Poem on his 73rd birthday
I won’t sit with my head between my hands
fearing the future or brooding on the past.
Each day is a bonus now, each sunrise a celestial
celebration, each evening a drawing down of blinds.
I welcome each sun with open arms and accept
the gifts it brings. Sunshine fills me with joy. It beams
like a beacon with the warmth of my joyous heart.
Her Hands
Her hands were cold,
her fingers were long:
I hoped she’ll tell me
what was wrong.
She warmed her hands
beneath hot water.
She was young enough
to be my daughter.
“If you were my dad,
here’s what I’d say …”
I liked it when
she talked that way.
But what she said
was not good news.
Tumors and lumps
left little to choose.
“And yet,” she said,
you have some choice.”
I’d have answered, but
I’d lost my voice.
My hands were cold.
My legs were shaking.
I could not speak.
My heart was breaking.
Reyes
On the night of January 5 – 6, The Three Wise Men, Los Reyes Magos in Spanish, visit all the children in the world as they travel to Bethlehem. They bear gifts to these children and January 6 is a time of visitors and gifts.
First: the visitors. Three deer walked out of the woods this morning. They paraded in front of the garage, luckily we had the door open, and equally luckily, I was able to get these photos of them.
This is the lead deer. At this stage, the road was empty and I hadn’t been seen.
The camera’s click sounded the alarm. The deer froze … and so did I. We gazed at each other for several seconds. I was afraid to move.
I took another photo. The feet picked up as the camera clicked and away the deer went.
Baby came last, but didn’t stay long.
Up went the tail and away baby sped. Wapiti, White-tailed deer, tail in the air.
After the visitors, came the gifts.
Below is a link to my first Poetry book of 2008: Iberian Interludes. It arrived just in time for Reyes … the little boy that still dwells within this old man’s heart is delighted with his gift: the majority of my best poems about Spain gathered together beneath two new covers. Click below and open the box!
https://www.amazon.com/Iberian-Interludes-Bulls-Blood-Bottled/dp/1539911411/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
May you all have a great visit from the Three Wise Men (los Tres Reyes Magos), and may you all have a prosperous and joyous New Year, full of excellent writing.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow, early, my love, you’ll fly away. Today, all tense and stressed, your foot in the stirrup, as Cervantes would say, the anxiety of the journey on your back, you walk around the Beaver Pond where red and yellow leaves abound. I know you are hoping to see, once more before you leave, the Great Blue Heron that was here last week. Some ducks remain. I can see them standing on the water, flapping their wings, inflaming the wind, keeping themselves warm, not looking as if they really want to fly.
Alas, there are no beavers now. An abandoned lodge, the grass on its roof turning brown and dry, lofts white sticks into the sky, but the waterways are clogging and the beaver have gone. Drowned tree trunks, beaver-gnawed and languishing, grow tiny clumps of grass and weed. Sometimes, they join together and form a miniature island that will grow at last into a grassland. The deserted lodge reminds me of our home, soon to be abandoned by the life and soul that animates it and keeps it alive. It will be sad and lonely living there without you. I know I will have the cat for company, but that’s not the same. I think I’m in charge of her, but I wonder sometimes if you’re leaving her in charge of me.
A thin grey woven webbing garlands one moribund tree. I don’t like tent worms or their equivalents. Every year we face a different invasion of this worm or that and the trees stand shocked by crawling creatures that infest their branches and build their silk cities up into the sky. I hate it when those dangling inhabitants, escaping from their cocoons, swing from low branches and twine silk threads around my face. Give me any day a fresh green frond caught by the morning sun in early spring, or else bright autumn leaves so soon to fall.
I love American Goldfinches when they sing that last departing song. I love most of all the occasional visitors that wing up north on the wings of a summer storm. Do you recall the Indigo Bunting that perched in the Mountain Ash just outside our kitchen window? He had the look of a lost bird and his call was more a cry of help than a birdsong. You took such lovely photos of him as he sat there, looking this way, that way, anyway for the way he needed to go home … and those two cardinals, orange the one, bright red the other, standing beneath the feeder, so bright against the early snow.
The hunting hawks give everyone a fright. They perch on top of a power line pole then step off into space to alight, claws first, on some poor songbird trilling away, quite free from fear, his unfinished symphony of song. Claws first? I gaze again at the photo you took of the Sharp-shinned Hawk that settled on our porch that day it rained. Claws? The massive yellow talons are high grade weapons fit for any war. I pity the poor bird clasped in those claws and brought to earth or lifted high into the sky, a feast for the marauder.
