Ice Storm
This month and my life
are nearly done.
Sun strengthens in the sky
but birds ice up
in spite of feathers,
fluffed like eider downs.
Man alone,
within warm walls,
can bravely laugh
at winter’s squalls.
But oh, if the power fails,
if wires are tumbled
by winter’s gusting gales,
man’s heart no longer
fills with ease.
He sits at home
in the cold and dark
while all around him,
ice covers the land
and even fire dogs
freeze.
Rage, Rage
18
I nod off again and dream
of a summer beach,
burning sand, tide way out,
sparkling waves, clouds moving,
inaudible, as they drift by.
I dream of my beginning
and find a forlorn formlessness
that sought the solace of sound
only to discover waves and wind
as I drifted on an amniotic sea.
The wind of change has blown.
I awake and pick up my book.
Voltaire –
“Si jeunesse savait,
si vieillesse pouvait.”
“If youth knew,
if age were able to.”
Comment:
The wind of change has blown and, by all accounts, it is still blowing. A Nor’ Easter here, swinging down from the Arctic and bringing us cold weather, ice, and more snow. Driving isn’t too bad, for the roads are cleared regularly, especially when schools are in. Most enterprises have cleaned, salted, and sanded their premises. Some haven’t. Yesterday, it took two people to move my shopping cart from the shop to the car, a matter of about thirty yards. The wind was so strong. It tussled and tugged, drove me where I didn’t want to go, and two people stepped in to help me. Then I discovered an undug doorway. I parked my car at a sharp upward angle, on the snow. A man offered me his arm. I said no, but he stood beside me, hands held out to help, just in case. Leaving that same shop, I was accompanied by a young lady who insisted on carrying my bags, taking my arm, and leading me to my car. The dangers of falling on down hill ice were even greater than going uphill.
I dream of my beginning, more and more often nowadays and now-a-nights. I know, spell check underlined that word. A neologism, not a proper word. But I like it, for though I dream by day, nodding suddenly into a shallow sleep, it is by night that I really do my dreaming.
At night, I find I can roam a world that has become hostile in the light of day. I can, and do, dream of my childhood on the Gower Peninsula. The fields are still there. My grandmother walks among the bluebells, and together we tell the time by the old dandelion clock. The larks still rise on Bishopston Common and Bluebells, Cowslips, and Primroses still hide beneath the trees. The sands at Brandy Cove are still clean. There is no pollution in my dreams and no oilers clear their tanks in the pristine waters of the Severn Estuary. There is no industrial haze and, on a clear day, I can still see, from the steps of the bungalow, Ilfracombe, across the bay.
And the people – my family and friends are still there. My uncles and aunts, my cousins, all young still, my parents and my grandparents … and all my dogs return, one by one, from their canine adventures. At night the cows can be heard crunching grass, and wheezing in my dreams. I met one, once, on a night trip to the outhouse – we had no indoor plumbing. And, on one memorable night, I stepped into a wet, warm cow patty, left like an anti-personal landmine, just outside the back door. I still shiver as I think of that warmth creeping up between my toes. No amount of wiping has ever really removed it. It haunts like the ghosts of summers past that drift at midnight round my room. waiting to be plucked from the air.
Rage, Rage
16
I doze in my chair.
The book I am reading
tumbles to the floor.
I fumble with my claw
and its metal hand
pincers the book,
then raises it.
The cat needs feeding.
I pick up her bowl
with my claw
but scatter her kibble
on the floor.
I can’t remember
where I put
the garden kneeler –
I just leave the kibble
where it lies.
Icing on the cake,
I pop my pills and now
I’ll feel less pain
for an hour or two.
17
On my own.
Outwitting old age,
accepting its growing limitations
with as much grace and humor
as I can and must.
Trying to feel no bitterness.
That aspirin this morning,
falling into my shirt,
then appearing on the floor
a moment before
I sat on the loo.
A blue-eyed, mini-aspirin
winking at me quite happily.
I reached for my claw,
picked the pill up
and swallowed it,
washing it down with a smile,
and a draught of laughter.
