Bees
This year, we mark them by their absence.
There is a stillness in the bee’s balm,
a withering of early blossoms and still no bees:
will they ever come back? The bee-keepers
don’t seem to know as they scratch their heads
and search dry colonies only to find
dead and dusty hives, with cells devoid
of the lust and life of their former inmates.
Each day we watch over the flowers,
and hum as we wait for the bees to buzz:
“will ye no come back again …”
Rage, Rage
41
Mortal,
this open wound
clinging, crablike,
to my sleeve.
A sudden surge,
this burgeoning urge
to end it all and sever
life’s thread.
How many times
must I jump,
eyes closed, through
hospital hoops?
Blood thinners,
my veins so
delicately untied,
my life blood
leaking meekly out,
dribbling from
my fingertips,
drip by feeble
drip.
42
Nothing left now
but this pain in my heart.
It makes me think
about growing old,
that unstoppable process
of the body’s slow,
inevitable breakdown
from everything
to nothing.
I should go to the doctor,
but what can she,
will she do?
She can’t stop the hands
on my body-clock
and lop ten, fifteen,
or twenty years
away from my life.
Nor can her pills,
lotions, potions
gift me in the same way
as the long-sought
Fountain of Youth.
Comment:
I should go to the doctor, but what can she, will she do? She can’t stop the hands on my body-clock and lop ten, fifteen, or twenty years away from my life. Nor can her pills, lotions, potions gift me in the same way as the long-sought, never discovered, Fountain of Youth.
Ah yes, my dear old body clock. Clocks went back last Sunday. My body clock still hasn’t quite caught up with the tick-tock clock with its Westminster Chimes and Nursery Rhymes. I have talked to quite a few people recently who have said the same thing. And it isn’t just the ageing and the aged – even young people, just out of their teens, feel the effects of the seasonal time change.
Apparently, the Insurance Companies notice a larger number of fender-benders, and worse, during the first few days after Old Father Time springs forward or leaps back. So why do we change the clocks and why does my body clock not immediately match the tick-tock clock? Good questions.
Maybe Salvador Dalí got it right. Time is Surreal. It is a clock folding itself over a tree branch or sliding over a waterfall, bent in two, with all its numbers abut to fly off. Moo says that his friend, Salvador Dalí, is jealous of Moo’s lovely painting, shown above. Moo says Dalí said he’d wished he’d painted it. I think that Moo, like all painters, has a little je ne sais pas quoi of the word magician about him. His words are as warped as his art. Who could even envy somebody who painted a clock like that.
I suspect Moo would not be able to ace his cognitive test if he actually drew something like that in answer to the prompt – “draw what time it is”. In fact, last time Moo was asked to do just that, this is what he drew – 10:42 AM. I don’t know about you, but I think Moo is a little bit strange. That doesn’t stp me liking him and using his paintings though.
Rage, Rage
8
A late summer storm
lays waste to the doggy daze
that clouds my mind.
Carnivorous canicular,
hydropic, it drains my soul,
desiccates my dreams,
gnaws me into nothingness.
Tonight, the old black hound
will dog me,
sending my head spinning.
It will force me
to chase my own tail,
round and round
in ever-decreasing circles.
It will devour my future,
leaving past failures
to ghost through my mind.
9
Where now are the hands
that raise me up,
that rescue me
from dark depression,
that haul me out
from life’s whirlpool,
that forestall
the jaws that bite,
that save me
from the claws
that snatch?
Where are the hands
that move the pieces
on the chess board
of my days and nights,
that prepare my breakfast,
that bake my birthday cake
and count the candles
that they place and light?
What will I do
without them
now they are gone?
Commentary:
Gnawed into nothingness – the umbra nihili of the medieval mystics, the shadow of nothingness that sometimes falls upon us, threatening our peace of mind. An AI search offers – Umbra Nihili (Latin for “Shadow of Nothingness”) refers to a concept of cosmic loneliness or existential void famously cited by Meister Eckhart. A great many of my friends have recently discovered this umbra nihili. I am not sure why. I guess it varies for each one of us. Mal de todos, consuelo de tontos / that everyone suffers consoles only fools, the Spaniards say. What can we do at such times? Reach out, help when we can, count only the happy hours, as the inscription on the Roman sundial tells us – horas non numero nisi serenas.
