Blessings

Rage, Rage 28 & 29

Rage, Rage
28

Two small gnomes
camped, one in each
of my lungs.

All night long
they played
their squeeze-box,
wheeze-box concertinas,
never quite in unison.

Sometimes they stamped
their feet and my body
rattled in time
with their dance steps.

Their wild night music
caught in my throat
and I coughed
unmusical songs
that spluttered
and choked me.

29

This morning, the bailiff,
Mr. Koffdrop, evicted
the two gnomes from my lungs.

Landlord Bodie
placed an ad on Kiji.

He rented the free space
in the left lung
to a tiny bag-piper
who took up residence
by my heart.

All night this piper piped me
a highland pibroch
on his whisky-worn pipes.

Comment:

All night this piper piped – and there is nothing stranger than having a clogged up, congested chest and hearing your own breath whistling in and out of your lungs. It certainly kept me awake. And I lay there remembering all the pipers I have ever heard piping. One very special one, from the Canadian Black Watch, gifted me the last image “a highland pibroch on his whisky-worn pipes”. A flask in his jacket and a nip every now and then to keep the music and the energy flowing. Scotch of course. None of the Japanese or Irish whisky varieties for that kilt-clad friend of mine. I can hear him now, as I type these lines – “A drop before ye go?”

As for the accordion, well, I have always liked the small, hand-held ones – squeeze boxes – wheeze boxes – and did those lungs of mine ever squeeze and wheeze. I called them Mr. Teasy-wheezy and Mr. Teasy-squeezy. And all night long they serenaded me. And I lay there, wide awake, not even drowsing, watching  Orion gradually striding his lonely way towards the western horizon. No rest for those afflicted with the squeezy-wheezy lung syndrome. And long may it stay away.

Rage, Rage 27

Rage, Rage
27

Last night
an east wind blew
outside my window.
It whistled and groaned
as it herded the stars
from left to right.

The stars pursued
the westering moon
and planets danced
to the rhythms
of the accordion playing
music in my chest.

The sky’s planetarium
folded and unfolded
its poker hands
of silent cards
marked with my fate.

Comment:

The photo is of the Hunter moon, as seen from Island View. It is quiet out here, very quiet, with very little light pollution. At night the stars shine bright and the constellations to North and South are clearly visible. Not so much so to East and West where the older trees tower. Occasionally, we get to see the Northern Lights. They can be incredible – great curtains of light hanging from the Northern Horizon. So bright, so clear, you can almost hear them crackle.

I have always loved the image of the planets dancing. If you have followed my poetry you will know that the idea of the Master of the Terracentric Universe, in Platonic and Neo-Platonic Theory, plays a large harp. The planets dance, forwards and backwards, to the sound of that harp. Of course, all that poetic beauty disappeared with the work of Galileo, Kepler, and all the students of the helio-centric universe. It is good to remember it though.

My beloved, born a Leo, loves to follow the progress of the sun. Each day she times its first appearance as it peeps above the ridge. Then she watches for it to arrive on the kitchen walls, and times that too. It is as if we lived as they lived thousands of years ago, in touch with nature, communicating with nature. And yet we are but a ten minute drive from the city centre.

The accordion playing music in my chest – you will have to wait until stanzas 28 & 29 for me to clarify that sound for you. I have been remiss in my postings. Very irregular, like my recently diagnosed A-Fib heart beat. Perhaps, after all, everything is linked, right down to the tiniest details, like posting blog notes and remembering all my e-friends out there. The known and the unknown.

Speaking of the known – Orion is gradually striding his way to the west. He dominates the southern sky at this time of year. He reminds me a lot of the Naked Man of Cerne Abbas. Except the Cerne Abbas man doesn’t move, while Orion definitely does. Or is it us who move around him. Your answer to that question will make you heliocentric – an observer, a measurer, like my beloved. Or it will make you Terracentric – a poet like me, well, an aspiring poet, who prefers the beauty of myth to the cold realities of science. Well, sometimes. Not always. But certainly in terms of my affinities to Plato and his celestial followers.

Rage, Rage 26 with Bonus Poem

Rage, Rage
26

In my dreams, I track 
the sails of drifting ships,
white moths fluttering
before the wind.

I think I have caught them
in overnight traps,
but they fly each morning
in dawn’s unforgiving light.

I give chase
with pen and paper,
fine butterfly nets
with which to catch
and tame wild thoughts.

I grasp at things
just beyond my fingertips.

I wake up each morning
unaware of where
I have traveled
in my dreams.

