Dreams

Thumper

Thumper
A Jackpine Sonnet

How quietly she moves,
the old one, scarcely
disturbing the floorboards
way above my head.

Such a light touch
as she tip-toes from
room to room,
her floor my ceiling.

Not at all like the young one
with her two left feet,
both flat, and her elephantine
shaking the floor overhead.

We often wondered if
the earth was quaking,
the house shaking,
with the ceiling about
to come tumbling down
upon our waiting heads.

Comment:

How silent, the house, with the visitors gone and me and my beloved back together, alone, as we have been for so many years. The silence is broken only by the tick-tock of the grandfather clock, an occasional creak from a floorboard expanding in the sun, or creaking in the shade, the hiss of the kettle … a silence so deep that sometimes we gesture to each other or whisper low.

Don Ryan came over to visit and joy and noise returned. I made him coffee and he brought us a fudge delight. My beloved took refuge in the silence of the front porch and Don Ryan and Don Roger planned their future adventures. We will be working again together soon. Our first task – to finish reading Don Quixote and to complete our notes on our readings, suspended, alas, during the summer work season, but soon to return when university goes through its September Rebirth.

After Don Quixote, we will probably explore two picaresque novels, Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler. That will be great fun for both of us, and I look forward to preparing the readings and their annotations.

When Don Ryan left, our table top noise melted away, silence returned, and Clare with it. Other friends will be visiting soon. They will break the silence with a soft tap on the door and a gentle voice calling “Hello!” We look forward to that. Meanwhile all is quiet and silence is golden.

Until the arrival of Moo. “Hello,” he bellows. “Writing again? Have I got a painting for you. You thought the little ones were noisy… well, speak for your self. Here’s your painting, Et Tu, Mu. It comes from Julius Caesar, the play. And remember, when you and Don Ryan get together you’re just as noisy as the little ones. And I am too, when I’m with you. That’s why the painting’s called Et tu, Mu. Time to go.”

Out he went, thumping and clumping, and left me to the tap of the computer keys and the ticking of the grandfather clock.

Tomorrow’s Words

Tomorrow’s Words


belong to another day
another experience
a different thought set

tomorrow’s words
new leaves
drifting from the tree
bright-faced
kites on a wind
we have yet to know

mini-kites they fly
and our eyes
cling on to them
while we stand
tethered
here below

itinerant drifters
they will not stay
they just fly away
notes on a wind
words of a song

tomorrow’s words
tomorrow’s song
yet to be sung

Comment

Some time ago, Moo painted this painting – Ephemera he calls it. He wrote a series of thoughts – in poetic form – then covered them over with paint. “Everything,” he told me, “is transient. Ephemeral. The poems you write. The paintings I paint. All ephemeral.” “What does ephemeral mean?” I asked him. He gave me his Bad Hair Day Moo Grunt – “Go look it up,” he told me. So I did.

Ephemeral means lasting for only a very short time, fleeting or transitory. Derived from the Greek word ephēmeros—which literally translates to “lasting only a day”—it is often used to describe things like a beautiful sunset, a brief childhood emotion, or a flitting dream that fades in the morning light. The true essence of the word highlights the fragile, impermanent nature of life, trends, and experiences, serving as a poetic reminder to appreciate moments while they happen. Thank you AI and Wikipedia and anyone else involved. Alas, some citations are as ephemeral as words.

Moo’s painting links with several themes from antiquity. Carpe diem – seize the day. Make the best use of the time you have, for time flits by in the twinkling of an eye. Ubi sunt – the central theme of time past – ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere – where are they who lived in this world before us -. This is an age old question that returns via Gaudeamus igitur – a song still sung in some European universities at graduation time. It also occurs in Villon – Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? Where are last year’s snows. This is the version sung by Georges Brassens.

While the past slips rapidly away, like scenery viewed in the rear view mirror of a rapidly advancing car, the future is always before us. Yet, in many ways it is as ephemeral as the past and soon fades into that rearview mirror as we drive along our chosen paths. The words of yesterday have gone. The words of tomorrow have not yet arrived. We can only cling to the words that we speak and hear now. Catch them if you can. Savour them. They won’t last long.

