Candle Light
Candle light
softens your features
brings out the bone shape
makes me forget
the minor flaws
of ageing.
Bone shape,
rock shape,
land scape,
your face contours
traced by the flame,
counting the years,
like tree rings.
Beneath the surface
you are as you always were
and always will be.
When I look into your eyes,
I see your soul
dancing in the candle’s flame.
Clepsydra
WFNB 2025 BAILEY PRIZE: 3rd Place
Citation
Clepsydra relates a process of identity loss, as time’s passing removes the people closest to the eroding narrator. Its consistent form – the manuscript is one long poem made up of 48 sections of varying length, each of which begins and ends with an ellipsis – provides a framework in which the narrator strives to describe how their sense of self drains away, drop by drop, the way the liquid in a clepsydra (a water clock) marks the passing of time. Amazingly, the poems convey existential dread through remarkably vivid and grounded images of things like “seals basking in sunshine, / knowing themselves, being themselves, / thinking themselves safe, / kings and queens of their seal-dom, / never questioning” (19) and “…an osprey, sudden, the swoop, / turned into a stoop, water shattered, total immersion, then emerging, / lusty thrust of wings, claws clasping, / prey imprisoned” (20). Sense slides in and around the sounds of the words as well as in their dictionary meanings. In Clepsydra the author rigorously plumbs a difficult subject: the loss of subjectivity.
Exhortation
Thank you for the privilege of reading your poetry manuscript, Clepsydra. I was quite taken with all of its virtues: a meaningful concept, carried out in an impressive form which is followed both rigorously and nimbly in each section.
Introduction
The National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff, had a working Clepsydra that fascinated me. School children could enter free, and every week day, during the school holidays, I would visit the museum and also the Clepsydra.
I have built the structure of the Clepsydra into the verses of this book. The words flow down, from left to right, just like the waters of the Clepsydra. Sometimes they overflow the line, and sometimes they hold back, just a little. This visual construction fortifies the idea of the ebb and flow of time, water, and memories.
I first met the poetic image of the Clepsydra in the poetry of Antonio Machado – No temas. Tú no verás caer la última gota que en la clepsidra tiembla. / Never fear. You will not see the fall of the last waterdrop that trembles in the clepsydra. I have, for better or for worse, repeated this theme throughout the poetic dialog.
I would like to thank the judge, the poet Kathy Mac, for her comments and her excellent suggestions. I have followed most of them in this revision of the original manuscript. My thanks go to all who have read Clepsydra at one time or another.
Clepsydra
1
… time, and my own place
not this dry museum
filled with dust
its ghosts, running rampant,
raging silent
over ancient artefacts
the clepsydra dreaming
time like its liquid
slipping
through clay fingers
runnels of water
ebbing flowing
continually running down
earthen-throated
its hour glass structure
each terracotta bowl
lower than the one before
a mini-cataract
a constant waterfall
second by second
time dwindling away…
Fall Folly Age
Fall Folly Age aka Fall Foliage is a play on words.
Thank you, Moo, my painter friend, for putting this title
on your painting and allowing me to use it for one of my book covers.
After intense heat
the garden is dusty dry.
The hollyhocks,
stressed out,
bow their heads
and tumble down.
Before the heat,
heavy rain drenched
the flowerbeds.
The yucca subsided
beneath waves of water.
One hollyhock,
regally proud,
stored so much liquid
in its flowery crown
that it bent and broke.
The mountain ash
bears a host of berries.
Bright orange,
they are already turning
to their winter shades.
I see so much stress
in the little world
I inhabit.
I no longer listen
to the news
or watch TV.
So much is beyond
my control.
Yet I can control
the radio and the TV
by turning them off.
The friends I meet
now have white hair.
Like me and my flowers,
they are dried up
and bent, held up
by sticks and canes.
My beloved and I
are growing old together.
We watch each other
with great care
wondering who
will be the first
to topple and fall.
Comment:
It has been a long, long time since I last wrote on my blog. Many things have distracted me, including editing books for friends, working on my own books, journaling, painting, and surfing the web in search of something positive to read. As for my own books, I published four this summer. Clepsydra – Chronotopos I, Carved in Stone – Chronotopos II, Rage Rage – Chronotopos III, and No Dominion – Chronotopos IV. Maybe I will try to post on a regular basis and copy some of those poems here, in my blog.
Transitions
Modes of limited transitions,
moods of time tapped in time
to time’s rhythmic piano.
Scales fall from my listening eyes
and all-seeing ears.
A transitory awakening,
this glimpse of the composer’s vision,
each note a new version
extracted from abstracts
perceived in color,
each note a hue, and chords
a rainbow spectrum of light
glimpsed darkly through
the raindrop’s distorting lens.
Birdsong and sunshine.
