Existence

Easter Seals

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Easter Seals

So, I’ll put my cards on the table:
it’s Easter and the seals are dancing
in the garden, and they are ring-tailed,
like raccoons, and they’re dancing
because it’s Easter and they’re Easter
Seals after all and you can’t blame them
for dancing when their time is upon them
and they’re in season and everybody
dances when the time’s right, don’t they?,
because I know I do, and I’m dancing right
now, dancing with joy and happiness
because last night, for the first time in two
years since I started my cancer treatment,
I only peed once, at half past three,
and I went to bed at ten and dammit,
that’s five and a half hours of sleep,
for the first time in two years, and I
usually pee every ninety minutes
and that’s five or six times a night,
but last night, I peed just that once,
and I went back to bed and I slept
for another four and a half hours
until eight o’clock in the morning
and that was almost ten hours straight
for the first time in … well, you remember,
I don’t need to repeat it yet again …
but boy, do I ever feel good this morning,
and yes, I’m laying my cards on the table
and I’m dancing, just like those Easter Seals.

Comment: I finally finished my poetic journal, A Cancer Chronicle, and I put it up on Amazon last Friday. A Cancer Chronicle is sub-titled ‘one man’s journey’ and in it I write about my reactions to the treatment I received for prostate cancer. I met many people at the cancer hospice during my eight week stay, most of whom were a lot worse off than I was. I admired the courage of my fellow sufferers and learned so much about human beings and how they face adversity. I was particularly impressed with the bravery of the women who were suffering from breast cancer. They were so strong, so courageous. In spite of their troubles, my fellow patients reached out and helped me from the first day of my stay. They pulled me through the difficult days and shared their experiences with me. I will never forget them. If this book can comfort just one cancer sufferer, I will be so happy.

It’s just a guess, but I am assuming that finishing A Cancer Chronicle took a weight off my shoulders and allowed me the peace of mind to finally sleep. I do hope that this is a milestone and that my recovery will continue. Pax amorque / Peace and Love.

Why?

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Why?

Curiouser and curiouser
the vanishing smile
on the ginger cat
and wild dog dingo
grinning like a coal-scuttle,
why, oh why?

Who put the cur in curious?
Why was the dog-watch curtailed?
Cynicism, some say, and why
do we kneel before him,
heads bowed, waiting
the thumbs up, thumbs down,
of placet, placetne,
why, oh why?

Comment: Raw poem. I dreamed it up last night, but it wasn’t like this when it started. Cur: means why or what for in Latin and curs were large, mongrel dogs, bred for herding cattle in the Middle Ages. Cynicsm: because the cynics were also called ‘dogs’ partly for their shamelessness and partly for the faithful way they guarded their philosophical tenets. In Mexico, the Dominicans were often portrayed with dogs at their sides. The explanation: domini / of the Lord, -can / dog; hence they were the faithful guard dogs of the Lord. Placet: it pleases in Latin; the thumbs up sign that allowed the defeated gladiator to live, not die. “In any event, the final decision of death or life belonged to the editor, who signalled his choice with a gesture described by Roman sources as pollice verso meaning ‘with a turned thumb’ a description too imprecise for reconstruction of the gesture or its symbolism” (Gladiator: Wikipedia).

The Brick

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The Brick

 The brick sits on the master’s desk.
The master enters the classroom,
sees the brick, picks it up,
and without even looking
hurls it out of the window.

It is a warm, spring day
and luckily the window is open.

The schoolboys watch the brick
as it tumbles in slow motion
end over end through the air.

It lands with a thump in the quad
right at the feet of another master.

This second master looks around
but there’s nobody in sight.

He shrugs his shoulders,
bends down, picks up the brick,
puts it in his briefcase,
and walks away.

 

Yellow

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Yellow

Sunshine and daffodils
and my grand-daughter
paddling in the kitchen sink
as her mother washes
the breakfast dishes.

“Sit,” the child says and “stand,”
following the words with actions.

Yellow, she says, yellow,
as daffodils fill the screen
to shine in that far-off kitchen
a thousand clicks away by road
but instantaneous as the child
reaches out to hug the I-Pad.

Yellow, she repeats, yellow.

Soon she will see the daffodils
dancing their spring dance,
snow gone,
beside the lake,
beneath the trees,
yellow, yes, yellow,
tossing their heads
dancing
yellow in the yellow
breeze.

Comment: Another raw poem, straight from the journal, with only minor revisions. We Skyped yesterday and discovered that our grand-daughter had added another word to her vocabulary: yellow. She repeated it again and again, with great joy and energy, as she paddled in the kitchen sink.

Frog Lake

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FROG LAKE
THE OPERA

Frogs chant spring love song from pond to ditch.
Their tunes are one note symphonies,
croaks of joy that move other frogs to ecstasy.

Boy frogs seek girl frogs, encouraging them to share
the splendours of ditch life, pond life,
in a pairing whose springtime union will employ
frog song to spawn still more singers.

There’s joy in this calling, croaking, creating;
and where there’s joy, there’s laughter, love,
happiness, light, sun, brightness, flowing water:
everything frogs associate with spring.