Frustration

Hand holding pen above blank notepad with coffee cup and glasses on wooden table
A hand holds a pen poised to write on a blank notepad next to a coffee cup
AI generated

Frustration
A Jackpine Sonnet

Hand hovering pen poised
a black shadow hangs over
the blank page threatening
to erase any ink marks
that may emerge

Eyes and mind blank
no butterfly kiss delicate
in its touch of nib to page
a black cloud of nothingness
damns creativity at its source

Who can prise the worm
out from the chrysalis
gift wings to the pupa
change it from slug or snail
into that glorious moment
when sunshine’s beauty
stutters into fluttering flight

Comment:

The top photo, AI generated, was based on the wording of the poem. The bottom one was a Moo choice from his pre-painting selections when he claimed to be a photographer. I like both, but for different reasons.

The first one emphasizes the fear of the blank page, the blank canvas, the blank mind, the overnight snowfall that is awaiting its first foot or hoof print, its first instant of inspiration, its first splash of paint, its first letter or word. And yet, according to many with whom I have spoken, artistic creativity is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. So, why hesitate? Get on with it. Make those first marks. Take that first step. And remember, even the longest journey begins with the first step.

The second photo expresses the duality of creativity. At the front end of the butterfly, its poised, fragile beauty. At the rear end, the fearsome face it assumes if approached in the wrong way from the wrong direction. Front end – the moment of creation. Rear end – the fear of that first step and the consequent sense of frustration.

So – at the moment of creating, we must consider several things – the fear of failure. But the only way to never fail is to never try. Each failure, however bad, is not a crime, it is a stepping stone on the way to ultimate success. The fear of the first step – this ties in with the fear of failure. Will we slip on the first damp stepping stone across the stream? How long will we permit our selves to search for a safer passage? Is there really a bridge around the bend, a bridge that will stop us from getting our toes wet? And what’s wrong with wet toes anyway?

When we dip our toes in the sea, we feel the cold of the water. When we take the plunge, dive in head first, we feel the full force of the ocean. And that ocean is the creative energy that yes, can sweep us away, can carry us up, can pull us down. Is that what we are afraid of, being overwhelmed by the creative powers within us? Of losing the meagre control we hold over our lives? I truly believe that in many cases it is just that element of being swept away by our own unleashed creativity that fills us fear. But if we never take that first step we’ll never know who or what we are, nor will we understand what we are afraid of, nor will we be able to conquer that fear and accept our creativity for what it is.

Outsider

Outsider

Outside their window
nose pressed to the pane
always an outsider

Cold rain turned
to sleet then snow
dark outside
inside fairy lights
the fire’s warm glow

I never cried
I accepted sleet and snow
just stood outside
watching the fire
the sparkling tree
gifts at the foot
children playing

I turned for home
my cold empty house
no lights no fire
just me all alone
my parents out partying
me left on my own

Comment:

Poor Moo – he’s been having a bad time. Winston Churchill’s Black Dog of Depression leapt out of the grandmother clock on the wall in the kitchen, draped itself round his shoulders, and wouldn’t let go. Well, that’s what he told me, anyway. Personally, I think he was silly enough as to check his pension plan on the stock exchange – bad idea. That descending red arrow is worse than the Black Dog and equally as likely to drag one down, down, down. Is there a rock bottom? Who knows. What I do know, from my own hard-won experience, is when it’s darkest and all seems lost, that’s when the you know dawn will soon come and the light will break through.

In 17th Century Spanish Mysticism, this is known as the dark night of the soul. Stick with it. Do not despair. That dark night leads to what the Mystics call the Via Iluminativa – the path of light that leads you back upwards, into your normal self and your daily life of sunshine and happiness.

Anyway, in a cri de coeur – a cry from the heart – Moo showed me this painting and asked me to write a poem, just for him, so that he could wallow in his sorrow for a little bit longer then pull himself out of the Slough of Despond. Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress – don’t tell me you haven’t read that? You’ll be on Santa’s Naughty List if you haven’t. Anyway, I offered him a hand to pull him out, but he said “No, not a hand. I want a poem.” And here it is. Moo on the outside, looking in. As you can see, he’s wearing Blue. So he’s a Blue Moo. Good job he isn’t from Kentucky – “Blue Moo of Kentucky, keep on shining.” If he was, he might never recover!

This poem is also dedicated to my good friends Ginger and Michael. They live in the Sunshine State and are never left out in the cold. Now, if they lived in Nova Scotia, they might become true blue Blue Nosers. As for me, I am just a reborn New Brunswick Herring Choker. And I think one of those two might be as well.

