Golden Oldies

Questions

Questions

Jackpine Sonnet

each time you see a shooting star
a child is born or an angel falls
swarms of them in certain seasons
when our planet sails through
the meteor belt and rocks burn up
as they fall to earth through air and fire

written in the stars they say
and everyday I read my horoscope
to see what lies in stall
or rather what fate will me befall

warmth and love perhaps yet what
do cold unconscious planets know
about this life that people lead below

Eros Agape Philia
Jupiter Mercury Venus Mars
who knows what ancient
Greek and Roman gods
still play at being gods
among so many drifting
shifting shooting stars

Comment:

So, Moo is back to painting, at long last. Last night he painted two paintings to celebrate his return to a lovely clean, neat, washed, rearranged workshop desk that a certain KTJ tidied up for him. He was so happy. I could see him bouncing up and down on tip-toe, trying not to fall over with excitement. He even got to wash his brushes and ensure that all the remaining ones were solid and good.

“Back again,” he sighed. And that’s exactly what he painted. Of course, in the course of time some of his paints have dried up and a brush or two needed careful separation, fine squirrel hairs from dried paint. But with a little elbow grease and a lot of luck everything came together.

This time, I had poem that fitted Moo’s painting. It explores the idea that everything can be found in the heavens. Fray Luis de León phrases it this way –

Es más que un breve punto
este bajo y torpe suelo comparado
con aquel gran transunto
donde vive mejorado
todo lo que es, lo que será, lo que ha pasado?

Is it more than a brief speck
this low and clumsy earth compared
with that huge universe
where lives in betterment
everything that is, will be, and was?

Well, what a load of questions and all based on 16th Century Spanish Neo-Platonism. Yet old as the system of star reading is, people still read their daily horoscopes. Well, some people do. I guess they think that in the same way that the moon rules the tides and pulls them this way and that way, then the moon and stars rule our bodies – we are, after all, 95% water – and pull us this way and that way.

But hold on a moment. Nature or nurture. And what about free will – libre albedrío? Are we ruled by the stars? Or do we have free will to do as we want in this little world of ours? Good questions. What we do know is that certain people think they can do whatever they want, with no repercussions or consequences whatsoever, while others understand that certain societal norms and rules are there for a purpose. Oh dear – the eternal question. If the stars and planets know what we will do and when we will do it, can we speak of free will or are our lives pre-determined!

I guess Moo’s painting is more than a Who’s Who Zoo and more a who did what and with which and to whom zoo combined with when and why did they do it. “Alas, if thy mother knew it, sadly, sadly would she rue it.” And now’s the time to De La Rue it – so get out those playing cards, shuffle them carefully, read your fortune, and let’s see what is going to happen, and how, and when. Or you could read tea leaves, Viking Runes, or the lines on the palm of your hand. Speaking of which – question – what is the first sign of madness? – answer – hairs on the palm of your hand. Question – what is the second sign of madness? – answer – looking for them. – and you did, go on, admit it, you took a little peek, didn’t you. I know you did – it was written in the stars, and in the Tarot pack, and … and … and …. did you find one?

Windmill

Windmill
Jackpine Sonnet

When the scales fell from my eyes
I stood on them and wondered
what I weighed on the time’s great scales.

Miniscule. A featherweight.
A dandelion seed blown on the wind
that whirls the world through space.

Spiritus mundi – the great world spirit
inflating my lungs, each breath
a glimpse of the infinite
combining in my body and soul.

The sails of a windmill, my arms,
and the wind turning them,
dashing me down into the dust,
then raising me rejoicing to the skies.

Comment:

Moo said I needed cheering up, so he painted me a happy painting. “I know it’s not a windmill,” he told me, “but you can pretend it is. The leaves of the clover even look like they might be a windmill, and look, it’s got arms as well.”

“Thank you, Moo,” I said. My poem is a happy poem and it proves that the Black Dog of yesterday had been banished today, not by a happy dog, but by a four leafed clover standing beneath a shower of solver and gold.”