Notes perched
on the matinal branch,
each in tune with the other,
at times in seeming discord,
yet the morning chorus
diluting the day
with the liquidity
of light and sound.
Comment:
Transitions is the fourth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.
“How on earth did you create that painting?” I asked my friend Moo. “And how do you relate it to this poem?”
“Good questions,” Moo replied. “Difficult to answer, though.” First of all, this is not a painting. It is the background cloth, always changing, always in transition, upon which I create my post card paintings. The idea of transition summarizes the movement from paint, to brush, to painting, and the haziness of the creative moment. It relates directly to your lines ‘Scales fall from my listening eyes / and all-seeing ears.’ This is the point in time, the magic moment, when the painting declares itself. I assume you have the same moment when you write poetry.”
“The two processes are very different, I think. In my poetry, a thought leads to a verbal image, and then each of the words turn themselves into little worlds in which verbal gemstones appear. I try to catch those verbal gemstones and to transform them into poetry. If I listen carefully, then my ears see and my eyes hear the words forming themselves into the right order.”
“Interesting. And yes, that’s what happens in my painting too. The initial mood captured in that first color, and then the minor moods that emerge from the first one gradually woven into the painting.”
“That is somewhat similar to how I write – by listening to the words and doing what they tell me to do. Then I do what they want me to do, not what I want them to do.”
“Fascinating. But there is one huge difference between us.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you next time.”
Empty Nest
Who are they, these ghosts who flit into my life
and leave me foundering in treacherous waters
as I search for enlightenment and meaning?
Why do they return, revenants, to disturb
my peace and quiet, and to trouble my sleep?
I watch them wandering through the coal mines
of my mind, while yellow canaries twitter rage
from their cages. Oh, praise the blind pit ponies
whose blinkered eyes will never see the light.
They are so lonely, so distant, so lost in deep-down
galleries that I no longer know them.
Memory’s fish-hook cannot snag them,
cannot haul them back into daylight reality
far from night’s net of silvery dreams.
A place… a time…the sudden scent not of presence,
but of absence. The absence of movement,
noise, of that other body that once walked the rooms,
floors, opening and shutting doors, windows, a robin’s
whistle, a thrush’s trilled song… gone now, gone, all gone.
We drift through silent sadness, avoid each other’s eyes,
sit with our heads in our hands or knit our fingers together
in desperate gestures that express our emptiness,
the emptiness of an empty nest…
Comment:
So many people, leaving, drifting on, out, and away, so many empty nests left behind. Why do I grieve, when I know that this is the natural path of life? And for whom do I grieve, for myself, or for them? I do not know. I only know that when that last visitor leaves the party and the door finally closes, the walls close in and I am left alone in this emptiest of nests.
To sleep, perchance to dream. And that is when they return, those broken ghosts who visit me at night and fill my empty head with memories, some happy, some beautiful, some ugly, and some of them sad. They fly, tiny silent birds, when the first rays of the sun, hit my window and awaken me. But they endow my day with memories – each morning marked by the rawness of a nightmare, or the sweetness of a midsummer night’s dream.
What is your mission?
Let us begin, as usual, by asking, what do we mean by ‘mission’? Here are some examples of the meaning of mission. (a) an important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes, typically involving travel. (b) the vocation or calling of a religious organization, especially a Christian one, to go out into the world and spread its faith. (c) any important task or duty that is assigned, allotted, or self-imposed. (d) an important goal or purpose that is accompanied by strong conviction; a calling or vocation.
I can happily dismiss (a) and (b) from the start. I do not consider an assignment to be a mission, not in my case anyway. I am not one to wander the world, good book in hand, heart on sleeve, convincing people to believe what I believe. That said, I can work with (c) and (d) because, as a life-long teacher, who was offered, at various time, an array of other jobs, I am happy to say that I was a teacher by vocation, by calling. Teaching was my mission. My mission was accomplished.
I taught, in Canada, from 1966 to 2009. Then I reached retirement age. On June 30, 2009, I was a teacher. On July 1, 2009, I was nothing. The shock was enormous. It took me a long time to recover and discover that no, my life was not over, and yes, I had many other things to do. Thankfully they all involved teaching, in one way or another. I used my teaching / research experience to sit on the editorial boards of various learned journals. I even edited a couple of them. I also translated, usually from Spanish to English, and worked with the translations of other people. I also wrote articles on teaching and on creativity.
Creativity gradually took me over. I offered workshops on prose and poetry, wrote and edited books, penned introductions for other writers, and even published some books by other people, usually my family or close friends.
There was never much money in teaching or in creative writing. I always did it for love – love of the subject, love of learning, love of the students, love of watching them grow and develop. When I work one-on-one with another writer, or with a small group of writers, that love is still there. Alas, as I grow older (much older!), I feel the ability to motivate slipping away. The will, the vocation if you like, is still there, but body and mind are growing weak, and that, my friends, is the saddest thing of all.
