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
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
Sun Storm
Some days the clouds roll in.
Your world turns from gray
into fifty shades of black.
These are the days when the sun
seems as lost as you.
But the sun isn’t lost.
It hides behind clouds, maybe,
but it’s there.
That’s where the sun storm comes in.
Clouds have silver linings
and the sun, once seen, will never,
ever be forgotten.
Hold its image in your mind.
Breathe in the sunshine.
Let it flood through your body
and shine out through your heart.
Now, you will never be alone,
and the sun will walk with you,
all your days, and be remembered
even in the darkest night
when paths disappear
and all seems lost.
Click here for Roger’s reading.
Sun Storm
New Year’s Day
What’s in a name?
Only the winners write the history of their conquests, only the winners. Am I a winner, then? Of course I am. I’m writing this aren’t I? Therefore, ipso facto, I am a winner. This means that although they trashed and thrashed me, they never broke me nor was I a loser. I survived. And in that world in which I lived, surviving without surrendering was a victory in itself. But this is no tale of a hero, of bloody deeds, of a great victory. It is a survivor’s tale. So, if I won, then they lost, and who knows now how the losers felt, history’s non-winners, their slates wiped clean now, their names anonymous, erased from my story, not carved in stone nor impressed into steel.
What’s in a name? The Red Wings, the Black Hawks, the Braves, the Algonquins? Whose heart lies broken and buried at Wounded Knee? Why does the Wolastoq rise in the Notre Dame mountains and flow down through unceded land to the City of Fredericton that noble daughter of the woods, and on to the city of Saint John on Fundy Bay? Why Wolastoq, Notre Dame, Fredericton, Saint John?
“Sticks and stones will break my bones, yet names will never hurt me.” But what if I am called Nemo and have no other name? No-name man, no-name woman, no-name child, no language to call my own, no culture, no history, except the one that others wrote and forced me to believe or the innocent who causes me to rebel
“Grandpa,” she says, climbing on my knee. “Tell me a story. Please.”
“Once upon a time,” I begin. “There was this little girl …” She wriggles and giggles.
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Don’t.”
“Do.”
“Was it me? Am I that little girl?”
“You can be if you want.”
“I want. How does my story end?”
“I don’t know. You’ve only just started it.”
So, write your poems, write your stories, write your childhood, write your memories, write what you know, invent what you don’t know. You can’t remember your name? Give yourself a new one. You have forgotten your myths? Create new ones. You have forgotten your language? Seek and you will find, and when you have found, learn your language again, a word at a time, phrase by phrase, word-picture by word-picture, until you have renewed your world and your place in it. Let your ancestors stride through your veins again and again to stand in the spotlight that you shine upon them.
Restriction, extinction, suppression of the weakest and poorest, survival of the fittest … You, you who are reading this, you who have survived, you can count yourself among the strongest and the bravest. Now name yourself for who and what you are.
Pick up your pen and write. Lazarus I name you: step out from your living tomb, step out from your kennel-cave. Pick up your bed and walk and talk, and write your own story. And remember the words of Oscar Wilde, “Tell your own tale, and be yourself, my friend, because everyone else is taken.”
Click here for Roger’s reading.
New Year’s Day
What’s in a name?
Comment: This is the penultimate chapter from On Being Welsh. I will put the last chapter up tomorrow.
Meditations on Messiaen
Revelations
3
Ash Wednesday
Each of the select will be marked with a seal,
ash on the on the chosen one’s forehead
signifying all grief and guilt consumed,
reduced to the ashes of this burnt-out sign.
Dust to dust and ashes to ashes, for of dust
are we made, and though the embers may glow
for a little while, that ash will soon grow cold.
Words are quick forgotten yet memories linger.
They wander among celestial fields of glory
where nimbuses of nebulae crab sideways
to claw-crack veiled mysteries in an effort,
often vain, to reveal them and lay them bare.
Bird song, far below, flickering fading,
luminous confusion of son et lumière,
infused with the ineffable joys of paradise
and time eternal, successive yet simultaneous.
Birds in the branches of the Tree of Life
gather its fruits with multitudinous song.
Forgotten offerings litter the hidden path,
trodden by the few wise men who in the world
did live. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh may not
be accepted. The offerings are we ourselves, for a
broken and a contrite heart will not be despised.
Click on the link below for Roger’s reading.
rogermoorepoet 