Daffodil Day
Daffodils
For ten long days the daffodils
endured, bringing to vase and breakfast-
table stored up sunshine and the silky
softness of their golden gift.
Their scent grew stronger as they
gathered strength from the sugar
we placed in their water, but now
they have withered and their day’s done.
Dry and shriveled they stand paper-
thin and brown, crisp to the touch.
They hang their heads:
oncoming death weighs them down.
Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus
Daffodils
(for my mother)
Light in dark
bright yellow stridence
shrill golden dog’s bark
to warn off death’s wolves
that freeze her blood
she dreaded night’s unease
the devil’s wintry anti-spring
life’s darkest sparks
but loved the daffodils’
sunny March cadence
of brief piercing dance
Light
Striving onwards to the light
I don’t need a ladder
nor an Aladdin’s Lamp
to transport me upwards,
not to stardom
but to the sun and stars
that wait, day and night,
outside my window.
Prince of Mirth,
soon to be Lord of Light,
I will wear my hibiscus crown
for a short time,
but with joy and pleasure,
a treasure I will treasure
until the natural end
when stars, sun, and crown
come tumbling down,
leaving me alone,
naked, yet clothed in,
and surrounded by,
light.
Click here for Roger’s reading.
Light.
Hold Fast
On days like these,
the center must hold,
but not just hold,
it must writhe and strive
to live longer, be stronger,
to hold together so that the periphery
understands that it too is at the center
of an extended web of life
that contains us all,
you and me,
past and future generations,
in a great chain of being alive
and knowing that yes, we are here,
we are, at heart, really only one,
and totally unique,
is spite of the sameness
that sometimes surrounds us
as time’s spider-web
unravels, oh so fast, so slow,
and yet still we are here,
and still the center holds.
Click here for Roger’s reading.
Hold Fast
Dawn Chorus
On a sunny morning, the sun lights up
my bedroom wall. Each day he arrives
earlier and earlier, a minute a day.
Now days grow longer, a sure sign
that spring is on its way.
As I lie awake, waiting for the sun,
I sing my morning sunshine song.
It keeps me warm and comforts me.
I also count the birds that fly across
the garden in search of sunshine and food.
Crows come first. They perch atop
the highest trees and watch and wait.
Mourning Doves come next
and their dawn song is a mourning chorus,
“Who-who-who’s next?
called from branch to branch.
With the sun come Chickadees,
Pine Siskins, lazy Blue Jays, Juncos.
These are all regulars.
Irregular are my neighbor’s Cardinals,
orange and red, American Goldfinches,
two small woodpeckers, a Downie
and a Hairy, a Nuthatch.
Gone now are the Gray Jays,
Gorbies, Whisky Jacks,
those ghosts of the woods.
Lost too are the Greater Pileated,
the flocks of Grosbeaks, Evening,
Pine, and Rose-Breasted.
They may come back,
but somehow, I doubt it.
For now, the Blueness of Jays,
the Blackness of Crows,
and an unsubtle dawn chorus
of Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw.
Mood Music
Mood music caught between brush
and paper then trapped in notes
that sing in acrylic colors.
Colored music and music
expressed in colors that dance
on the page and light up
my face and the room
with joy and light.
What figurines dance here,
before your eyes, partners,
each one different for each of us,
moving in a musical mood
that captures a moment of magic,
brush magic,
with silent colors flowing
but all too ready
to burst into song.
Doors
Revised version
Paintings:
doors you can walk through,
windows that open onto visions
of another, more beautiful life.
Deeper than the paint, the thoughts
and words that formed them,
brushed them into life,
an ephemeral life, so brief
that butterflies seem to last longer
and flowers live for all eternity.
Transience and insubstantiality.
Change is all around us,
we are surrounded by change.
But the deepest changes,
the ones that affect us most
are internal, set deep within us,
death’s eggs hatching slowly
since the day we were born.
Life is indeed short, and art endures.
Carved five thousand years ago,
in stone, this magnificent henge,
first Wood-henge, then Stonehenge,
majestic at the dawn of time,
with its sarsen stones, pillars, post-holes,
and labyrinths, circling within circles,
a frail spider-web of sunlit brilliance.
Lost now, the message,
as my own message is lost,
covered by paint, though words
emerge in the strangest places,
allowing us to peer in through windows
as long-lost words and worlds
whirl out through carved and painted
windows and everlasting doors.
Doors
First version
Paintings are doors you can walk through,
windows that open onto visions
of another, sometimes better, life.