Dark Angel
He will come to me, the dark angel,
and will meet me face to face.
He will take all that I own,
for my wealth is only temporary:
health, wealth, possessions are all on loan.
My house, my wife, my car,
my daughter, my grand-child,
my garden, my trees, my flowers,
my poetry, my works of art.
I use the possessive adjective
knowing full well that these things
are only on loan. I will never be able
to preserve and possess them.
I even rent this aching heart,
these ageing, migrant bones,
this death that has walked beside me,
step by step, every day
since the day that I was born.
My death alone is mine.
It belongs to nobody else.
It will be my sole possession.
It will soon be the only thing
I have ever really owned.
Comment:
Dark Angel is from my poetry book – Septets for the End of Time / Poems for the end of Time. The lead painting in today’s blog is by my friend, Moo, and he calls it Storm-Me.
Do you play in your daily life? What does ‘playtime say to you?
Poesía de juego y poesía que expresa la autenticidad del ser / poetry as play and poetry that expresses the authenticity of being. For me, poetry is play. However, it is far more than just ‘play‘ – because it is a play that expresses the authenticity of my being.
I write in my journal on a daily basis. As I write, I sometimes spot little gems, thoughts or word clusters that can be turned into poems. For me, playtime is when I start to elaborate the words (signifiers) and turn them into thoughts (signified). The meaning may be the message, but the words that carry the message are the building bricks of the poetry of play which sometimes, with a happy Midas touch, turns into the poetry of gold that expresses the authenticity of who and what I am.
But play is also what I do when I paint. And sometimes I sit beside my mirror image friend, Moo, and paint with him. While Moo is great with colours, he is sometimes at a loss for words. Then I help him by playing with words, shuffling them around, until he finds the title that he wishes for his poems. Sometimes I consult, on Moo’s behalf, with other friends, and they are the ones who join in the game, and settle the dispute by agreeing upon the name that Moo will finally choose for his painting.
But, speaking of painting, there is no play better than the game of making meaning out of color [does it really matter how you spell it? ] and shape while taking a line for a walk and turning it into something playful yet meaningful. Mix and match, and stitch and patch, and then add the lines and title that ease the metamorphosis of color into shape and meaning.
There are other games I play to help fill in the daily gaps that have entered my post-retirement life. Online games of patience, crosswords, chess games with their intricate patterns of red and white or light and dark. Then their [now it does matter how you spell there!!!] are mining games when I dig deep into other people’s poetry and search among the gems of Octavio Paz, Antonio Machado, Dylan Thomas, John O’Donohue, Milton Acorn, Valverde, Quevedo, St. Teresa of Avila, Gongora, Sor Juana, Cervantes, or many other friends, their voices now silences, with whom I speak with my eyes, in order to find something that inspires me to play yet another game – hunt the symbol.
Re-reading Rudyard Kipling is a game too. “Do you like Kipling?” “No, I never Kipple.”And in books like Kim, the great game of life goes on and on, and Kipling’s signifiers (words) turn into a signified (meaning) that is warped by my creative mind and changed into my ideas of a new game in which hunt the symbol turns into the game of Brillig where the slithey troves of new words, fresh words, are reborn into my game-world and emerge from their game-whirled into my own word-play conversation with my own thyme and plaice [or should that be time and place?] And long may Moo and I play that game!
The Face in the Mirror
Oh dear!
Is that really me?
What a way to start
the New Year,
seeing myself,
as others see me!
A Happy New Year
to all my readers
and followers.
I wish you health,
happiness,
joy
and
prosperity
in the order
you need them.
And if you live alone,
may you not be lonely.
Lost
I took a wrong turn along the way
and got where I didn’t want to go.
Oh no! But there I was, stuck
in a land I didn’t understand.
Snow fell all around. No sound.
The forest silent. Trees asleep.
Snow rising higher. Ankle deep.
Obstacles. No path around.
I tried to speak. No sound came.
I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t hum.
Silently, I cried, but no help came.
I saw so many things I couldn’t name.
When I tired of playing this lost soul game,
I knew I was the one to blame.
Comment:
And yes, I have been lost. Absent without leave for a whole month – 11 November – 11 December. Where did I go? I still don’t know. I owe the above photo to my friend and Beta reader, KTJ.
Divinity
outside us or in us
the divine is always with us
green god
of the mountain ash
garlanded now
with autumn berries
lady hollyhock
and her flock
of butterflies and bees
colibri
martyred soul
reborn
as a hummingbird
our garden
a paradise
where the creator
still strolls
some of her
many faces
glimpsed
among the leaves
in this half-light
as the sun
goes down
rogermoorepoet 