Every night the frowning silence of frozen stars
wings deeper into memory. Spring moonlight
swings its cheerful love lamp. Earth also sings.

Daffodils 3

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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.

Daffodils

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Daffodils

Winter’s chill lingers
well into spring.
I buy daffodils
to encourage the sun
to return
and shine in the kitchen.

Tight-clenched
fists their buds,
they sit on the table
and I wait for them
to open.

Grey clouds fill the sky.
A distant sun
lights up the land
but doesn’t warm the earth
nor melt the snow.

The north wind
chills the mind,
driving dry snow
across our drive
to settle in the garden.

Our red squirrels
spark at the feeder.
The daffodils
promise warmth,
foretell the sun,
predicting
bright days to come.

Comment: Another ‘very raw’ poem, just less than a day old. We bought two bunches of daffodils in the supermarket yesterday. There were none about on Dewi Sant / St. David’s Day (March 1), so we made up for it yesterday by buying two bunches. They bring a brightness and a lightness to the house and ease the winter gray that besieges the mind when winter lingers and spring seems so far away. Here is a link to two more poems on Daffodils. There are some photos here, too. https://rogermoorepoet.com/2016/05/29/daffodils/

Whisperer

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Whisperer

The bird whisperer, bag of bread crusts in his hand, walks towards that lake I knew so well in my childhood. His friends, the ducks and geese, wait for him to arrive so they can have their breakfast. The whisperer is late today and emerges slowly from the early morning damp and mist.

The whisperer’s friends are hungry and impatient. They leave the lakeside to waddle across the road in a lengthening gaggle, fastest at the front, laggards strung out, straggling behind. When they reach him, the whisperer stops for a moment to greet them. Ducks and geese and traffic stand still as the whisperer pulls the whole world to a halt. Watching him, I remember how, when I was a child, those same sharp bills nibbled at the crusts I held in my fingers as my father rowed our hired boat over the lake’s smooth waters.

The whisperer crosses the road with his flock strung out behind him. Drivers and passengers take photos and videos on their cell phones as the battalion marches on, down the slight slope, back to the waterside where the whisperer scatters crusts and breadcrumbs and throws corn as if it were a shower of stars from the firmament.

Greying skies threaten above dark waters. At lake’s end, above the waterfall, the monument to Scott of the Antarctic pierces the gloom with its fine, white tower. Scott sailed from this city in search of new lands and adventures at the South Pole. Like me and many others he left, never to return.

I look at the bruises that decorate my wrinkled hands. Neither spots nor wrinkles were there when I left that lake behind me, was it really fifty years ago? I view the video on YouTube, shot from an I-phone in a parked car, and my eyes mist over. This was my home, this was the land of my fathers, this was the land of choirs that would always welcome me back with song … yet I no longer go back.

The video is grainy and bears grey threads that mimic the passing clouds. I gaze on that well-remembered lake: there, so many years ago, I swam in its waters, ran and biked along its winding paths, rowed around its edges in and out of the reeds, and fed the lake birds as I floated beside them. I remember all too well the warmth of spring and the joy of the returning sun that strew gold daffodils beneath budding trees.

I see myself reflected in the computer’s screen: my wrinkled skin wraps my shriveled flesh in the same way crinkly paper winds itself round an Easter egg. There is so much inside that binding, so many memories and secrets that dream their lives away inside me. I close my eyes and for a moment I am once more that youthful body flashing its jack-knife blade into those rippling waters …

Evening comes and I stand in a shimmer of moonlight at the garden’s edge, my hands held out to catch a falling star. Alas, I seize only the mutterings of snowflakes strung between the constellations. My scarecrow dream stretches out a long, thin hand and clasps bright treasures in its tight-clenched fist. Inverted, the Big Dipper hangs its question mark from the sky’s dark eyelid. A honking of geese haunts the highway high above me. I swivel from north to south to catch an impression of darkness swift and sudden that blots out the scattered grains of stars.

A finger-nail of rising moon emerges from the trees and hoists itself skywards. The moon hones its cutting edge into an ice-thin blade and the lone dove of my heart flaps in its trap of barren bone. Moonlight and starlight run twin liquors, raw, within me. Stars nearby fade in its brightness. I have built a fire inside the house. When I go back in, my goose quill pen scratches black lines in my journal as I weave words by firelight across a flickering page. Ghosts of departed constellations drown in the nearby river. Pale planets scythed by moonlight bob phosphorescent on a rising flood of memories.

Comment: This would be a “raw poem” were it not a piece of “raw prose”! I found it among my notes late last night and revised it and put it up this morning. It was based on a YouTube video of a man, the bird whisperer, feeding geese at Roath Park Lake in Cardiff, South Wales. When I was a teenager, my family moved from Swansea to Cardiff and Roath Park was a short bike ride from our new home. The Scott Memorial stands at the lower end of Roath Lake, just by the waterfall. Apparently Robert Scott sailed from Cardiff on 15 June 1910 in a converted whaler in an effort to walk to the South Pole. Like me, when I left Cardiff, he didn’t return.

Here’s a link to Robert Scott: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Falcon_Scott

This is the video on which the piece is based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clbbMt2sl0k