Many have walked this way before. But that should not be a consolation in itself. Rather, it should be an acknowledgement that there is an exit to the maze, a key to unlock misery’s door, a thread to lead us out of the labyrinth. We must just acknowledge that fact and search for the exit, the key, the thread, that will prove to be our personal salvation, and hopefully the salvation of other fellow sufferers as well.
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?
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.
Carved in Stone
61
Water through the water clock,
water off a duck’s back,
the waters of life,
continually flowing,
trapped in our children
and their children,
and the love we create
never lost, just circling,
like the hands of the clock,
like the planets and stars.
But who will wind up
the clockwork universe,
and tend the mechanism
that balances planets and stars?
What will happen
when the clockwork
finally runs down,
the last candle is snuffed,
and the water clock dries up?
62
Whoever, whatever remains
will be left to contemplate
Ozymandias with his two vast
and trunkless legs of stone,
standing in the desert.
“Look on my works,
ye mighty, and despair.”
Commentary:
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Well, Moo does have a sense of humor after all. I thought he did. From Ozymandias to the meaning of “works” to the destiny of the work we did. What a journey. It goes from the joy of the children who build a snowman to the warm spring wind that melts him to the crows and the dog who do what crows and doggies do. Intertextuality – the links between verbal and visual and think about it – such strange things happens in Moo’s creative mind.
But what do we leave behind? Think about it. Only the wake of the ship in which we sail. The wake – that white trail we leave behind us, on the surface of the sea, slowly vanishing as we also vanish, pulling away into the unknown that always lies ahead. Moo is right – so many things disappear out of the frame of the painting. “There are no pockets in shrouds” said the preacher in the hospital where I took my father, so long ago for treatment.
And even if there were, how would you fit a snowman, several crows, a cardinal, and the rear end of a dog into the pocket? “Contemplate Ozymandias with his two vast and trunkless legs of stone, standing in the desert. Now contemplate the fate of the snowman. Now look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Carved in Stone
58
Modern shamans
roam the pyramid’s flat top,
looking for its energy point,
not knowing that, seated,
peacefully in silence,
that power will seek them out.
The more they seek,
the less they find,
yet that power seeks me out,
because I no longer seek it.
Is that the secret of creativity?
Commentary:
A long time ago my judo instructor taught me the following –
“The more you strive,
you cannot grasp it,
the hand cannot hold it,
nor the mind exceed it.
When you no longer seek it,
it is with you.”
It was the same with the St. John Ambulance course that I took. The instructor told us that we might not remember now exactly what we were doing, but if the occasion arose, everything we were practicing now would appear before us and we would just do it, knowing exactly what to do. A rugby coach, I saw and met and solves several such injuries on the field of play. Something took me over and I did what I had to do.
I still don’t know how or why. But it is the same with creativity. “When you no longer seek it, it is with you.”
Just breathe deep and believe.
Dog Daze
Memories deceive me with their half-remembered shows, shadow shapes shifting over the walls with a flick of the magician’s fingers. What magic lantern now slips its subtle slides across night’s screen? Desperate I lap at salt-licks of false hope that increase my thirst and drive me deeper into thick, black, tumultuous clouds. A pandemic storm lays waste to the days that dog my mind. Carnivorous canicular, hydropic, it drinks me dry, desiccates my dreams, gnaws me into nothingness. At night a black dog hounds me, sends my head spinning, makes me chase my own tail, round and round. It snaps at dreams, shadows, memories, anything that ghosts through my mind. Hunter home from the hill, I return to find my house empty, my body devastated, my future a foretold mess. Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are lost in a Mad Hatter’s illusion of a dormouse in a teapot raking runes from an unkempt lawn.
Commentary:
Well, what a muddle. Images flying everywhere, in and out, like Von Richthofen’s flying circus of WWI fame. And look at that last line! Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are lost in a Mad Hatter’s illusion of a dormouse in a teapot raking runes from an unkempt lawn. No wonder Moo said “Nein!” when I asked him if he had a painting to illustrate this one. In fact, he quoted Salvador Dalí at me: “There’s no difference between you and a madman, except that some days, you aren’t mad.” I guess this implies that some days I am.
