Creativity

Rage, Rage 5 & 6

Rage, Rage
5

Empty now the house,
clean the floors
where she scattered her toys,
polished the grubby tables,
where her small hands
splattered food,
wanted and unwanted.

Empty the bathroom,
the tub where she took
her daily bath,
dry the towels she dampened,
wrinkled the toothpaste tubes
she happily emptied.

Empty too
this heart of mine
wherein she built her nest.

Like a wild bird, she has flown,
joined the end of summer migration,
yet I still possess a part of her
within my emptiness.

6

I remember how she stood
at the window, excited,
gazing at the birds.

“Finch,” I pointed.
“Goldfinch. Grosbeak.”

Her hands plucked at the air,
not a feather fell,
she caught nothing.

“Yellow, she cried, “yellow,”
jumping up and down with joy.

Her nose, all wet and runny,
left damp, sticky smudges
on the cold window-pane.

I see the greasy smears
that remain where her nostrils
pressed against the pane.

Still the glass stays unwashed
and now that shadow stands
between me and the sun.

Commentary:

Empty house, empty nest. How many homes have just enjoyed the festive spirit, rejoicing in the company of family and friends. Alas, the holiday is almost done. In many houses, the taxis have left for the airport, the cars have driven away, the rooms that were filled with warmth, joy, and laughter are cold and empty. Only the shadows remain. The echo of voices that are now silent.

The old remain, as they were before the festive invasion, old and lonely. The young have flown back and away to their usual lives, their schools, their jobs. I sit before my screen and type these words. My beloved sits in another room and watches TV. When the adverts come on, the volume increases and the same tedious voices mouth their joyless messages. My nest may be empty, but I do not have an empty head. And I don’t want it swamped by the commercial acumen of the tv set.

My head contains many rooms and many of those rooms are filled with memories that will, as Albert Camus said, last me a lifetime. One summer afternoon, examined in its intensity, will last forever, or for as long as the viewer lasts. Alas, I mourn for those who age, who suffer from Alzheimer’s and the like, and whose heads are empty. What do they think, what do they feel, what twilight memories flicker through the empty nests of their ageing brains? I hope and pray I never know.

Rage, Rage 4

Rage, Rage
4

I walk from room to room,
startled by shadows,
and open doors,
search under the table,
look behind chairs.

Nothing. No one.
The house stands
still and empty,
but for the sadness,
the silent sadness,
that fills each room
with their remembered
presence.

Commentary:

Absence and presence. How many of us feel that something is there, walking beside us, or just behind us? How many feel that an empty room is not empty, but is filled with a presence, something we feel, half-recognize?

I have been in houses, invited for the night, where I would not sleep. Why? I do not know. But I felt a presence, a prescience, if you wish, that filled me with a desire to leave and not to stay.

What is it? Is it other memories, other lives, that impinge upon ours in this current time frame? I do not know. But I do know that there are houses and rooms in which I will not stay. I also know that there are others that throw open warm arms to welcome me.

Look at Moo’s painting(s). How many of them welcome us in? Do some of them shut us out and make us shiver with a fear, not of the unknown, but of the hardly-remembered, that lies in wait to shake us out of this dream which is our present life?

Rage, Rage 1

Rage, Rage
1

Old age creeps up on you,
slowly, ambushes you,
catches you unawares.

At first, you don’t believe
that it’s real.
You ignore the signs,
pretend they aren’t there.

Then comes a knock on the door.
There, did you hear it?
Around you your body’s house
slumbers in comfort.

You lose your footing,
but you do not fall.
Your book drops to the floor,
you bend down and pick it up.

Everything is as it always was.
Or is it? One of your friends
slips and falls down the stairs.

You descend the stairs
with more care than usual.
No, you don’t need a cane.
Nor special shoes and socks.

You convince yourself that
all is well. And so it is,
for a little while longer.

Commentary:

Rage, Rage
against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas’s famous poem celebrates the passing of his father. “Do not go gentle into that good night, / old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I am no Dylan Thomas, although I am still a Swansea boy at heart and, as my paternal grandfather used to sing while at the fighting front during WWI – “and still I live in hopes to see Swansea Town once more.”

