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
Forget Me Knot
so easy to forget
the troubled times
when the lines of life
did not align
with what we thought
we wanted even if
we didn’t really want it
and it wasn’t any good
for us anyway but we did it
in spite of knowing all the time
the harm it would do
short term long term
and the results of that one
false step walk with us still
and we wish we could wash away
the stains on our hearts
souls minds memories underwear
but the strings are knotted and tied
and we can forget them knot
Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Forget Me Knot
Pocket Paintings
Peintures de Poche
My usual discipline has deserted me and, as a result, I have deserted my blog, abandoned it, gone absent without leave. It’s not that I am not creating: I am. I am just not posting. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I thought that, for a change, I would post some of my Pocket Paintings / Peintures de Poches. Maybe I will be inspired to write verse about them. Maybe not. We’ll see.
Supplication
I raise my hand to heaven
in fervent supplication:
you sever it at the wrist.
I spread out my arms in despair:
you take out a tape and measure me
for a tailor-made, hand-crafted cross.
I step on my bathroom scales
only to find that they have become
the scales of your justice:
I mourn every pound I have put on.
Where can I turn for solace
when all around I see
nothing but sorrow and tears?
Covid bears us all down.
An albatross, it hangs around our necks
and when we raise a hand,
your knife is there to cut it off.
Who are you? What are you?
Where are you when we need you?
Why are you there judging us like this?
I look up at the sky.
By day, a great cyclopean eye
winks and blinks and tells me nothing.
I look at the sky at night:
a silver moon slides silently by.
Orion stalks away to the west.
He leaves me restless, breathless,
agape at all this beauty
that I dare not reach out and grasp.
My Father in Oaxaca
I saw my father this evening.
I walked through the zócalo,
opened the main cathedral doors,
looked up, and there he stood,
motionless.
Light shone through stained glass
and gifted him a halo,
as if he were some long dead
saint come back to visit me.
We stared at each other.
The hairs on my neck
stood on end.
My hands shook.
When I forced my mouth open,
words stuck in my throat.
He wore his best grey suit
over a light blue shirt
and a dark blue,
hand woven tie:
the outfit in which
I had buried him.
Survivors
Chuck Bowie
(KIRA, June, 2019)
We met at St. Andrews, at low tide, on
the underwater road. In secret we
shared the closed, coded envelopes of thought,
running fresh ideas through open minds.
Our words, brief vapor trails, gathered for
a moment over Passamaquoddy,
before drifting silently away. Canvas sails
flapped white seagulls across the bay.
All seven seas rose before our eyes, brought
in on a breeze’s wing. The flow of cold
waters over warm sand cocooned us
in a cloak-and-dagger mystery of mist.
We spun our spider-web dreams word by word,
decking them out with the silver dew drops
proximity brings. Characters’ voices,
unattached to real people, floated by.
Verbal ghosts, shape-shifting, emerging from
shadows, revealed new attitudes and twists,
spoke briefly, filled us with visions of book-
lives, unforgettable, but doomed, swift to fail.
Soft waves ascended rock, sand, mud, to wash
away footprints, clues, all the sandcastle
dreams we had constructed that afternoon,
though a few still survive upon the printed page.
Comment: We, like the words we leave on the printed page, are survivors. Sometimes, when the seas rise high and our paths grow rough and hard to travel, we need a friend to reach out to us in our time of need. That friendship extends across differences and distances. Here, on the shores of time, we can meet and greet and share. Patos de diciembre, we can paddle together and give each other strength and comfort.
This poem appears on pages 64-65 of The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature, soon to be available at Cyberwit and Amazon. More details later.
Book Burnings
fire
the means of forging
the Omega and Alpha
of those book worlds
that surround us
fire words
encircling us
consuming us
outside and in
book burnings
Alpha and Omega
so many heroes
going up in flames
fire their beginnings
fire their ends
fire
OMG-3
55-54 BCE. Julius Caesar visits Britain, but he doesn’t come as a sight-seeing tourist. When asked later about his trip across the channel, he replied with three little words that have echoed through the halls of history: veni, vidi, vici / I came, I saw, I conquered.
Filled with a desire to paint, I prepared a floral background. Overnight, those words came to mind: veni, vidi, vici. To them I added Alpha (the first letter of the Greek alphabet) and Omega (that alphabet’s last letter), these being the Greek letters currently being attached to the various variants of Covid-19. It being Sunday and me, having years ago sung in the choir of the ancient, 12th Century Anglican Church at King’s Stanley, I thought of the words of the old hymn “Omega and Alpha He”. Then, with a stroke or two of the pen, I added them to the painting.
Last, but not least, I added co- to -vidi to get co-vid-i. The painting was almost done. OMG-3 (OMG cubed in the painting) was the final touch and there you have it. The ultimate Covid-19 painting, or is it a poem? Whatever it is, it is a warning, or rather a series of warnings. (1) It is here. (2) It is real. (3) It is killing people. (4) We are currently at Omicron. (5) There’s still a long way to go to Omega. (6) It’s not over yet, not by a long way.
So my friends: keep well, keep safe, keep out of trouble, keep believing, and keep visiting this site! There’s something new here every so often. And once in a while it’s pretty and / or unique.
North Wind
North Wind descended from the pole
sending its wolf pack through snow-
bound trees. Listless, they stood there,
then wind and wolves came, cutting
and shuffling, playing snap-the-branch,
chase-the snow-flake, and strip-jack-
naked. Wolves danced on their hind-
legs, round and round, shaking trees,
biting at branches, testing winter games
until trees stood naked, stripped of snow,
tresses and garlands gobbled and gone.
Oh the wickedness of winter, its cold-
cut cruelty, the lash of the wind, ice-
pellets hurled, picketing fences, pecking
a wild winter-song, forlorn in its fury,
its pace, its power, its reckless race
to hurl everything away, out of its way,
snow twisted, tormented, twitching
its snake-way down barren highways
devoid of secret places in which to hide
tender faces from the North Wind.
Sharp-shinned Hawk
She surveys her empire
from a tall tree, then steps
into space, plunging her
body’s weight downwards,
diving into fragile air.
A feathered arrow,
she makes contact, feet first,
and pins the unsuspecting robin
to the ground. His shrill shriek
emerges from a beak
that shreds failing life.
The hawk’s claws clench.
Her victim weakens.
His eyes glaze over.
One final spasm,
a last quick twitch,
the robin is gone.
One wing drags, flaps weakly,
borne skywards in the hawk’s
triumphant claws.
Coal Face
My family never forced me underground.
Nobody ever made me kneel at the coal-
face altar and worship, on my knees,
that grimy god with its coal-black soul.
A child in body and heart, nobody ordered
me to squirm down diminishing seams,
much too narrow for men or machines
and fitting only for the smallest child.
Fitting indeed, an early coffin, made to
measure, lying in wait for the slightest
slip of the rocks above or below. Tight
fitting, indeed, no wiggle, wriggle room.
Billy Blake, my mate from Trinidad,
younger than me, saw the black faces
of miners emerge from the mine, enter
the pit-head baths and come out white.
He, too, wanted to be white. He dug
underground, grew even blacker, went
into the showers, gouged his black skin,
drew rivers of blood, never changed color.
He died when the roof above him fell
without warning. They pulled him out.
Brought him to the surface. Prepared
him for burial. Wrote on his tombstone:
“His body was as black as night,
but oh, his soul was white.”
