love with Love

In a dream
I dream of you,
dream you into reality,
yearn for your name.
Now I’ll never be the same.

I dream you in a garden,
roses around you.
I stand there suffering,
my head crowned
with thorns.

Caught in the briers of your eyes,
I am trapped in the eye-
lash of your name.

Your presence taunts me.
Your absence haunts me.
My life
will never be the same,
oh Guiomar.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
In Love with Love 1

Sometime

Sometime
with thanks to Seamus Heaney

Sometime, make the time to drive to Alberton
where the Great Blue Herons
stand thigh deep in the incoming tide.
Lobster boats spark stars from the waves.

They white-water surge through a gap
in the sandbank where the lighthouse
stands red and white, outlined against
blue sky, golden sand, sparkling bay.

Follow the fast-eroding coastline, a little
less each year, past Jacques Cartier Park
to Kildare Capes. Black-backed gulls ride
shotgun on the red sand beach. Piping
plovers charge up and down the wind-rush
of surf digging for treasure, the crustaceans
that will fill their bellies and enable them
to survive their long journey south.

Head north past Sea Cow Pond to North Cape.
Quixotic windmills wave their arms, like giants.
The sand and pebble reef stretches its low-tide
footpath out to the lazy seals basking in late
summer warmth. Sea-birds seethe in great
white clouds while fishing boats bob on wild
waves and a black horse hauls Irish Moss
off the beach to be sun-dried on the shore.

An osprey hovers, drops its lightning bolt
to spear a flapping flounder on sharp claws.
The magic of that great bird’s fall and rise will
drive a wedge through your heart and split it open.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Sometime

Coal Face

Coal Face

My family never forced me underground.
Nobody ever made me kneel at the coal-
face altar and worship, on my knees,
that grimy god with its coal-black soul.

A child in body and heart, nobody ordered
me to squirm down diminishing seams,
much too narrow for men or machines
and fitting only for the smallest child.

Fitting indeed, an early coffin, made to
measure, lying in wait for the slightest
slip of the rocks above or below. Tight
fitting, indeed, no wiggle, wriggle room.

Billy Blake, my mate from Trinidad,
younger than me, saw the black faces
of miners emerge from the mine, enter
the pit-head baths and come out white.

He, too, wanted to be white. He dug
underground, grew even blacker, went
into the showers, gouged his black skin,
drew rivers of blood, never changed color.

He died when the roof above him fell
without warning. They pulled him out.
Brought him to the surface. Prepared
him for burial. Wrote on his tombstone:

“His body was as black as night,
but oh, his soul was white.”

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Coal Face.

Snow Geese

Snow Geese

Snow geese falling, plummeting from the sky,
dropping like leaves, slowly and tumbling,
swiftly and twisting, spiralling down. Fresh
snow on the ground, their seasoned arrival.

Some land on water, others on the earth.
They gather in groups, snow banks of geese,
ghost-white, frightening, true sky lightning,
celestial, striking from its ancestral throne.

Always some sentries, necks stretched, eyes
open, alert, watching, guarding their needs
while the flock feeds. One honks “Who goes
there?” the flock looks up, watching him move.

Slowly, at first, they waddle from the walkers,
then faster and faster as the man unleashes his
hounds. An idiot woman, grinning like a death’s
head, points her cell phone and barks instructions.

The dogs run at them, barking and growling.
The snow geese panic, run ever faster, taking
to the air with a clap-wing chorus, honking
and hooting. The woman laughing, shouting

and shooting. “I’ve got them, I’ve shot them,”
she calls in her pleasure. Frustrated, the hounds
take to the water. Whistling, calling, the man
cannot catch them, not till they tire of the chase,

no match for geese, not in air, nor in water.
Joyous the couple, their videos made, hugging,
cuddling. They get back in the car, dogs shaking,
spraying them, baptismal water, cleansing all guilt.