Alas, I never will see Swansea Town, save in my dreams, for Swansea Town is no longer a town. It is now Swansea City and no, I will not be leaving Island View again, not even to return to Wales, the land of my fathers. But I can and do age, and ageing is a strange and very personal experience. These pages contain the thoughts that occur to me, in my solitude, as I come to terms with my diminishing existence.

Moo has been very silently recently. But when he saw this poem he climbed out of the woodwork where he had been hiding like a silent spider and he said “Roger, have I got just the painting for you.” The painting is also called Rage, Rage – make of that what you will.

Carved in Stone 72 & 73

Carved in Stone
72

Is this world I create real?
Of course it isn’t.

It exists only in my head,
and on the page,
but perhaps, one day,
you too will see
the things I have seen.

Yet the world I describe
is as unreal as the words
from which it is woven.

73

Heraclitus once wrote
we can never bathe
in the same river twice.

This is the Catch 22
faced by all poets,
to remember,
and to try to recreate.

Shadow hands on cave walls,
colored pictographs on gesso,
hieroglyphics on papyrus,
ink on paper, raw words,
and in the end,
everything reduced
to these three little letters
carved in stone –

RIP

Commentary:

If you have read this far, we have walked a long journey together – 73 verses that comment on life and the meaning of life. Hard reading in places, easy in others. I trust you have enjoyed the journey and found some stops and resting points along the way in which to contemplate the ways in which the threads of your own life intermingle with mine.

Throughout this journey, I have tried to use a four step process. (1) Verbal – the poems themselves. (2) Visual – photos that intertwine with the verbal. (3) A Commentary – that goes beyond the verbal and visual and opens up the ideas a little more. (4) A Dialog between myself – the poet – and Moo – the visual artist who has so frequently loaned me his paintings when he thinks they illustrate my words.

It’s been a topsy-turvy journey through what Bakhtin calls a world of carnival, where little is at it seems, and the world is turned upside down. That said, we have a clear choice – to slide down the downside of this life, or to scale the upside, to contemplate, with joy and happiness, the world from those heady heights.

Blessings. Pax amorque.
And thank you for travelling with me.

Sheep

Sheep

Wales is whales (with an aitch) to my daughter who has only been there once on holiday, very young, to see her grandparents, a grim old man and a wrinkled woman. They wrapped her in a shawl and hugged her till she cried herself to sleep suffocating in a straitjacket of warm Welsh wool. So how do I explain the sheep? They are everywhere, I say, on lawns and in gardens. I once knew a man whose every prize tulip was devoured by a sheep, a single sheep who sneaked into the garden the day he left the gate ajar. They get everywhere, I say, everywhere. Why, I remember five sheep riding in a truck on the coal train leering like tourists travelling God knows where bleating fiercely as they went by. In Wales, I say, sheep are magic. When you travel to London on the train, just before you leave Wales at Severn Tunnel Junction, you must lean out of the carriage window and say “Good morning, Mister Sheep!” And if that sheep looks up, your every wish will be granted. And look at that poster on the wall: a hillside of white on green, and every sheep as still as a stone, and each white stone a roche moutonnée.

Commentary:

Sheep in Wales and deer in Canada. And here is a little group wandering around in our garden. So how do I explain the deer? They are everywhere, I say, on lawns and in gardens. I once knew a man whose every green leafed plant was devoured by a herd of deer, who sneaked into the garden the day he left the gate ajar. They get everywhere, I say, everywhere. And everybody loves them, because the heart beats a little faster when you see them walk by.

As Right as Rain

As Right as Rain

It’s the day after the night before
and I awake to an ache
in each of my arms.

I went to bed early, at ten,
and slept until eight-thirty,
but my AI watch tells me
that I only got six hours sleep.

I found a bump in the bed,
on the right side,
when I look towards the window.

I must have lain my arm against it,
during the night. It was so sore,
my right arm, the Covid arm,
when I got up this morning,
but the left arm, the flu arm,
was perfectly alright, except for
a little itch, and a tiny tingle,
like the jingle of elf-bells.