Green Banks

Green Banks

An empty shell I am
the sea sound swishing
when you hold me to your ear

Pwll Ddu and pebbles
Swansea Sands
their fishnets glistening
with golden day stars

Brandy Cove
ever-changing after
winter’s storm surge

Fisherman’s Point
early evening
when dog-fish bark

Pyle Corner
cows in the lane
quick to kick
high the five barred gate
we climb
to avoid them

Rats
in the rubbish dump
grey bodies
scuttling claws

Green Banks at last
home of our summer
sky cloud castle dreams

Comment:

Have you ever held an empty sea-shell to your ear and heard the sea’s soft sighting sound? I used to collect them from the sands, hold them to my ear, and listen. The best shells left you with the sigh and sound of sea and waves moving with a magic that sounds eternally. These I would take home and listen to them in winter, or at boarding school, when I needed such beauty to keep me alive and sound in heart and mind.

Sure I was a dreamer. But oh what dreams and how they have followed me step by step, town by town, country by country. And now they gather here, in Island View, and let me know that within my mind the dream world of memory is immense but I can still capture it and hold it to my heart.

Funny how things come back to me.

1. Taste – and I there at Eynon’s in the Uplands, where I first tasted crempogau, Welsh pancakes. They changed into the Crêpes Suzettes I tried in Cassis-les-Calanques, all soaked in Grand Marnier.

2. Touch – damp wood beneath the hand takes me to boarding school where the walls sweated and the bannisters gleamed in foggy weather. There, in the Vale of Severn, damp mornings were the warm. I also remember the touch of hot air, breathed into my shirt, to keep me warm.

3. Smell – the scent of things burning, burnt porridge particularly, drifting down the drive, and driving through the tree mist and into my nostrils.

4. Sound – so many songs take me back to the places where I used to sing them. Sometimes they attached themselves to a family member, though I didn’t understand how or why those associations were made, not until much, much later.

5. Sight – put them all together and you can see those memories surging out of the mists in all five forms.

Have you tasted sea mist on your tongue? Have you touched the dampness of your jersey when you cycle down Painswick Hill in the mist? Have you caught the smell of wet wool, mist moistened, and clinging close? Have you heard the rustle in autumn when the November mists wrap themselves around ghostly trees and the dry leaves rattle like bones? Have you seen long dead mist warriors rise up from the ground at Badbury Rings or atop Maiden Castle, or on Cley Hill, or Westbury White Horse?

Time and tide wait for neither man nor woman. And memory’s mists do not wait either. they rush in, like angels, and foolish is the the man who refuses to meet them, eye to eye, tongue to tongue, nose to nose, finger to finger, ear to ear – in all their mystical mist-filled glory.

No Man’s Island

No Man’s Island

It’s so easy to lose
our true selves
or to be carried along
by the flow of another’s
rhetoric because we
no longer possess
(or never had)
that inner conviction
that makes us different.

That’s why we must join hands
and link together:
a chain of bridged
and ferried islands
to insulate us
against our loneliness.

Comment:

I first published this in 2017 with the title Islands – I have changed the title, very slightly, to move closer to John Donne’s No Man is an Island. What I have noticed more and more recently is how we tend to isolate ourselves. Birds of a feather flock together – true – and nowhere truer than in this bloated Soccer World Cup with its 48 teams to be expanded next time, 2030, to 64 teams, unless we have 64 teams in 2028, because this circus demands to be offered more frequently so it can make even more money … or is so that more teams can compete in the final stages. Remember – the finals are meant to be the ultimate challenge – the best 32 teams in the world – until Quatar (2022) 42 teams and now USA (2026) 48 teams.

Il gruppo della morte – remember that? It’s when three top teams were drawn together in a group of four – and one of them was doomed not to get out. Didn’t happen this time. No gruppo della morte this time – 24 top teams all got through, and the next eight third best place finishes. There were some very one-sided games. And there were many games in which one team parked the bus – all ten players inside their own penalty area and no way to get through. This led to some very negative defensive football. And don’t forget that terrible off-side law – no portion, not a hair or a fingernail of the attacking player could be seen on the – bow your heads in submission – Video Assisted Referee’s screen. And how far back do you go when searching for that minor infringement that will disallow whatever happened to whomsoever it happened to?

Before the days of the electronic spy in the sky, the rules of rugby were fairly straightforward. “The referee is the sole judge of fact and of law.” In addition, in those days, the advantage needed to be immediate. No five minute wait while the players bang away at the goal line from the one yard until an infringement takes place, the attacking team fails to score, and we all go back to the original infringement. And no five minute wait while all the moves leading up to the try are checked and double checked so that there are no imperfections. For those without memories – check the Barbarians versus New Zealand in Cardiff, way back when, in 1972 or 73. Look at those high and dangerous tackles leading up to that wonderful Gareth Edwards try. Guess what? That try would never have taken place with a VAR check for dangerous play.

