KIRA

Ides of March

Ides of March

Sometimes, as the sun goes down, the shadows close in.
You can sense real people, half-hidden in the mists
rising up from the ground. You shiver in their presence.

They fought a battle here, according to legend.
Legends never lie, though they hide away the facts,
as these mists hide those fallen warriors, brought
back to life, in the half-light, and thirsting for warm blood.

In the distance, blood flows staining the evening sky.
When the hairs on your neck rise up as wraiths, you take
to your heels and run to the place where you left your car.

Westbury White Horse, Badbury Rings, Maiden Castle –
such places are haunted with those whose spirits never left,
never moved on. They stayed here, defending the defenseless,
spirited warriors, never saying die, not even when dead.

Close by, at the hill’s foot, someone has built an altar
crowned by a small, carved cross. Who put those flowers on it?
Who came to bless the peace of those who dream and wait?

The Ides of March have come once more. Now they have gone.
Like all those other Ides before them, like all those years,
those seasons, those warriors. Come and gone. Or not gone,
as you stand there, sensing their spirits, living on and on.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Comment: The Ides of March – March 15 this year, two days before St. Patrick’s Day. “The Ides of March are come.” “Ay, Caesar. Come but not gone.” William Shakespeare. Julius Caesar. The Ides always seem such a precious time. Sandwiched between St. David (Wales) on March 1 and St. Patrick (Ireland) on March 17, and all so close to the Equinox and the start of spring. It is snowing outside my window as I type. About four inches / ten centimeters down and more to come. But, with the lengthening of the daylight hours and the arrival of spring, we hope the snow won’t last too long.

Writing in the Red Room

Writing in the Red Room

Dawn over Kingsbrae, as seen from the writer’s desk in the Red Room in KIRA. “A poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company.” Wordsworth, thankfully, for how words change their value as language transforms itself and old values and meanings grow wings and flit away.

Gai saber – from Old Provençal: “gay knowledge” or “gay science”, the art of composing love poetry, especially the art of Provençal troubadours as set forth in a 14th-century work called the Leys d’amors. But one doesn’t have to be gay, in any sense of the word, old or new, to write poetry, and it is difficult not to write poetry when the sun creeps over those hills and lights up the room and the bay below.

Warmth and light flood into your heart. The pen fills with words and they splash out over the page, moving the writer as the sun moves, as light moves, as light breaks where no sun shines as yet, but will, soon, so very soon, and here it comes, filling the heart once more with wonderment, the bay with light, and the page overflowing with the joy of light.

To be here is to be honored and privileged beyond words. To be able to share that joy with others is a blessing that many seek and few find, and none possess, for, like fairy gifts, such powers fade away all too swiftly. And, when all is said and done, one can only be humble, rejoice in each moment, and give thanks.

Silence

Silence

Words emerge from the silence
of wood and stone. They break
that silence when they are born.

Silence, once broken, cannot
be repaired. A word once spoken
cannot be recalled.

The greatest gift is to know
how to be alone amidst the crowd,
how to sink into silence.

A world of words smothered
at birth and that world, unborn,
dismissed, forgotten, still-born.

A lost world of words whirled
on the silent wind that fans
the unborn fire within you.

The spider web of the mind
blown clear by the wind
that blows unspoken words.

The sultry silence of wood and stone,
the hush of the tadpole swimming
into its own metamorphosis.

Click for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Silence

Circles

Circles

Secret and sacred,
this shadow world that walks
naked in the inner chambers
of the mysterious mind.

Here, in the valley,
surrounded by whaleback hills,
the horizon limited by fir and fin,
I live without limits
beneath a limitless sky.

Dream boats sail above me
on a sumptuous azure sea
and I am a mammal,
feet rooted in the soil, dwelling
at the bottom of a sea of air.

Mysterious, the circles
weave their cycles –
sunrise to sunset,
moonrise to moonset –
and in my dreams
a photo of the rising earth
seen from a cyclical satellite
we call the moon.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Circles

Gilt Trip

Gilt Trip

Last night, I packed up my troubles
in my old kit bag, but this morning
my back and shoulders buckle
beneath its ponderous weight.
I take care not to stumble,
especially on the stairs, for if
I stumble, I will surely fall,
and every fall is a precipice
that I will never be able to climb.

I want my feet to take root,
to sink solidly into the floor,
so that even when the wind of change
blows, it will not knock me down.
Downstairs, at my kitchen table,
the sun promises warmth and comfort.

I raise my gaze and rainbows sparkle,
dance on my eye-lashes.
I strive upwards, ever upwards,
and, turning towards the light,
its golden beauty creates in me
this morning hymn of praise.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Gilt Trip

Grey Dawns

Grey Dawns

Was it just a partial eclipse,
that morning when ash-grey horses
pulled a dustbin sun
across a drab and dirty sky?

Contorted clouds
fell from distorted horizons,
light filtered fine filaments
through to a sedimentary world.

Early morning birds,
startled by this grimness,
ceased their celebrations,
their dawn chorus choked

in doubting throats
so that strange, false notes
would not flit grit music
over garden and lawn.