Comments:
I doze in my chair. Just about sums it up. I remember playing darts in the Red Lion, Knowle, Bristol. When I threw an occasional good dart, the locals would whisper “Dozy, dozy.” To them it meant “lucky, lucky.” After a bit, I began to play better. One of the professionals made me my own darts set. Hand made. Adjusted to how I throw. I got better and better. One night, playing 301, double in, double out, I needed 131 to finish. I made it in a three dart finish – 57 (treble 19) – 42 (treble 14) – 32 (double 16). This was the only three dart finish, over 100, that I ever made!
I left the darts there. “Weed the board,” they shouted – meaning – clear the board of wasted darts so the next player could throw. “Check!” I countered, meaning I wanted them to check that I had won the game. “Dozy, dozy,” they cried. And, if I went back there, more than sixty years later, those who survived, and remembered, would still call me Dozy.
So, I sit here and doze about my life. The good days, the bad days, the in-between days. Faces drift in and out – [that’s why Moo painted me the picture] – and sometimes I can put names to them and sometimes not. And that’s life. A collection of personal memories – very vivid – and a selection of faces that we can no longer name and names to whom we can no longer fit a face.
My life – A blue-eyed, mini-aspirin winking at me quite happily.
Rage, Rage
11
In one room in my head
my mother’s mother
sits at the kitchen table,
with me on her knee,
playing patience.
In another room,
I stand on a stool in the kitchen
helping my father’s mother
to mix the cake she’ll bake
in her coal-fired oven.
My mother’s father
sits before the television,
leaning back in the chair,
raising his foot so he can’t see
the adverts on the screen,
putting his fingers in his ears
so he can’t hear them.
My father’s father lies in bed,
his dog beside him.
The dog licks his hand,
waiting, like all of us,
for the death that threatened
since he was gassed
in World War One.
I sit at the computer,
following the figures
that track the latest pandemic
singing softly to myself
“¡Qué será, será!”
Comments:
Brightlands – 1956 – we sat behind the goal posts, watching the soccer First XI playing. A dream of Doris Day drifted down to us and we sang this song as we watched the game. Strange how a moment in time can suddenly reappear in full clarity and grace us with its remembered presence. Beside us, the River Severn, Sabrina, in Latin – flowed out to the sea. Then the tide turned. The river ceased to flow, and the Severn Bore swept everything before it as we gazed in amazement at the rolling clash of river and tide.
Above, I have posted five memories, each taken from a small room in my head, and turned into words. “In my father’s house, there are many mansions.” And I can say the same of the memories that crowd my head. Some as bright as the bright lands where our school played their school, some as raging as the fight between the river and the sea, as witnessed by the tidal bore, and some as dark as the mist and fog that always fell with the change of river and tide.
So – what about your memories? Does a word here or a word there, a phrase or a metaphor, make you stop for a moment and explore the Olde Curiositie Shop that thrives in the attic in your own mind? I do hope so. For that is what I would like to think, that my words are stirings that jerk the puppets of memory that dwell in each of our minds. I would be so happy to know that a thought of mine has set your own mind dancing to tunes of its own.
Never mind. “¡Qué será, será!” Whatever will be, will be.
Rage, Rage
10
My body’s house
has many rooms
and you, my love,
are present in them all.
I glimpse your shadow
in the mirror, and your breath
brushes my cheek
when I open the door.
Where have you gone?
I walk from room to room,
but when I seek,
I no longer find
and nothing opens
when I knock.
Afraid, sometimes,
to enter a room,
I am sure
you are in there.
I hear your footsteps.
Sometimes your voice
breaks the silence
when you whisper my name
in the same old way.
Comment:
Rage, Rage – and still I rage against the dying of the light and, like Dylan Thomas, ask the ageing of this world not to go gentle into that dark night. Yet, as my beloved and I age, we watch day’s shadows growing longer, and night stealing steadily along. What can we do?
Well, since the winter solstice, we can start counting the minutes as each day adds a minute or two and gifts some more light and strength to the sun. Sunrise today – 8:03 AM. Sunset today – 5:09 PM. That means 9 hours and 6 minutes of sunlight. Well, it would, if it weren’t cloudy, with a cold wind, and a dropping temperature. My guess is that it will get dark much before it ought to. And that’s not nice – no respect!