Intertextuality – texts speaking to texts. I wonder how many texts you can spot in this poem. I can count five, at least, and there are probably more. Milton Acorn, Miguel de Cervantes, Northop Frye, the Bible (not y Beibl Cymreig, unfortunately), Edmond Rostand. That’s quite the handful. Well, four fingers and a thumb, at least. Now all you have to do is spot the original sources which, blended, give my poem a saucy sauce of sorts. So, grab your AI and play hide and seek and see what you can find drawn from the dark recesses of my mind. Don’t give in too easily, now.

Mood swings – mood changes – Moody Me – Moody Moo – I’ll bet that you are Moody Too. Good mood, bad mood, who’s to say? We’ll leave that for another day!

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.

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.

Enigma Variations

Enigma Variations

Our world is spinning on its edge, placed on
the perimeter of space, going who knows where.

Specks of dust, we float around and contemplate
night’s wonders wondering what might happen.

Out there, in the vastness that surrounds us,
worlds without end will never know we existed.

Bleak and blank our names, our deeds, our status,
the monuments sometimes raised in our praise.

And what of our thoughts, those sparks
of electricity that link us mind to mind?

Is each of our actions determined by a dance
performed by circling planets that shape us?

Are we nothing more than a code
of virtually meaningless dots and dashes?

Are we then pinballs bouncing between
a million trillion strings of flashing lights?

What star god plays trivial games of snakes
and ladders with our lives and names?

Commentary:

Moo’s painting is called Grey Sky with Bear Claws. He thinks it is a great companion to the poem. Actually, I rather think he likes to have his paintings published online without the necessity of lifting a finger to help. Oh dear – he heard that and just lifted his middle finger in my direction. “I am helping,” he said. “I also lift paint brushes. Remember that, you philistine.”

Philistine? Me? Now why would I be a Philistine? And what is a Philistine anyway? That’s where AI comes in. Thank you, Don Ryan. I wouldn’t know about AI without you. “And you wouldn’t know about painting without me,’ says Moo. “So tell me what a Philistine is,” I said to him. “Go look it up,” he scowled, wagging that finger in a menacing way. So I did.

AI to the rescue. A philistine is a person who is hostile, indifferent, or smugly oblivious to art, culture, and intellectual pursuits. The term typically describes someone whose interests are purely materialistic and practical, lacking any aesthetic refinement or appreciation for high culture.

Well, I don’t think that’s fair. Let’s see – hostile, indifferent, or smugly oblivious to art – no, that’s not me. I love Moo’s art, and he knows I do. I am not hostile to it at all, though I might be just a little teeny weeny bit hostile to him when I think he is lazy and doesn’t appreciate me. More – someone whose interests are purely materialistic and practical, lacking any aesthetic refinement or appreciation for high culture – no. I refuse to accept that. Purely materialistic? I give my poems away, free of charge, to my friends and anyone else who wants to read them. Moo isn’t materialistic either. He gives his paintings away to his friends. I know he does, because I have seen him do it. Come to think of it, I don’t think either of us is practical. We wouldn’t be living in Penury if we were.

Sorry. I won’t go any further. That’s all Isle of Wight Ferry, as they say in Hampshire. Well, I won’t call you a Philistine if you don’t know what they say in Hampshire. Okay – here goes. “What’s hot, black and smelly and comes steaming backwards out of Cowes?” Why, it’s the Isle of Wight Ferry, of course. Well, it was until they replaced it with a hovercraft. Now the joke [Cowes, the port / cows] doesn’t work any more. So, here’s a couple of questions at Philistine 100 level for you – (1) What have Margo and Reg got? If you don’t know, you’ll have to ask Stomping Tom Connors. And (2) what did Reggie give to Margo? Okay, okay. I give in. I’ll tell you.

Answers – (1) Margo’s got the Cargo and Reggie’s got the Rig. (2) A cowsy dungsy clock, of course. Made only in Canada. And you can check that one on AI too. And look up the song on YouTube while you are at it. Canada Day – July 1 – and Stomping Tom Connors is one of the best adverts for Canada. Go, check out his songs.