Black coffee and an aspirin
soon cleared it all up, and now
I am as good as new,
as right as rain,
except the rain that fell last night
brought power losses, cold,
and an absence of warmth and light,
and that sort of rain is not all right.

Commentary:

That’s a golden oldie from a couple of years back. I did both jabs in the same arm this year and didn’t feel a thing. It didn’t rain either, but look at the muck coming down in the photo – we had a bit of that a couple of days ago. Welcome to our Canadian half-winter. We used to get 3 metres / ten feet of snow every winter. Last year I only used the snowblower of three occasions. No wonder I think of it as a half-winter – winter ain’t what it used to be.

Carved in Stone 63

Carved in Stone
63

Words descend, soft and peaceful.
They brush my mind
with the hushed touch
of a grey jay’s soundless wings.

Yet the grey jays have gone,
vanished along with the grosbeaks,
evening, pine, and rose breasted.

Words can hardly express what I feel
in this diminishing world
when I inhale color and light.

Dawn bursts into bloom,
and the indoor hyacinth starts,
once more, to blossom.

Its immanent beauty
fills me with a warmth
that disperses night’s shadows,
taking away all sense of gloom.

Commentary:

The indoor hyacinth starts, once more, to blossom. Its immanent beauty fills me with a warmth that disperses night’s shadows, taking away all sense of gloom. Indeed it does. Once upon a time, it became infested with little bugs and was reduced to one leaf. Clare worked with it, spoke to it, cajoled it, and bit by bit it came back to life. Now it lives in the front porch in summer and returns to the house, southern aspect, in winter, to flourish when least we expect it.

Hyacinth, Jamaica in Spanish. And nothing more delicious than the miel de jamaica that one is offered in Oaxaca, fruit juice squeezed from the hyacinth flowers. “My wife has gone to the West Indies.” “Jamaica?” “No, she went of her own accord.” Humor flows and the hyacinth flowers, and I spend my winter hours sitting and watching my indoor flowers.

Yet the grey jays have gone, vanished along with the grosbeaks, evening, pine, and rose breasted. They used to flock on the picnic tables but as the weather warmed, they went further north. I remember when 64 mourning doves perched on the power lines. Now, we have two or three who look lonely in the garden and sound even lonelier. Words can hardly express what I feel in this diminishing world when I inhale color and light, but long for the passerines’ morning and evening flight.

But, in spite of all that, sad as it is, the hyacinth’s immanent beauty fills me with a warmth
that disperses night’s shadows, taking away all sense of gloom.

Carved in Stone 59 & 60

Carved in Stone
59

St. David of Wales once said,
“Do ye the little things in life.” 

I do, and I wander
along the banks of the River Taff,
admiring how wild daffodils
flourish each spring, in Wales.

Young, I run on the beaches,
Brandy Cove, Pwll Ddu, Langland,
Caswell, Swansea Bay,
and, as I write these words,
I hear my footsteps
echoing back through time.

Baudelaire’s words ring in my mind,
“Creativity is nothing more nor less
than childhood recovered at will.”

Or, as Pablo Picasso said,
“I have spent my life
learning to see, paint,
and write again, like a child.”

And on and on I go –
child-hood, youth, maturity, age,
then back to my second childhood,
when I can recreate
that youthful world
in all its joyous beauty.

60

Does life flows through me,
like water in a clepsydra?

Does it flicker like a candle
guttering on a church altar?

Is it circular, like a sundial,
or the Roman numerals
on the face of the clock?

Am I just flesh and blood,
doomed to blossom and flourish,
then wither and perish?

Or will some small part of me
linger on, an unchained melody,
with all my memories slowly erased.

Commentary:

Moo’s daffodils are painted and potted, not growing wild at all. They are still the national flower of Wales and they still grow wild, in the spring, in Blackweir Gardens and beside Roath Park Lake. At least, I hope they do. I haven’t been back to check for 37 years now. Maybe things have changed, and the daffodils have gone the way of the sky lark, the cuckoo, the cowslips, and the bluebells. I wonder if the foxes still wear gloves? Let me know if you know the answer to that one. Just write “I do” on the back of the usual postcard. And you know what to do with it.