Of course, my beloved is a sun bunny and a Leo, and she perishes in these shortened days. I was born in them and they don’t affect me as badly as they do her. But I can still Rage, Rage, because there is so much to rage about – icy streets, the usual potholes, roads that hide ice beneath a thin covering of snow, some strange drivers who don’t seem to have bought winter tires. Oh yes, I love them. One came twisting and turning down the same side of the road as me only this morning. Luckily he hit the snow bank before he hit me. But, I ask you, what was he thinking?
So there’s Rage, and Rage Rage, and also Road Rage. Way to go! I think we should call a national rage day and all stay home for 24 hours, just to cool us all down for a bit. Oh dear, that might lead to cabin fever – and that would be an out–Rage.
Rage, Rage
5
Empty now the house,
clean the floors
where she scattered her toys,
polished the grubby tables,
where her small hands
splattered food,
wanted and unwanted.
Empty the bathroom,
the tub where she took
her daily bath,
dry the towels she dampened,
wrinkled the toothpaste tubes
she happily emptied.
Empty too
this heart of mine
wherein she built her nest.
Like a wild bird, she has flown,
joined the end of summer migration,
yet I still possess a part of her
within my emptiness.
6
I remember how she stood
at the window, excited,
gazing at the birds.
“Finch,” I pointed.
“Goldfinch. Grosbeak.”
Her hands plucked at the air,
not a feather fell,
she caught nothing.
“Yellow, she cried, “yellow,”
jumping up and down with joy.
Her nose, all wet and runny,
left damp, sticky smudges
on the cold window-pane.
I see the greasy smears
that remain where her nostrils
pressed against the pane.
Still the glass stays unwashed
and now that shadow stands
between me and the sun.
Commentary:
Empty house, empty nest. How many homes have just enjoyed the festive spirit, rejoicing in the company of family and friends. Alas, the holiday is almost done. In many houses, the taxis have left for the airport, the cars have driven away, the rooms that were filled with warmth, joy, and laughter are cold and empty. Only the shadows remain. The echo of voices that are now silent.
The old remain, as they were before the festive invasion, old and lonely. The young have flown back and away to their usual lives, their schools, their jobs. I sit before my screen and type these words. My beloved sits in another room and watches TV. When the adverts come on, the volume increases and the same tedious voices mouth their joyless messages. My nest may be empty, but I do not have an empty head. And I don’t want it swamped by the commercial acumen of the tv set.
My head contains many rooms and many of those rooms are filled with memories that will, as Albert Camus said, last me a lifetime. One summer afternoon, examined in its intensity, will last forever, or for as long as the viewer lasts. Alas, I mourn for those who age, who suffer from Alzheimer’s and the like, and whose heads are empty. What do they think, what do they feel, what twilight memories flicker through the empty nests of their ageing brains? I hope and pray I never know.
Rage, Rage
4
I walk from room to room,
startled by shadows,
and open doors,
search under the table,
look behind chairs.
Nothing. No one.
The house stands
still and empty,
but for the sadness,
the silent sadness,
that fills each room
with their remembered
presence.
Commentary:
Absence and presence. How many of us feel that something is there, walking beside us, or just behind us? How many feel that an empty room is not empty, but is filled with a presence, something we feel, half-recognize?
I have been in houses, invited for the night, where I would not sleep. Why? I do not know. But I felt a presence, a prescience, if you wish, that filled me with a desire to leave and not to stay.
What is it? Is it other memories, other lives, that impinge upon ours in this current time frame? I do not know. But I do know that there are houses and rooms in which I will not stay. I also know that there are others that throw open warm arms to welcome me.
Look at Moo’s painting(s). How many of them welcome us in? Do some of them shut us out and make us shiver with a fear, not of the unknown, but of the hardly-remembered, that lies in wait to shake us out of this dream which is our present life?
Rage, Rage
2
These problems start the day
you realize you are alone.
Your beloved goes away,
for a holiday,
to be with your daughter
and grandchild.
Now the house and the cat
are yours, and yours alone.
No problem you say and
everyone believes you.
You jumped in the car,
drove daughter, and child,
holidays done,
to the airport.
Your beloved went with them,
her holiday about to begin.
And that’s when it all began.
3
When I come back home
from leaving them at the airport,
the front door stands open.
I thought I had closed it
when we left.
I tip-toe in and call out
“Is anybody there?”
