Poems

Hiraeth

Hiraeth

If only the impossible could become possible.
I think we all experience these longings.
Maybe not everyone, but I certainly do.

I wish I could go back.
Back in time to a slower world—
Back to Highway 81.

Back to that warm feeling of innocence.
Back to the safety of my dreaming days
when wishes were made on stars each night,
when the skies were clear and stars were bright,
and fireflies were imprisoned in mason jars
with holes in the lids to allow them to breathe.

When was the last time I saw a firefly?
Or heard a mocking bird’s song?
How long ago since the nights were so clear
we could lie on our backs under the sky
and count each star twinkling above.

Remember the days of watching the clouds
that chased across the afternoon sky,
Forever changing as we named each one?
“Look, it’s a kitten, or puppy or sometimes even a cow!”

We lived in the country and knew every shape
from our hours of work and play
back in the day when children were children
even as teenagers
and guns were only for bringing home our supper.

I even miss the party line in those days 
when it meant four families
sharing the same telephone line.

“Hang up Miss Lockie, it’s private”
was always the first thing we said.
It never worked, she always listened
especially when we were talking with boys!

Ah, Miss Lockie, the party line snoop,
and the bane of children and parents alike.

If only–sad words indeed.
If only I could go back for a day
a week, a month.

All the things I would appreciate more,
the dreams I would rethink and change
to realistic wishes.

But for now the only impossible dream I have
is to return to the slow days of my youth.
Hiraeth!

Comment: A poem from my long-time friend, and fellow poet, Angela Wink, that I am so happy and proud to post on my blog. Great poem, Angela. Thank you for giving me permission to post it.

Bone Fire Night

Bone Fire Night

Sometimes the sun’s too bright
and we are best, at night, by moonlight,
when shadows flicker and we seize,
in the shimmering half-light,
half-truths glowing in the dark.

In the full light of day, these ideas
take forms, flesh themselves out,
grow skin and bone, flesh and blood,
their skeletal beings standing,
fully-clothed, beside us.

They take on match-stick bodies,
twisted, pipe-cleaner shapes,
or stick their stakes into the ground,
hold out their arms, and turn into
scarecrows that scare away the truth

Do they bring us release from our
darkest yearnings, or are they those
self-same cravings, hankering after
their day of glory, that precious moment
when they stand upright in the sun?

With the advent of bone fire night,
we stack them into wheelbarrows,
place them on the gathering pile
of outmoded thoughts and ideas,
light a match, and watch them burn.

A Game of Chance

A Game of Chance

You make me think of the road not walked,
the path untaken, the bay around the headland
where we never swam, the cliffs on the Gower
that we never had the time to climb.

Who knows which path is right or wrong
when we throw the dice and stake our future
on a single moment of time when, thinking done,
we come to a decision and take that first step.

The more I know, the more I realize that I know
so little and am surrounded by a world
not only unknown, but totally unknowable,
and me with my life dangling from a frail thread.

Sometimes, I dig deep into bottled sunshine,
But find no answers there, just the same questions
swirling round the glass, and the glass filled with
the same uncertainties and lack of knowledge.

I really don’t know where to go, or how to get there.
And then I remember that, if I don’t know where to go,
any path I take will lead me there. That is when I shuffle
the cards, breathe deep, and give the dice a throw.

Lac Megantic – 10 years on

Lac Megantic
ten years on

Fire on the water, the waves ablaze,
and the sound, a monster, indestructible,
a dragon descending, breathing fire,
so swift, so powerful, come sudden
from nowhere, yet another disaster,
one of the many that torment us
now and then with its ravage and roar.

It refused to move on until sated – but
who could satisfy the monster’s hunger,
destroy its will, defeat its power?
Not us with our pitiful sacrifices,
homes, friends, family, devoured.

In spite of our efforts to rebuild,
nothing can ever be the same.
Ten years later, memories, grief,
and our tears are all that remain.
Yes, it has left, but what can we do
to stop it, if, and when, it comes again?


