Hope

Springle Dance

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Springle Dance

I guess the title comes from Tolkien where the Hobbits begin an energetic dance at Bilbo’s Party. Or something like that. Mine is a Fall Girl Dance. The hand on the right points to the poor misshapen heart as it moves between fall leaves and colorful dancing sprites and spirits that help it on its way. Where is it going? Who knows where the autumn leaves go once they leave the tree? The bodies fall to the ground, obviously. We rake them into dry, crisp piles and our children and grand-children dive into those leaf-piles, scattering them everywhere so we have to rake them up again. Think of them, the children, as forming leaf angels, a bit like snow angels, but, like the broken heart, a great deal more fragmented.

Try as I might with camera and photo shop, the colors are never quite what they were when I splashed them haphazardly, like September rain and wind-blown leaves, across the page. But life is like that: memories are discolored and distorted, old photos turn sepia, old folk turn white and grey and wrinkled and fragile, like withered leaves from the tree of life. And this is life, real life. We live it every day. Each dream, a flower, each moment a leaf, and every moment the only one we ever truly experience.

So savor those moments, both the good and the bad. They are yours and nobody else’s. Your like is what happens to you. Sometimes it is bitter with salt and vinegar and lemon juice. Sometimes it is toxic and poisonous. But it is yours. It is your chalice to drain as you stand in the garden, feeling betrayed. Like it or not, this is you. Then there are the dream moments: sugar and spice and everything nice. On those days, when the sun shines, it’s away with slugs and snails, and puppy-dog tails and hello hollow world, I see you for what you are and I welcome you for what you are. And yes, you can meet with triumph and disaster, and you can treat those two impostors just the same. You are more powerful than the forces around you. Centre yourself. Find yourself. Heal your broken heart as it wanders among the springle dancers sent to bring you peace and comfort.

Look for your self. Find your self. Be your self. You and your self are stronger than any woes that may beset you. Seek the light … and you will find it.

Here

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Comment:

Another photo and poem from this early series (1966) while I still lived in the UK. Like Cervantes, I always wanted to be a poet. Like him, I may always be disappointed by my poetry. However, my beloved has never disappointed me.
This photo was taken at Dodman’s Point, close to where the Spanish Armada was first sighted in 1588. Dodman’s Point / Dead Man’s Point.
In 1988, a computer ran all the tides and all the times of the Armada’s progression up the English Channel, all based on those tides and the annotations of them in the sometimes seemingly haphazard English and the Spanish logs. Seemingly haphazard: because in spite of telling the time by water clocks (clepsidras) and marked candles, and in spite of the ten day calendar difference, and in spite of all the other different differences, these were real sailors and they lived and died according to the tides, the tides that the computer can track, all the way back to 1588, even as it can track the stars and their original positions when Stonehenge was first built in 3500 BCE.
I have stood on the temple mounds in Oaxaca. I have visited Maiden Castle. I have walked on Hengistbury Head and lain in the scrapes of the reindeer people. We underestimate the intelligence of our ancestors and, by extension, of many indigenous people, at our peril. And we over-estimate our own abilities as we destroy the very world in which we live.

White Flame

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White Flame
in praise of my beloved

White flame, her hair, emerging from shadows,
lighting her path downhill toward water’s edge.
Wind-driven waves splash lake-side. I watch
her footsteps, not now as firm as once they were.

Burgeoning age grips her hips. Toes and heels
no longer  lift in the same old way. Component
parts break down, arteries clog, arthritis worms
its stiffening way into fingers, wrists, and knees.

I recall nursery rhymes: “Jack be nimble, Jack
be quick,” but she isn’t anymore and neither
of us could jump over a candlestick. Her beauty:
inner light. Outer light, her hair, pure and white.

Her voice  is still as clear as a bell, soft yet
luminous, as she picks her way on a perilous
path through wayward woods, not stumbling
yet, and still she lives, as I still live, in hopes

to see each other, until earth stops our eyes and
we can see, sense, touch, and hear no more …

Angels

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Angels

So easy to believe in them when you see them dance, at midnight, when stars sparkle and the world seems dark. They light up everything you know, turn your world inside out, make you believe in things you never thought you would believe in.

So many people can no longer see them. For all too many, the angels have fled, have abandoned the world, leaving it in darkness. Where are they, where have they gone? They are still here, my friends, they are still with us. It’s a question of vision and belief, above all, belief.