“Ah well,” said Mrs. Thomas calling her son Arwel in for tea. Welsh joke. Many won’t get it. Arwel didn’t and he didn’t get his tea either. Never mind. Those things happened a long time ago when the world was so much younger, and, dare I say it, wiser! Actually, there’s nothing wrong with the world itself. The problem, as always, just like the old woman who lived in a shoe, it’s the madmen who inhabit the shoe that are the problem. And when the shoe’s sole needs a nail, who is going to come and glue it back together. Not me, said the red squirrel, laughing. And he always laughs. As soon as it gets cold he tucks into my garage and it’s a devil of a job to get him out again.
What’s worse, he insists on building nests in my car engine. That’s three times now. And it costs money to dig those nests out. Not to mention the mess. First time, I didn’t even know he was in there until the windscreen wiper on the driver’s side started to fail. Then the whole watering system broke down. I took it to the garage, and the garagemen said “I hope you’re getting rent money, you’ve got a tenant.” Anyway, he got rid of the squirrel and the nest. But the little blighter must have followed me home, because a few days later he was back in there again. He’s in there now. I can hear him chuckling as I type this.
Dog Daze, indeed. I wish I had my doggy back. Alas, as you can see from the photo, he crossed the rainbow bridge to his doggy paradise, leaving me to contend with a garage full of ham-fisted red squirrels. No wonder my head is spinning around and I am chasing my own tail, round and round. At least he’s single, that squirrel. I don’t know what I’d do if he got married. I know my maths ain’t no good (nor is my English), but where squirrels are concerned, I am pretty sure that 1 + 1 = 6 or more and a foretold mess.
54
On the Night of Sorrows,
the Spanish invaders,
defeated,
fled the city.
Plunder weighed them down –
gold and silver,
images carved from jade,
wealth beyond measure.
The fleeing troops,
floundered, then foundered,
sinking rapidly
in the lake’s dark waters.
55
Cortés retreated to the coast
where he built small boats
and carried them in pieces
back to Tenochtitlán
He assembled them there,
and attacked, by water, the Aztec city
that had only been attacked by land.
Tenochtitlán,
one of the world’s great wonders,
more populous than London or Paris,
destroyed by internal conflict
and an armada of small boats
that outsailed the Aztec
dugout canoes.
What was there, at the end,
but wailing, burning, and death.
Carved in Stone
53
Nor do I belong
in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán
with its cruel stone gods.
Built originally
in the middle of a great lake,
it defied all comers, and held
the mighty Cortés at bay.
Human sacrifices, night and day –
what is it that makes some people,
carve and shape the living flesh
of others, as if it were wood or stone?
Who could admire a culture,
based on human sacrifice,
death, blood flowing,
just to keep the sun in the sky,
red at its dawning,
westering in the evening
into a sea of blood.
Commentary:
“Man’s inhumanity to man.” Robbie Burns, if I remember correctly. Thus it was and thus it always will be. Man’s need for space, for room around him. The need to establish himself and his own tribe and oust the other. The need to target the other to prove the weakness of those who do not belong. So many ways to target, including humor and jokes, all pointed at the targeted individual.
“What’s the most dangerous job in Ireland?” – “Riding shotgun on the garbage truck. “The jokes never change, just the targets. For Ireland, substitute England, France, Canada, Wales, Scotland. For a country, substitute a town – Fredericton, Island View, Saint John, London, Cardiff, Dublin, Paris. Okay, so they are cities, not towns, but you know what I mean.
Let’s change the joke. “How do you get the [choose one or more] English, Irish, Scottish, French, Welsh, Germans, Italians, out of your front yard?” “Put your garbage cans in your back yard.” And so it goes on and on. Like old Father Thames, who just keeps rolling along, down to the deep blue sea.
Why, I ask myself, why, why, why, do we have to diminish someone else in order to appear strong ourselves? Is it just human nature? Is it the nature of some people? Do all people behave in the same way? If you have the answers, or any answer, the same instructions as usual, send it to me on the back of a postcard, by dog sled, via the North Pole. And if you’re feeling generous, put a $5 bill in the envelope. It will help me pay the lawyer’s bill for suggesting such outrageous nonsense.
rogermoorepoet 