Deeper than the paint are the thoughts
and words that formed them,
brushed them into life,
an ephemeral life, so brief
that butterflies last longer
and flowers live for all eternity,
or so it seems.
Transience and insubstantiality.
Change is all around us,
we are surrounded by change.
But the deepest changes,
the ones that affect us most
are internal, set deep within us,
death’s eggs hatching slowly
since the day we were born.
Life is indeed short, and art endures.
Carved five thousand years ago,
in stone, this Towie ball
with its labyrinths and circles.
Lost now, the message,
as my own message is lost,
covered by paint, though words
emerge in the strangest places,
allowing us to peer in through windows
as long lost words and worlds
walk out through carved and painted doors.
Spiders
The spider plant
spins out web after web,
all knotted together,
then ejected
from the central nest.
One landed on my floor
the other afternoon
with an enormous clunk.
A huge new set of offspring
and roots ejected and sent
on a voyage of discovery
to find a new home.
Mala madre / bad mother.
Oaxacans have a curious way
of naming their plants.
I lived in an apartment
above a courtyard
filled with malas madres.
A Bird of Paradise
nested in the same tree,
while in the garden
a banana plant, in flower,
a huge hibiscus,
and such a variety
of prize poinsettias
that I could never get
the varieties straight:
red, white, cream, single,
clotted, and double-crowned.
In the powder room,
downstairs, our hibiscus
is about to break
into winter blooms.
Sider mites crawl all over it.
Every day, I hunt them down,
squishing them whenever I can.
My daughter calls me cruel
and a padre malo.
I say ‘no: it’s them
or the hibiscus.
You can’t have both.’
Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Spiders
Stumps
Stumps, yes. Firmly planted.
Newly arrived at the wicket,
I can now take my guard.
Last man in
with everything to play for.
“Middle and off. Please.”
I hold the bat steady, upright,
and the man in white
nods his head, counts
the coins, or stones,
he has in his pocket
and wonders when he can leave
his post and go to tea.
I stand, there, right-handed,
and the field adjusts.
Then I change hands,
keep the same guard,
now middle and leg,
and stare at the square leg,
now a short leg
who glares back fiercely.
The man in the white coat
tut-tuts in despair.
I know he knows this isn’t done.
It’s just not cricket.
But then, he’s not the one
batting on a cloth untrue,
with a twisted cue,
while the bowlers bowl
with elliptical balls.
The field changes over
to a left-handed stance.
I think about changing over again,
but I’m sure there’d be an appeal:
wasting time, a nasty crime
at this stage of the game,
though many do it.
First ball, a long-hop,
and I clobber it for four.
Three runs to win,
four balls to bowl.
I block the next ball.
The one after is short.
I cut it away past gully
and call for two.
I make it home safe
but my partner is run out
at the bowler’s end.
We lose by one run.
“Serve you right,”
says the man in the white coat,
racing towards the pavilion
for a pee before tea.
“That just wasn’t cricket.”
I walk slowly back,
stiff upper lip,
ramrod straight bat,
and no time at all for this
sticky dog wicket.
Comment: I wonder how many of my followers will have understood a word of what I have written. Never mind. You can always enjoy the painting. Oh the mysteries of what used to be England’s national game and a wonderful source of metaphor and image. A double-header on the weekend. England vs the West Indies. I wonder if it will be that close?
Pocket Paintings
Peintures de Poche
My usual discipline has deserted me and, as a result, I have deserted my blog, abandoned it, gone absent without leave. It’s not that I am not creating: I am. I am just not posting. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I thought that, for a change, I would post some of my Pocket Paintings / Peintures de Poches. Maybe I will be inspired to write verse about them. Maybe not. We’ll see.
Supplication
I raise my hand to heaven
in fervent supplication:
you sever it at the wrist.
I spread out my arms in despair:
you take out a tape and measure me
for a tailor-made, hand-crafted cross.
I step on my bathroom scales
only to find that they have become
the scales of your justice:
I mourn every pound I have put on.
Where can I turn for solace
when all around I see
nothing but sorrow and tears?
Covid bears us all down.
An albatross, it hangs around our necks
and when we raise a hand,
your knife is there to cut it off.
Who are you? What are you?
Where are you when we need you?
Why are you there judging us like this?
I look up at the sky.
By day, a great cyclopean eye
winks and blinks and tells me nothing.
I look at the sky at night:
a silver moon slides silently by.
Orion stalks away to the west.
He leaves me restless, breathless,
agape at all this beauty
that I dare not reach out and grasp.