As for me, I am moving into my second childhood and, in may ways it is so much better than my first one. Here, I am free to look back on my life, to harvest my memories, to paint what I want – well, what Moo wants, anyway – and to think my own thoughts. Thank heavens Moo doesn’t think for me, though he does get his fingers covered in paint when he reads my mind and puts paintbrush to postcard, and designs his designs.

I feel very sorry for Moo. I guess he never had a childhood, so therefore, ipso facto, he can never have a second one. How much he is missing even he doesn’t know. How could he? Mysterious Moo – I like that idea. Sólo el misterio nos hace vivir, sólo el misterio. Only the mystery keeps us alive, only the mystery. And if you guessed that the author was Federico García Lorca, then you can award yourself a glow of satisfaction, for I have no prizes to hand around.

But hold on a moment, that was the title of one of Lorca’s drawings, so he was the artist, yes, but maybe not the author. Picky, picky nit-picky! Another of the joys of second childhood – annoyingly spotting the minor slips of other second-childhood thinkers – and never, never ever admit the mistakes you might, or might not make, are your own. Blame someone else. There’s always somebody out there whether to own up to your errors, especially if the price is right.

Carved in Stone 58

Carved in Stone
58

Modern shamans
roam the pyramid’s flat top,
looking for its energy point,
not knowing that, seated,
peacefully in silence,
that power will seek them out.

The more they seek,
the less they find,
yet that power seeks me out,
because I no longer seek it.
Is that the secret of creativity?

Commentary:

A long time ago my judo instructor taught me the following –

“The more you strive,
you cannot grasp it,
the hand cannot hold it,
nor the mind exceed it.
When you no longer seek it,
it is with you.”

It was the same with the St. John Ambulance course that I took. The instructor told us that we might not remember now exactly what we were doing, but if the occasion arose, everything we were practicing now would appear before us and we would just do it, knowing exactly what to do. A rugby coach, I saw and met and solves several such injuries on the field of play. Something took me over and I did what I had to do.

I still don’t know how or why. But it is the same with creativity. “When you no longer seek it, it is with you.”

Just breathe deep and believe.



Latch-Key Kid

Latch-Key Kid

In one room in my head, I stand on a stool beside my father’s mother helping her to mix the cake she will later bake in the wood-fired oven of her black, cast-iron stove. Every time she mixes a cake, she places a small piece in a dish and bakes it just for me. As a child, I spent hours in that kitchen, watching her cook. When she boiled vegetables, she never threw out the vegetable water, but used it for boiling other vegetables or for making rich, thick, delicious gravy.

Later, with both my parents working, I became a latch-key kid. I spent all day in an otherwise empty house and cooked my own breakfast and lunch. I also prepared supper for my parents so that it would be waiting when they came home. I grew up loving to cook.

When I went abroad to spend my summers in Spain or in France, I spent as much time as possible in the kitchens, watching, listening, learning. The women always had time for a small child. Then men seldom did. Children should be seen and not heard. They just got in the way. That was the male attitude. I learned so much in those kitchens.

Later, in Santander, my landlady would place one egg, one onion, and one potato beside the stove. It didn’t matter what time I came back from a night out with the boys, my supper was there, a Spanish omelet, una tortilla Española, waiting for me to cook it. Sometimes she left me a piece of chorizo, but I preferred the omelets. I did enjoy making shapes and designs out of the chorizo – that was always fun.

Not many people knew about my cooking skills. One of my aunties always cooked for me. She told me that her husband didn’t even know how to boil an egg. The men in my family seldom cooked, except for my maternal grandfather, who learned how to fend for himself in the trenches and dug-outs during WWI. He taught me how to make stews and soups, rich and nourishing, and always better on the third day. He also told me what he put in them – and you wouldn’t want to know about what he hunted and scavenged to stay alive in those cold, dark days. Nowadays, so many of us just don’t know how lucky we are. I do know how happy and lucky I am, not to be homeless, not to be living out on the streets, dependent on soup kitchens, charity, and fighting the elements just to stay alive.