So, what is holding you back? Why can’t you see them when they are there, before your eyes, dancing on moonbeams, sunbeams, fluttering before you, begging you to believe, to open your eyes, to seize them as they flit to and fro. Look at them, gathered on that pinhead, on the button of your blouse. They love you, they want you, they need you … and you need them, you know you do.

So hold out your hands, open your heart, let the sun shine in, let moonlight bless and caress you, and may all your dreams be filled, not with shadows, but with the bright light of angels.

 

 

Think about it!

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Commentary:

Climate change, is it real or is it a hoax? Do we believe the scientific facts or do we follow the propagandistic myth makers? Your choice. The issue has become so clouded by the religious and the anti-religious who stress belief above fact. It reminds me of the religious wars of the sixteenth century: believers, true believers, non-believers, un-believers disbelievers, all summed up in atheists, agnostics, gnostics, and true believers. But believers in what, and in which, and in where, and in why, and in whom?

I am not a scientist: I am a linguist, an analyzer of language. I do not know the rights and wrongs of maths and science. But I do know the difference between Stork and Butter, or Talk and Mutter, as David Frost (the original) once said in TWTWTW (That was The Week That Was — remember that? If you do, you are as old, or older than I am! And you probably didn’t live in this geographical region). I have never played poker. But I have studied languages, more than most people have and I know from body language when the speaker is bluffing, throwing up Aunt Sallies (remember them? Rhetoric 100), Straw Men, or Pestilential Pancakes.

Bluster and Bluff. Emotion not argument. Lies not truth. Think about it. Listen carefully. Make up your own mind. But please: move beyond twits, twitter, and tweets. Move beyond bewitching personae. Move beyond the casual joke, the witty epigram and read beyond the grade nine press and the flagrant advertisements. If you can’t, and if you are trapped in the comic art of the rhetoritician’s net, please consider upgrading your knowledge, your studies, and your education.

Our well ran dry a summer ago. Think about it. I did. Deeply. Our neighbors wells have also run dry. Think about it. I have lived here for thirty years. Never before have we seen a water shortage. Think about it. I thought about it. Luckily, in our case, it was a problem with the pump. $200 for a new control panel and a couple of adjustments, not $12,000 for a new well and an even deeper dip into the diminishing aquifer.

Lucky, lucky, lucky: but for how much longer?
Think about it!

 

Full House

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Full House

Full house: echoing footsteps, shadows,
everywhere, a litter of toys, crayons,
colored pages, jigsaw puzzles, Barbie
and Ken found at the back of a shelf.

Memories: pinned to the fridge, found
in strange places, an almond on my chair,
a drawing in my notebook, a message,
unintelligible, scrawled on shopping lists.

That peremptory voice calls my name
and I drag myself from sleep, only to know
it was a dream, netted up from slumber’s
dark midnight sea. I drift off again and

see her again, opening the bedroom door,
calling, calling, ever present in voice,
song, and dervish dance, such energy,
round and round, bouncing on my bed,

rolling the exercise ball across the floor,
oblivious to danger, harm, the perils of
unbalancing, stumbling, slipping, falling,
aware of the need for sticking plaster

comforts littering thighs, knees, calves,
feet arms, elbows, where ever instant
attention calls for instant, urgent treatment.
I will always remember the ambushes

that rolled off the tongue, phrases way
beyond the skills of a four-year old. What
if her mother is a lawyer, the youngster
shouldn’t control that sort of language.

She remembered so much from her last
visit. We thought she would have forgotten
us, but no, she remembered where almost
everything was hidden, out of sight but

no longer out of reach. Just a little bit taller,
stronger, more determined, faster, so fast
and loud we could not keep up. This morning
I awoke to the silence of an empty house.

Yellow

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Yellow

Sunshine and daffodils: my grand-daughter
paddles in the kitchen sink. Her mother
washes feet and dishes. “Sit,” Finley says,
and “stand,” following the words with actions.

“Yellow,” she says, “yellow,” as daffodils
fill the computer screen to shine in that
far-off kitchen five hundred miles away
by road, but immediate by I-Pad.

“Yellow,” Finley repeats, “yellow.” Soon
in that distant province where spring arrives
so much earlier than here, she will see
daffodils dancing their warm weather dance,

tossing their heads to gold and yellow trumpets,
fresh, alive, and young in the soft spring breeze.