Echo answers me –
‘… there, there, there …”
Commentary:
Raymond Guy LeBlanc, one of my favorite Acadian poets, published his poetry book, Cri de Terre, in 1972. My painter friend Moo, who also likes Acadian poetry, borrowed the title and changed it slightly when he painted this painting – Cri de Coeur. Earth Cry / Heart Cry.
What is all creativity, visual of verbal, but a cry from the land or a cry from the heart? Sometimes it is more than a cry – it becomes a clarion call, a shout out, a calling out.
So many of us are born with creativity in our hearts. So few of us carry that creativity, be it verbal or visual, into the adult world, a world that all too often grinds us down and sifts us out. We become grey people in grey clothing sitting behind grey desks beneath artificial lighting, doing grey jobs that slowly turn us into nine to five (or longer) dusts.
Moo has promised me a series of red paintings for this sequence. We shall see how he does. Red for anger, red for age, a red flag for danger, a red rag to wave at the raging bull of life, to provoke it, then bring it under control.
Nadolig Llawen – Welsh for Have a Joyous Festive Season. You can add other languages, as you wish. But above all remember Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s words – “Life is a dream and dreams are nothing but dreams.” One day, we shall all wake up. Artists and dreamers, grey ghosts and people of straw and dust.
Carved in Stone
70
Where can I survive
in this harsh world
where poetry and ideas
struggle to be free,
a world in which
the great literary myths
have been destroyed?
Where mass media rules,
sensationalizes, lies,
falsifies the power and glory
of words, now used
not to delight and educate,
but to manipulate.
A treacherous world
in which an evil genius rules
and constantly misleads us.
71
An Age, not of Enlightenment,
but of Endarkenment,
this is not the world
in which I want to live.
My chosen world
is that quiet corner,
outside El Rincón
in the Plaza Zurraquín,
by the Mercado Chico,
in Ávila, Spain,
where leaves and confetti
dance to the wind’s tune.
A world of mystery and dream,
personal perhaps,
but well known to
all of those dreamers
who have the eyes to see
and the heart to stand still
and listen.
Commentary:
“There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1596-1650).
Cervantes wrote about such times in Don Quixote. Do we see what others see? What is truth and what is fiction? How do we approach and understand authority? What do we believe and why do we believe? Are they windmills or giants, wineskins or warriors, a flock of sheep or an invading army? “Only believe, and thou shalt see” – but what do we believe and why do we believe. “The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves, not in the stars, that we are underlings,” Shakespeare, from one of his many plays.
Carved in Stone
67
At night, on the cool
sea-shore of my dreams,
the calls of shore-birds
at Ste. Luce-sur-Mer
are borne on the wind.
High-pitched, they are,
like the voices of children,
or of men and women,
in distress.
I walk on the sand
at low tide and a lone gull
flies past my head,
battering itself
against the wind’s cage
with outraged, sturdy wings.
68
Sunset.
Sea mists descend.
The church on the headland
steps in and out of darkness.
Shadows gather, persistent.
Gulls surround a lone heron.
It clacks its beak in anger
forcing the gulls to scatter.
These words are not my words.
They came to me in the speech
of birds hidden in the foliage,
or carried on a feathered plume
sprung from the osprey’s wing.
Some came from the click
of the crab’s claw as he dug
deeper into the sand
a refuge where he thought
he could live safely.
Commentary:
Sunset. Sea mists descend. The church on the headland steps in and out of darkness. And so do I. I seek clarity, but there is no clarity when the sea mist descends, just the blurred image and the clouded thought. The cloud of unknowing, one philosopher called it, many years ago, and it is still with us. Especially when the sunlight fades and we are left wandering in the mists of unknowing.
“Is it here, you ask, or over here?” Well, if you do not know, I cannot tell you. But I will ask you this, and think very carefully before you answer – does the answer come from outside of you, given by another, or does it come from the deep, sacred intimacy of your own soul? The answer to that question will tell you all you need to know, one way, or the other.
These words are not my words. They came to me in the speech of birds hidden in the foliage, or carried on a feathered plume sprung from the osprey’s wing. Some came from the click of the crab’s claw as he dug deeper into the sand a refuge where he thought he could live safely. Sunset. Sea mists descend. The church on the headland steps in and out of darkness.
rogermoorepoet 