It’s getting late, my love. You walk towards me out of the woods like some lost spirit returning to this earthly world from some spiritual sanctuary. The season is ending. Thanksgiving is close. It will soon be time for you to pack your bags and go. Three silent wishes for you my love: enjoy yourself; don’t forget me … and don’t stay away too long.
Comment:
This piece goes back to the Fall of 2016. Clare and I visited the Beaver Pond at Mactaquac the day before she left for Ottawa. I sat at a picnic table and watched her as she walked through the woods and around the pond. ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow’: she didn’t want to leave me and I didn’t want her to go, yet we both knew how important it was for her to visit our grandchild for Thanksgiving. Time apart is good: it makes us realize how much we miss each other. For me, above all, it is a reminder of everything that gets done around the home without my ever noticing the care and love that is poured into each moment of every day. Having to provide that care and love for myself is an object lesson that makes me so thankful for the seemingly simple blessings Clare has brought to me throughout our married life …
Indigo Bunting, for Meg:
For you, Meg: photos, by Clare, of our second Indigo Bunting.
He’s rather handsome. We usually get them in from the States following a strong south wind or a summer storm.
Great Blue Heron, for Tanya:
He was right over the garden: beautiful. We don’t often see them up here as we are on the far side of the hill from the river. Must have been raiding a neighbor’s goldfish pond.
Claustrophobia
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“I can’t breathe.”
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere.”
“Are we going to Gran’s?”
“Why not? Yes. Pack your bag.”
“What about Dad?”
“What about him?”
“Aren’t you going to tell him where we’re going?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t care. If he cared, he’d be here.”
“Maybe he’s had an accident?”
“He didn’t have one last night, or the night before. He just doesn’t care.”
“We can’t just go …”
“We can.”
She called a cab and when it came, they turned the lights out in the house, and shut the front door behind them. Then they got into the cab. The cabbie turned to her and spoke over his shoulder.
“Merry Christmas, and where would you be going, Ma’am?”
“The station.”
“Bus or train?”
“I don’t care. They’re both the same.”
The cabbie shrugged and pulled away from the kerb. The bus station was closer and that’s where the cabbie left them. Mother and son stood there for a moment, under the station lights, looking at the coaches that squatted there, parked in regular lines. Then, mother and son, they walked into the ticket office.
“What time does the next bus leave?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Swansea.”
“The next bus for Swansea leaves in twenty minutes.”
“We’ll take it.”
“Single or return?”
“Single. Two tickets.”
“You should buy a return ticket; it’s cheaper.”
“We’re not coming back. Not this time.”
“How old’s the boy?”
“Seven.”
“He can travel half price.”
“One and a half then, singles.”
It was December 23rd, her own mother’s birthday. Mother and son sat together on the dark, empty bus. The cold seats chilled them as they waited in silence. The boy looked out the window and coughed.
“Will Grampy be there to meet us?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t he know we’re coming?”
“No.”
“Does granny know?”
“No.”
“Mum, why are we going?”
“It’s granny’s birthday today. We’re going to give her a surprise.”
Two hours later, the bus deposited them in Swansea. The night had filled with heavy clouds and promised snow.
“Can we take a cab. mum?”
“There’s none here. We’ll have to walk.”
They walked side by side down the well-known streets. Christmas lights adorned the shops and they walked through alternate pools of light and darkness.
“Mum, I’m tired.”
“Give me your bag. We’re nearly there.”
“But mum …”
“I can carry both. Hold on to my arm.”
They kept on walking. After a while, they stopped beneath the streetlight outside the old family home and looked up into the street light’s glow. The first snow-flakes danced down.
“Can we go in now, mum? I want to see Gran and Gramps.”
“You go in. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
She watched her son climb the steps to the front door. He lifted the old brass knocker and banged it down. After a moment, the front light came on and the door opened a crack. She stood beneath the street lamp, inhaling, taking the chill air deep into her lungs. She felt the tight bands in her chest start to loosen. For the first time since this time last year, she felt free
Warning to the reader:
Raw material, still under revision, and probably needs lots of revising. I look forward to your comments. In some ways, this is my take on A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Not quite how Dylan Thomas saw it; more a sort of … well, you work it out for yourself!
24 December 1966 – 24 December 2016
This what all those poems were leading up to:
Clare and I, married for fifty years today,
unbelievable.
Share the joy with us.
Blessings to all.
Roger and Clare.
“Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day” from The Mikado
Goodrich Castle
I thought I had felt everything worth feeling
until I looked on Goodrich Castle and explored
with you its walls and towers and labyrinth
of inter-connecting corridors and rooms.
Do you recall the way its old stone bones
thrust out from that pelvis of red bedrock?
Civil War tore down its curtain walls,
fired its stables, drove horses and people mad
with fear. Sometimes at night fate mans
the pumps of my blood and sends alarums
surging through my arteries. No. I don’t want
to die before you. I don’t want to leave you
here, alone, defenseless, besieged by memories
that gnaw at you and devour your days, like flames.
Last Night’s Reading
I can hear the questions now:
“How do you feel
when he writes about you?”
“What do you think?”
The question of how
the listener feels doesn’t enter
the reader’s mind
when it imprisons
this furious god
who drives us onward.
We carry a picture within
our hearts that corresponds
to an internal reality
that has nothing to do
with the world around us.
At first, we impose.
Next, we learn to shape.
Then we realize we are the ones
who’ve been shaped
and we learn to share.
Only then do we understand
that what we carried within us
like the mother carries
a baby kangaroo in her pouch,
was not at all what we thought it was.
“Mankind can withstand
a small amount of truth,”
some poet wrote, Eliot, I think.
And what we release hops out,
floppy ears, long legs, bounding,
bonding with its own sweet music.
Candles
I love the flicker of flame,
the yellow light dancing
shadows on face and plate.
Let’s clear away the dishes
and bring the table back
to its pristine state: grained
wood. Now let’s talk of old
times back home when coal
fires roared and drafts ran
from dark corners, raising
hair on necks and sending
shivers down spines. It’s so
easy to believe in ghosts
when night winds howl
through windows, dogs bark
at nothing, houses are older
than families, and the land
snuggles down to sleep
in its winter blankets.
Beware of the sudden draft
on the oil lamp’s frail chimney:
cold will crack the glass, sending
us to bed by candlelight while high
on corridor walls old folk come
alive and frown down from
their sepia photographs. Cold
and frightened by their restless
afterlives, we shiver in the grave
cloths of our damp beds.
Love the Sorcerer
“What sorcery love must be
to make such fools of men.”
There’s more to love than the magic
conjured from chemistry as eye
meets eye or flesh makes secret
contracts, body to body, in free
trade agreements that are remade,
over the dinner table, day after day.
Hands that plug in the kettle,
pour boiling water on the tea,
poach or fry the breakfast eggs,
brown the early-morning toast,
write out the weekly shopping list,
flick the switch on washer and dryer,
peg wet laundry to the outdoor line,
pack the children’s lunch boxes
and get them ready for school
day after day:
such love is truly a magician.
My cartoon speaks
not three words
but a thousand.
Ties that bind:
what more can I say?
What if … ?
Secret Garden 5
Here, between the hedges,
snakes the maze.
We can see the entrance.
We know where the exit lies.
We can even see each other
on our separate paths,
but we can’t come close
unless we break the rules.
Faced by constantly forking paths
we play the “What if … ?” game.
There are no answers,
just a series of trials and errors
where right and wrong
are paths we may, one day,
be forced to choose.
Forced:
for we cannot stand here
motionless.
Sun travels sky,
casts shadows long over
labyrinth and lawn.
Fish rise to flies on the lily
pond and life slips slowly by
as we ponder each decision,
over and over.
Time’s up.
The uniformed keeper
moves toward us.
Jumping low hedges,
we meet, hold hands,
and hurry to the exit.
Behind us,
the keeper smiles.
He rakes our foot
prints from the path.
The gates click closed.
Comment:
Fifty years ago today, Clare arrived in Canada. A friend drove me to Malton Airport, as it was then, and we waited for her to clear Customs and Immigration. While waiting, I played the “What if …?” game. “What if she’s not on the plane? What if she doesn’t like the apartment I’ve rented? What if she no longer likes me? What if she hates it here? What if she wants to go home?” So many questions stormed through my head. There were no answers, just a series of trials and errors where right and wrong were paths we chose; and we chose to get married, to stay, and to make Canada our home. Fifty years later, to the day, the “What if … ?” game goes on. The playing field has changed, the game rules are different, it’s a whole new ball game … yet we still ponder each decision, over and over. We have changed, both of us, over the last fifty years together. Changed, yes, but deep down we are still the same, for some things never change. And we are happy to keep it that way. Oh yes: and we still hold hands.
rogermoorepoet 