Comment:

White moths fluttering before the wind – my dreams at night. How do I trap them, catch them, squeeze them between my fingers, hold them, pin them to the show case of memory? I remember in Oaxaca – the young boys, trapping the moths. Huge, gigantic butterflies, moths, as large as birds. They severed their wings, and sold them to the passing tourists. Such beauty, such colour.

I heard an angry buzzing, looked down, and saw flightless bodies, wings clipped, rowing their stumps of bunt oars, skidding sideways across the gutters, and dreaming painfully of the stars.

Bonus Poem

Dreams

White moths fluttering
before the wind
my dreams at night.

How do I catch them,
trap them,
pin them
in memory’s showcase?

In Oaxaca
young boys traps moths.
Gigantic moths,
huge jungle butterflies,  
as large as birds.

They cut off their wings,
sell them like postcards
to passing tourists.

I hear
an angry buzzing
and look down.

Flightless bodies,
wings clipped,
rowing stumps of blunt oars,
skidding sideways
across the gutters
dreaming painfully
about the stars.

Wild Life

Wild Life

I see green grass
Small ponds
Winding roads
Patches of sorrow

Turquoise blues 
Hills to climb
Softness
Strength 

Flowers blooming
A small animal
Covered in feathers 

An eye
Keeping watch
Purity of white

Ekphrastic Poem
©
Yolande Essiembre

Comment:

My good friend Yolande Essiembre sent me her Ekphrastic poem after viewing this morning’s painting by Moo. Wild Life II is a better representation of the colours of the original. However, Moo added in some (what he calls!) helpful touches – the black shapes that reinforce the suggestions of the original. Yolande wrote her poem based on Version I – but with the stronger colors of version II. Magic – oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. And all artists weave their webs of deceit. As Cervantes says – Tanto la mentira es mejor, cuanto más parece verdadera. / The closer it approaches the truth, the better the lie.

Imitatio – imitation – one of the bedrocks of classical rhetoric. “Imitation is the best form of flattery”. Flattery, yes, but what we find, in art above all, is that there exists only one original. However good the copy, the flattery – the imitation, if you prefer – it is never as good as the original. The original of this painting exists in one time and one place. The two deceptions are not the original. In fact, Wild Life I no longer exists because Moo has repainted it. It has turned into Wild Life II.

So many questions – which version do you prefer – I or II? De gustibus non est disputandum. There is no arguing about taste. Which is the better version? Well, each viewer must choose. But remember, each version is a deception, and each deception is a lie. And there is only one original. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

But we can, I hope, agree on one thing – Yolande’s verbal version (which I publish here with her permission) is verbally picture perfect. It is how she sees the painting. It is what the painting means to her.

Thank you so much Yolande. Moo and I hope to publish your words and visions more often. With your permission. we will do so.


Cribbage

Cribbage

Red and white markers
chase each other
along the S bends,
past the skunk lines
to the final straight
where a single space
awaits the winner.

I don’t remember
who won, nor do I care.

We shuffle the cards
and deal again
as we wait for sleep
to descend and bless us.

We fast, tonight:
no food, no water.

When midnight strikes,
we put away the deck
and pegging board,
and bid each other
goodnight.

Sleep well if you can,
my friend:
morning will bring
a much more serious game
that neither you nor I
can afford to lose.

Comment:

A Golden Oldie from 2015. We were both receiving treatment for cancer, in Moncton, at the Georges Dumont Hospital. We both had sessions the next day, he had opted for surgery, while I was undergoing radiation treatment. We could not sleep, and so we sat up and played cards. It helped reax both of us and we talked while we played. I do not remember the conversation – nor the cards – just the immense peace and brotherhood that wrapped itself around us as we waited together.

A little later, we both left the hospital and we never met again. I remember how he played cards, his pegging skills, his ability to read the hands. But I can’t remember his face, or his name. Yet here he is, a ship that passed me, nameless now, in the night, and still, I hope sails on.

Looking back on those days – I remember such closeness in the Auberge, such camaraderie. Those who had been there longest sharing the secrets of survival skills with the newest arrivals. One of the greatest joys for me, was to meet with so many wonderful Acadians – male and female – who shared their language, their knowledge, and their culture. I remember the quilting sessions, the gossip around the table – and I was the only man in the group. The ladies wanted to know where I had learned to sew so well, but I fudged the answers and wouldn’t tell them. I still keep that knowledge to myself. I remember, too, the painting sessions. And the musical evenings with dance and song. So much encouragement, so much fun – and all in the face of disaster, for not everyone survived their treatment. As for me, I was one of the lucky ones. And I recall those days as blessed, in spite of the fear and sometimes the pain.

Rage, Rage 18

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 14, 15

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 & 13

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

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.

Two Poems

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.