On Re-reading Quevedo’s Poetry

On Re-reading Quevedo’s Poetry

Was that where my life went,
a spent candle trailing dark studies
among the packed lines of your poems?

What about you, was your life gutted by that
same guttering candle by whose light you
scrawled your tight black spider rhymes?

Are they all meaningless, your insights
and my words? Few people now know who
you were and what you represented.

Am I, your scholar, a mere shadow
of your shadow struggling in the straggling
half-light of your existence?

Yet, I’m still intent on sharing light
and the word with a world that thinks
the two of us are out of date and absurd.

In Praise of The Other

In Praise of the Other

I have lived with the Other.
He treated me well.

To him I was the Other,
yet he fed me when I hungered,
gave water when I ran dry.

I fell ill and he cared for me,
nursed me back to health.

He taught me his language,
culture, history, and skills.

He loved me, never forced me
to forget myself and become
something I could never be.

He made me what I am today:
a believer in humanity,
not man’s inhumanity to man.

Commentary:

Words for a divided world where man’s inhumanity to man sometimes seems to over-ride man’s humanity. Sometimes I am afraid to publish poems like these. Self-censorship is the worst form of censorship because it bottles things up until they rot inside you. Somebody has to speak out. Somebody has to stand up. So many, myself included, are afraid to do so.

Moo asked me to use his painting for this one. “Yours,” he told me, “is a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart. It must be heard. I’ll stand by you, side by side, and support you with this painting. It’s a Golden Oldie, but it’s good.”

I turned to thank Moo, but when I looked, he had gone. So much for shoulder to shoulder and side by side. Never mind. The poem’s not mine really. It belongs to others, many others. The start is from the Bible – The Good Samaritan. The ending is from Robbie Burns, changed slightly. There – now I have people who will stand beside me and echo my cri de coeur. And wow, look, here’s Moo, back again.

Wonderful. Now we can stand together. Should to shoulder. Side by Side. With no walls to divide us (Billy Bragg).

No, Moo. Sorry. I don’t have twenty dollars to lend you. Oh dear. There he goes again. Once more I am the monarch of all I survey and shoulder to shoulder with Alexander Selkirk I ask that other question – “Oh solitude, where are thy charms?” He ought to know if anyone did for he too made his cri de coeur from another horrible place.

The Dancers and the Dance

IMG0041_1.jpg

My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, refers both to the danzantes and to Monte Albán. Monte Albán was the capital of the Zapotecs and the principal city in the Oaxaca Valley (Mexico) between its foundation in approximately 500 BCE and its abandonment in approximately 750 CE. The White Mountain, thus named by the Spanish conquistadores, is justly famous for its temples, its tombs, and its carvings.

IMG0013_1

Two natural phenomena affected Monte Albán and its population. The first was drought and the dried earth with its brown and yellow tinges is clearly visible in these photos. The second natural problem came from earthquakes, for this is indeed an earthquake zone with active volcanoes causing tremors at regular intervals. The temples, even today, sometimes need repairing as earthquakes have been known to destroy even the reconstructed temples.

IMG0034_1.jpg
IMG0035_1.jpg

In fact, the abandonment of Monte Albán may well have been caused by an earthquake that cracked the enormous natural cistern in which the population’s water supply was stored.

IMG0031_1.jpg

The Danzantes are strange, grimacing characters that have been carved into prisons of stone. They may be captured warriors awaiting sacrifice or the chieftains of conquered tribes humiliated, perhaps tortured, and then flash frozen into stone photographs where for centuries they have danced out their torment. Whoever and whatever they may be, they still dance on  Monte Albán.

IMG0039_1.jpg
IMG0047_1.jpg
IMG0045_1.jpg
IMG0047_1 2.jpg
IMG0038_1.jpg
IMG0038_1 2.jpg

My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, captures a different form of dancing. It is taken from my book Sun and Moon: Poems from Oaxaca (2000) and contains echoes of the vibrant folkloric culture that thrives to this day both in the city of Oaxaca and in the Oaxaca Valley. Here, traditions are remembered and relived. Each year, on the Day of the Dead, for example, families place food and drink alongside photos of the dearly departed on altars inside their houses and their doors are thrown open to welcome their deceased family members as they return along the marigold paths that lead to their former homes.