Writing these words, I feel myself to be isolated. A man with a memory who has been left out in the cold by a world that has moved on and left him behind – with all his beautiful memories. “See that house?” My grandfather asked me, when I was an avid collector of autographs. “Knock on the door and ask for the autograph of the man who lives there.” I did. He was old. He was asleep. Leave the book. He’ll sign it when he wakes up. And he did. I have the book here in the house and the autograph standing in isolated glory in the middle of a page. W. J. Bancroft – aka Billy Bancroft. “Who’s he?” you ask. Well, just go and look him up. You may be surprised at what you find down memory’s lane where my grandfather and I wandered hand in hand all those many years ago.

As for Moo’s painting, he calls it Craters with Creatures. But I call it In search of times past. Look closely. You can see many of them within the picture’s frame and they are all searching for something they have lost and would desperately love to cling on to.

Starry Night

450px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Starry Night
(1889 & 2019 & 2026)

last night I saw stars
never thought to see them again
first time in years
a riot of bright lights
no dark spots floating
no black holes barring
vision’s edge

just layer upon layer
star fields like buttercups
littering the sky
I had forgotten their names
forgotten how many existed
smiling frowning down
immortalized in myth
celebrated in song

daylight broke waves
an ocean of sunshine
untying dreams’ night-knots
sharp black and white memories
shifting to corkscrews of color

two refreshing rain drops
four times a day
a never-to-be-forgotten face
seen once again in close up

Fundy fogs clearing
mist un-threading between
salt-laden pine roots gripping
splitting fragile rocks

complicated emotions
woven into a simple
carpet bag of words

Commentary:

I wrote this some time ago, after a simple eye operation that scraped clean the new lenses that the doctor had placed in my eyes. Distorted vision – it happens in so many ways. Kennel blindness – at the doggy shows, the owners and breeders blind to the faults of their own dogs while eagle-eyed for the slightest fault in another owner’s woof! Cat shows the same. Incidentally, tell me if you can, why a cat show has a catalog, as does a dog show. But why shouldn’t a dog show have a dog-a-log? I wanted to print one foe them when I was working with the kennel club, but their own kennel blindness made them insist on a catalog for dogs.

Think of the joy and beauty of sight. Sunrise. A thunder storm, dark clouds building. The slash of rain. Those first flakes of winter snow. That snow snake hissing down the road before you whipped by the wind.

Now I am back with new glasses and new eye drops and the world has come back into focus yet again. My beloved is, as she always was, and as I will always remember her. Yet, with my new glasses, I see and sense the subtle changes that have taken place.

And words. That magic carpet of letters that turn an army of ants into a Jackpine sonnet or a song about the sixpence that vanished so long ago. Oral poetry, yes. You can listen to it. But the written word, going letter by letter onto the page – you need vision to see that.

Vision and Revision – we are not writers, we are re-writers. Indeed we are, but without vision, without sight, we would be lost, so lost. Unthinkable a world without words. Unthinkable that night sky without its stars. Ah, to feel the warmth of the sun – but alas not to be able to see sun and shadow, the butterfly upon the flower, the stork returning to its nest.

Sight, touch, taste, sound, smell – deprived of one sense, we are left with four – but oh what a chunk of world goes missing when we lose just one sense.

Riddle-me-Ree

Riddle-me-Ree


What does the kettle whistle
to the grandfather clock
and why does its pendulum
call the kettle black?

A chime in time saves the cuckoo
just before it flies before our eyes …
and in August, fly it must.

Does anyone know how thyme
tells the time and whether or not
the dandelion clock
will learn how and when to chime?

Deep in a Gower Cave,
a woolly rhinoceros weaves
a web of time
on his mother’s knitting needles.

Beside him, in the rock,
a neolithic clock is fast asleep.
Was it Bill Haley put that rock
around the clock?

“You’ll never know,”
rings the sea-bell
tolling on its tidal surge,
“and I don’t have the urge to tell.”

Commentary:

Moo loves a riddle – that is why he fills his paintings with some many strange half people and animals that look out and King Lear at you. Mad as a hatter, is our Moo, especially when he’s feeling Moo-dy Blue. Moo is visually strange and now he is encouraging me to be verbally strange. So I took up the gauntlet, accepted the challenge, and road Nexus, my old dobbin, down to the end of the jousting lists, up with my lance and shield, and off I go.