Commentary: Not a large vocabulary, back then … yellow … yellow hair, yellow jello, yellow dog, yellow cat, yellow daffodils, well, we got that one right anyway. So, she is here now, yet again, with an enlarged vocabulary and two feet taller. She comes shopping with me, swings on the shopping cart, runs everywhere, will not sit still, slips and slides like stones in a slate quarry. She takes my cane, I call it a walking stick, and thwacks it in the air, a danger to sundry and all. Knows what she wants: not this, not that, no, yes, THIS … and points with a sticky finger at whatever it is that has caught her fancy.

She runs away from me, and I cannot catch her. I stand there quietly, waiting for her to return. And she does, with a squeal and a shriek and cries of joy after even a brief absence. We talk magic. I say I am invisible, and she cannot see me. She says she is invisible, but I poke her in the ribs with my index finger and she squeals again. Magic, she says, you can do real magic. I nod. Me too, she says. And she is the real magician for she is four years old and has me bewitched.

Finley at Two

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Finley at Two

Blood of my blood, my daughter’s daughter,
I live too far away to watch each day the laughter
on your lips, the sparkle of your eyes.

I see them when we Skype. Such a miracle
this magic machine that reduces distance
and time and brings you here to me.

I see you trying to stand, to understand,
to hold my image in your mind, to figure
out these moving shadows on the screen.

Words, born from poetry in my heart
and music on my lips, sometimes fall short,
and fail. Perhaps I should carve you a Welsh

love spoon. But time is not on my side. So brief,
this life: I wonder if we will ever meet again.

Commentary: Seeing Finley again, now aged four, has made me question all my earlier poems about her. I am overwhelmed by her energy, her interests, her concentration. I am bowled over by her flexibility, her strength, her joy in simple things. The above is not a new poem: it is a rewrite of an older poem, one that no longer served its purpose. I reshaped it as a sonnet, not traditional, but a sonnet none the less. I doubt that I will have much time on my own over the next two weeks in which to write. I guess I will pick away at this blog, adding a little something every so often, when the energy runs down and tranquility descends. Bear with me: I’ll be back.

 

 

 

A Different Kind of Doorway

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A Different Kind of Doorway

When one door closes, another opens. And yes, they are so important, these doors, that open and close. One day everything is open to us; the next, the future seems closed. But another door opens and we walk right through.

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Or maybe we don’t. So much depends. The brain drain, as they called it. The migration of students from Great (as she used to be) Britain to North America.  “Make sure,” they told us, “That you can see light at the end of the tunnel. If you can’t, don’t go.” I went to Canada for a year and stayed here for the rest of my life. I came to New Brunswick for a year and stayed here for the rest of my life.

Regrets? None. Dim o gwbl /  none at all, as we say in Welsh, the language of my maternal grandfather, from the land of my father(s), who never spoke a word of it. A language that I am just learning now with great pleasure, in the evening of my life. I am losing my French. I am losing my Spanish. I am learning Welsh.

So how do we open those doorways? Well, that depends on you, each one of you. Keep your eyes open. Study. Learn. Don’t waste your life. Recognize your talents. Don’t despair. Never give in. Nil carborundum illegitimi. No. Don’t allow yourself to be beaten down. Believe. Breathe deep and believe. And remember: there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Any tunnel. Don’t give up. Never give up. You just have to find that light. Seek: and you will find it.

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Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds

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Do hummingbirds hum? Only when they’re humming birds. Otherwise they are quite silent, when alone, and the whirring of their wings is what whisks them up and away. In Oaxaca, the colibris are the souls of dead warriors killed in action. Their bravery is rewarded by their transference to a colibri in the afterlife, for colibris are given the gift of serving the sun in Mexican Mythology.

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Here in Island View, New Brunswick, we only see the ruby-throated hummingbirds. No ruby throat, and they are usually females. Obviously, when they have their backs to us, then it is more difficult to determine male or female.

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I desperately wanted to catch one feeding in the hollyhocks. Alas, they vanished inside the larger flowers. Also, they were much too quick for these old eyes and ageing fingers. So I just clicked away and hoped and this was the best I could do. I am still hopeful though… there’s still quite a bit of summer left.

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