The Dancer and the Dance

1

she comes here to dance for me
only for me does she dress this way
 she shows me her dreams
unfolding them one by one
silk and cotton garments
drawn fresh from her scented closet
thin copper bracelets
carved wooden mask
 only her eyes reveal
subversive flesh and blood

 2

she orchestrates her story
skin drum
rattle of seeds in a sun-dried pod
single violin string
stretched across an armadillo’s shell
 I too am tense like an instrument
waiting to be played
 the bones of my love
reach out towards her

3

when she makes her music
familiar spirits return to the earth
dancing in a sash of moonlight
 she recreates an ancient spell
gold letters plucked from dark scrolls
no wands no words
just water’s purity
flicked fresh
across lips and face
 she binds me with the string of notes
she undoes with her hair
our bodies form an open altar
we worship with mysterious offerings
drawn from wells set deep within us

4

Rain falls from the sky
Moon turns his face away
suddenly in darkened alleys
clouds hold hands and dance
dense streamers of light
dangle from street lamps
shadows remember their forgotten steps
gently she draws me to her
I try to follow
frail whirlpools of withered leaves
fragment weak sunshine
in light’s watery pool

 5

her magic grows
I take my first step
an unmapped journey
into desert space
we move to old rhythms
across moon flecked clouds
raindrops fall more slowly
faltering drum beat
diminishing water

6

high above us
the ghost of a melody
shaking its head
wringing its hands
 we return at last
to light and air
the moon’s vacant face
scowls in an empty field
someone has plucked the stars
one by one
and threaded them like a chain of daisies
 now there are no sky flowers
to adorn the night

7

noche de rábanos
someone has taken a knife
and peeled an enormous radish
this cartoon moon face
this full skull hanging from nothing
this lantern lighting from above
 now my lover sculpts time
and space
into small chunks
 each sacrifice
a jewel between her fingers
 I pin to my chest
three small notes
and a skeleton of words

8

inside my dancing head
the fires have gone out
 without her hands to guide me
my feet have turned clumsy
 scars layer my wrists and ankles
star crossed bindings
cutting against the grain
 I gather a harvest of stars
she holds them in her eyes
 her fingers are grasshoppers
making love in my hair
when she kisses my fingernails
one by one
we both know our bodies
will never be the same

9

together we weave a slender cage
she cuts out my heart with her tongue
placing it on an altar inside the bars
she locks the tiny door
a silvery key wrought from moonstone
 my fluttering heart grows miniature wings
next time the door is opened
my wings will fly me to her lips
my heart is a caged bird on a tiny perch
it chirrups a love song
its image in the mirror answers back
breathless it scrapes its wings on the moon
its body striving upwards to the stars

10

on Monte Albán the danzantes
sway to soft music
their shadows dance in and on stone
as they have danced for centuries
wind rustles the grass
moon casts sharp shapes
darkness ascends the temple steps
huge fingers grasping upwards
an owl’s feathers clutching at the skies
at dawn tomorrow
the sun will rise beneath our feet
we will squint down on its majesty
we will pluck the ripeness of its orange
in our outstretched hands

11

our last night together
I pluck a blossom from the tulipán tree
a final offering of my love
 she gives it back
I place it in the pocket of flesh
where I once kept my heart
 tomorrow when the flower breaks
it will stain my shirt
a damp splash of blood
no longer running in my veins
 the scent of our happiness
will cling forever to my fingers

All About Angels

039.JPG

I first saw the Black Angel in Aldebarán’s cultural store in Ávila (2006). She sat there, in the shop window, along with several other angels, and I worshiped her from the distance of the street. Her image was taken from an original painting from Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1464). This was turned into a 3-D image and then converted into the statue I saw in the shop window.