Luckily Moo doesn’t know what I am talking about and he doesn’t have a dobbin anyway, let alone a lance. So, there he is, sitting on the sidelines, flicking paint at me with his paint brush. “The brush is mightier than the last,” he said. “Here’s mud in your eye!” And he must have been to PEI, because the mud was all red.

Alas, the Field Marshal thought I was bleeding, so he waved the white handkerchief and told me to leave the field of combat before PEI was swept away and vanished under a tide of big red mud along with Bud the Spud. And that made Stompin’ Tom stomping mad. “He might at least have used ketchup,” he cried, “because ketchup loves potatoes.” I found out, a lot later, that he had actually betted some money on me and was furious because he lost it.

“Never mind, Tom,” I told him. “Jousting isn’t the best game out there, and not every day does the best knight win.” “Hmmm,” said the Man from Skinner’s Pond. “I guess I could write a song about that. I think I’ll call it The Good Old Nexus Game. Nope. Doesn’t sound write. Jousting game? Nope. Hockey – that’s it – I’ll just go off, get my guitar, and tune up the old stompin’ bored.”


Poema de Amor – Love Poem

Poema de Amor / Love Poem

Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico.


Mitla is a sacred burial place in the Oaxaca Valley.
 The caves in the hills above the town
 are said to lead directly to an underworld from which demons and devils emerge at night and by means of which humans can communicate with the souls of the dead. Mitla, in fact, is often called the city of the dead.
 Legend has it that if you embrace  a certain magic column in the Palace at Mitla, 
the time left for you to live can be measured by the distance 
between your fingers as they reach round the pillar and almost touch.
 The pillar, they say, grows and shrinks according to the length of the seeker’s life. Petrus,  a rock, in Latin, evolves into piedra, 
a rock or stone in Spanish: upon this rock will I build my church.

1
We walk on tiptoe round the garden
peeling free the sunlight cloud by cloud

sometimes the heart is a sacrifice of feathers
bound with blood to an ornate altar

petrus
this rock cold against my chest
piedra
centuries of glyphs alive in your face

if our arms meet round these all too human columns
what will become of us?

2
beneath your skin the woad lies as blue as this evening sky
yellow light bends low in the fields below us
each darkened pool a warrior fallen beneath the scythe

the moon paints a delicate circle
its great round open eye stands out
above the rooftops
tonight it bears an eye lid carved from  cloud

our teeth are diadems of whiteness
we tie shadows to our heels
and dance in triumph through street and square

3
daylight bends itself round rock and turns into shadow
we flourish in blocks of fire

dreaming new selves from roots and branches
we clasp each resurrection with greedy fingers
will the moon rise again tonight and will we watch?

dark angel bodies with butterfly wings
our shadows have eloped together

we can see them sitting side by side
bumping knees at a table in the zócalo

4
church bells gild the barrio‘s rooftops
our fingers reach to the skies and hold back light
we draw shadow blinds to shut out the day
night fills us with stars and silhouettes

we dream ourselves together in a silent movie
closed flesh woven from cobwebs
lies open to a tongue-slash of madness

the neighbor’s dog wakes up on the azotea
he barks bright colors as dawn declares day
and windows and balconies welcome the sun

can anyone see the dew-fresh flowers
growing from our tangled limbs?

your fingers sew a padlock on my lips
“Listen to the crackle of the rising sun!”

Tuseday’s Child

Tuesday’s Child

1

Thursday’s Child has far to go …
so too does Tuesday’s child,
especially this one, when he sets out
on a Tuesday on a long journey.

Just by chance, I caught this cormorant.
“Behind you, quick,” said Clare.
I turned and ‘Click!’

2

Such a miracle:
the first steps of flight
taken over water.
That first step heavy,
the second one lighter,
and the third one
scarcely a paint brush
pocking the waves.

3

The need for Tuesday’s Child
to take flight lies deep within me.
Fleeing from what?
Running towards what?
Who knows?

All I know is that the future
lies to the right of this photo
and the past lies to the left,
and I don’t know
what either might contain.

4

But I do remember the words
of Antonio Machado:

‘Caminante, no hay camino,
sólo hay estela sobre la mar.’
traveler, there is no road,
just a wake across life’s sea.

5

We may not know what lies ahead
but, like a ship at sea,
we leave white water behind us
and that wake tells us
where we have been
and what we have done.