Sat at my grey dawn window,
in the lull before the storm,
I watched and wondered
when my world would end.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Grey Dawns

Eclipse

Eclipse


Was it a total eclipse,
or just a partial eclipse,
that sky the likes of which
I will never see again?

I do not want to see,
let alone experience,
the mushroom cloud
that descends from the skies,
then swells up again
to embrace them,
leaving my ashen body,
a bleak, black shadow
on a brick wall.

Meanwhile, back in my kitchen,
in the lull before the storm,
I wait and wonder if my world
and all within it
will be eclipsed.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Eclipse

Red Sky

Red Sky
After a long conversation
with my hero:
Travis Lane.

“Red sky at night,
shepherd’s delight.
Red sky in the morning:
sailors take warning.“

But I am not a sailor,
nor will I ever be one.
Nor a tinker, nor a tailor, nor
part of any nursery rhyme.

So easy to follow the sheep,
and graze where they may graze,
in safety, and the shepherd’s crook
all too close at hand, with both
hands and shoulder all too ready
to save, comfort, and carry
home to the security of a safe place.

Better by far to float along,
guided by sun, stars, and tide,
choosing your own route as you go,
or going with the eternal flow,
going where it takes you,
red skies at night, storm warnings
in the morning, and everywhere
the give and take of creating
new things, new paths, wherever
you may choose to go.

“Red car at night,
wifey’s delight.
Red car in the morning,
hubby take warning.”

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Red Sky



The Water Tower

The Water Tower

I took the e-file to Covey’s, the Printer on Prospect Street, Fredericton, on Monday. On Tuesday, Jared set up the files for printing, and I received the book on Thursday morning – nice and early. What an incredible turn around. The writing time-frame is interesting too. Geoff painted and posted. I wrote. The whole thing came together in less than a month. It just shows what inspiration, collaboration, and hard work can do. Here is a poem (# 17) from the book.

17

This year’s snow is not last year’s snow.
Tell me, if you know,
where did last year’s snowfall go?

These flowers you paint,
they are not last year’s flowers.

Time flows and the world renews itself.
It may seem the same, but it’s not.
Nor are you the same. How could you be?

You too have renewed yourself,
grown, like these flowers you paint,
these flowers that will wither and perish
to lie buried beneath fresh snow.

You cannot walk in the same river twice.
Nor can you paint the same flower
once it has withered and gone.
The flowers you paint can never be
the ones you painted before.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower

Boxing Day

Boxing Day

Still Life with Hollyhock
Geoff Slater

How do you frame this beaver pond,
those paths, those woods? How do you
know what to leave, what to choose?
Where does light begin and darkness end?

Up and down: two dimensions. Easy.
But where does depth come from?
Or the tactility, the energy, water’s
flow, that rush of breathless movement
that transcends the painting’s stillness?

So many questions, so few answers.
The hollyhock that blooms in my kitchen
is not a real hollyhock. Intertextuality,
visible and verbal: this is a poem about
a painting of a digital photograph of a
hollyhock, a genuine flower that once
upon a time flourished in my garden.

A still life, naturaleza muerta in Spanish,
a nature morte in French, a dead nature,
then, portrayed in paint and hung alive,
on display, in this coffin’s wooden frame.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Still Life with Hollyhock

Comment: Back home in Wales, Christmas Day was for family and Boxing Day was for friends. I guess the same traditions still exist here in Island View. And what better friend than Geoff Slater? I met him in 2017 at the first KIRA residency and we have been friends ever since. We have worked on so many projects together: painting, creative workshops, videos, sound recordings, poetry, and short stories. He has illustrated several of my books, McAdam Railway Station, Tales from Tara, Scarecrow, and I have put some of his drawings to poetry, Twelve Days of Cat. Last, but by no means least, his painting of a hollyhock from my garden appears on the front cover of my latest poetry book, The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature (Cyberwit, 2021). The title of the collection, incidentally, came from sundry discussions we had on the nature of art and the Prelude: On Reading and Writing Poetry (pp. 7-31), was written at his suggestion. Poems to Geoff can be found on pp. 43, 44, and 61-62 of The Nature of Art.

So, Boxing Day is for friends. And I dedicate it to Geoff Slater and all the many friends I have made in KIRA, Kingsbrae, and throughout my multiple meanderings through the realms of academia, coaching with the NCCP and the NBRU, researching in communities like the ACH, the AATSP, and the MLA, various editorial positions on academic journals like the IFR, BACH, STLHE Green Guides, STLHE Newsletter, La Perinola, AULA, CJSoTL, Canadian Modern Language Review, Calíope, translating for different associations, including the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in St. Joseph’s Convent, Avila, and volunteering with STLHE and the 3M National Teaching Fellowship. To all those friends out there, including my friends and e-friends in TWUC, the LCP, and the WFNB, and those on Facebook, my blog, and my online Skype and Zoom courses and meetings, plus, of course, those I know via Quick Brown Fox, you are not forgotten. Here, for you, on Boxing Day, is a hug or a wave of the hand and a great, big thank you for being there.

Selection of my books
on the sea-shore at Holt’s Point.