I brought the statue back to Island View, placed it on the shelf above the fireplace, where it still rests, and wrote several poems on the theme of Angels. I gathered them together in a chapbook entitled All About Angels that I self-published in Fredericton in 2009. The chapbook was dedicated to Clare’s great-aunt, D. E. Witcombe who departed this world on October 15, 2008.

All About Angels was also based on a book of a similar title, Sobre los Ángeles, written by Rafael Albertí, one of the poets of Spain’s Generation of 1927. I avoided the ambiguity of the Spanish title — Sobre (in Spanish) can mean Above or Beyond as well as About — by limiting my own title to All About Angels.

All About Angels
Paperback edition

All About Angels
Kindle Edition

For Carl Jung, angels are the messengers sent to inform people of the state of their world. For me, they are also the wild creatures that inhabit the world around me and often take the form of birds and other spiritual creatures. They can be best seen in those moments of solitude when we are most open to the natural world around us. Then, and sometimes only then, we can hear the urgent messages they bring.

Black Angel

You cannot hide
when the black angel comes
and knocks on your door.

“Wait a minute,” you say,
“While I change my clothes
and comb my hair.”

But she is there before you,
in the clothes closet,
pulling your arm.
You move to the bathroom
to brush your teeth.

“Now,” says the angel.
Your eyes mist over.

You know you are there,
but you can no longer see
your reflection in the mirror.

Angel Choir

(on seeing the Northern Lights at Ste. Luce-sur-mer)

listen to the choristers with their red and green voices
light’s counterpoint flowering across this unexpected son et lumière
we tremble with the sky fire’s crackle and roar

once upon another time twinned in our heavenly prisons
we surely flew to those great heights and hovered in wonderment
now our earthbound feet are rooted to the concrete
if only our hearts could sprout new wings and soar upwards together

the moon’s phosphorescent wake swims shimmering before us
the lighthouse’s fingers tingle up and down our spines
our bodies flow fire and blood till we crave light and yet more light
yet when the lights go out we are left in darkness

close up.jpg

 Croaking Angels

Their tunes are one note symphonies,
croaks of joy
moving their fellows to ecstasy,
exhorting them to share
the splendors of ditch life,
in a springtime bonding
that will loft them to the skies.

There’s an ancient magic in this calling:
love and laughter,
moonlight and water,
all the joyous things
one links with spring.

Moonlight swings its cheerful love lamp.
New leaves and buds are also known to sing.

In a country garden …

Each day sees another spark of brightness in the grass, in the trees, or at the feeder. Where, I wonder, have they been? In whose back yard did they winter?  Some, stray thoughts perched for a moment on a branch in the mind, fluttered last fall in the falling snow and melted away. Others, I know, stayed here with us and we fed them throughout the short cold days.

IMG_0017.jpg

The robins, even though they are not my English robins, are my favorites, perhaps because they remind me of my childhood home. Less bold than those of my youth, they fly when we draw near and do not sit on the spade handle watching for worms as we turn the early earth and shake the garden back to life.

IMG_0033.jpg

Sentry duty: and they march up and down the lawn pacing their quicksteps, then standing to attention. They strut their stuff, turn their heads, listen, and look like guardsmen on parade outside our pastoral palace.

IMG_0014.JPG

With the guardsmen come the workmen, the busy birds, the ones who tap on the trees in search of insects or to set the juices running. Shy, they turn away and hide behind the trunk. But if we are quick, we can catch them, heads turned, when absorbed in their work, they forget to fear us.

IMG_0063.JPG

And the song-birds, shiest of all, often heard, their melodies, but their quicksilver spirits seldom seen except by chance and the artist’s luck and speed of finger. But listen: other songs throb their melodies on the wind and most days now we wake to music. A calling in the trees in the evening’s glow also tells us the world has turned once more and the birds, the glorious birds, the dwindling flocks of endangered birds, less this year than last year or the year before, are back. We must welcome them and cheer them while they are still with us.  Neither we nor they may  endure much more.