Comment: I wrote this poem on July 6, 2023, while listening to the CBC radio commentary on the tenth anniversary of the Lac Megantic disaster. A terrible event, it still haunts so many people, and yes, the fears, tears, grief, and memories linger on. How could they not?

Painting – Poppies – by Clare Moore.

Hanwell

Hanwell

Here, in Hanwell Woods,
a seemingly abandoned chapel,
paint peeling, and two stark crosses
marked on barred doors.

The new copper spire gleams
as sunlight casts leaf shadows,
sending them dancing under trees.

Neither sight nor sound of bells
this sunny afternoon,
just the mosquitoes’ whine,
the black flies’ zip and buzz.

Across intervals of silence,
a far-off chain saw rips wood.
Trees and branches topple then fall.
Trails set free from winter’s debris.

The wind herds clouds instead of sheep.
Giant footprints drift shallow
across the shadowed land.

Patience

Patience


“Patience achieves everything.”
St. Theresa wrote this in Spanish,
back in the old days, when patience
was a virtue that few possessed.
Patience has vanished nowadays.

It is as dead as a doornail,
as dead as the proverbial dodo,
as dead as whatever cliché
springs to mind in the laziness
of the instant possession of each
passing cloud, each new slogan
marketed madly on the TV.

Turn off the TV. Go out, barefoot,
and walk on rain-wet grass
or walk on sea-wrinkled sand
out into the sun-warmed waves,
there where the sandpipers
stitch their secret messages
and the crows walk barefoot too.

Learn the secrets sown there,
decipher the ancient wisdom
left on the beach by wandering gulls.

There, in the tide-mark you will find,
among the sand-papered bones
and skulls, the secrets that will solve
the mysteries that you seek.

“If you try to force the soul, you never succeed.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 147.

“La paziencia, todo lo alcanza.” St. Theresa of Avila.

Magician

Magician

I stand on a tiny platform, high above
the upturned faces of the clamouring crowd.
Before me, the high-wire stretches across
the diameter of the circus tent.

Clad in the enormous shoes of a clumsy clown,
I grip the wire with the toes of one foot.
Now I must choose – umbrella or pole?

The spotlight outlines my face’s whiteness,
the bulbous nose, the fixed, painted smile.
My jaws clamp tight in concentration.

Clutching the brolly, a good old gamp, I walk
the thin wire plank of my current destiny.
One step, two steps, tickle you under the chin,
and I pretend to fall, grasp the wire, and raised
by the crowd’s gasp of despair, swing back up.

Then, a yard from the finish line, I swallow dive,
turn a somersault in the air, and land on my back
in the middle of the safety net as the crowd goes wild.

“The magician works on the threshold that runs between light and dark, visible and invisible.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 145.

“The most difficult role in the play is that of the fool – for he who would play the fool must never be one.” Don Quixote.

Painting: Fire Sky by Moo.

A Place Eternal

A Place Eternal

When sunshine floods my body
it leads me down into a secret,
sacred space that I know exists
even though, all too often,
I am unable to locate it,
search as I may, but then,
when I no longer seek it,
it is with me, and I know
that I am no longer alone,
but wrapped in the comfort
of an angel’s protective wings.

That haunting presence lingers,
plays melodies within my mind,
invites me to return, keeps me warm
when chill winds blow.

I depart from that place,
a fingernail torn from the flesh.

“There is a place in the soul that neither space, nor time, nor flesh can touch. This is the eternal place within us.”

“You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.”
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 105.

Painting: Sky Wound by Moo.

Sacred Moment

Sacred Moment


Evening falls, leads into night.
I search darkening skies
for the moon’s bright circle,
so meaningful, that light.

The moon, a thin wedding ring,
encircling a gilded cradle,
wherein five planets float.

Aligned, their circular lights
create such longing
in the observer’s heart.

The magic moment has come,
a moment forever sacred.
Whatever happens now
will be correct and right.

Pain and Pane

Pain and Pane

I am living in a Duke of York world
fraught with mood swings and random changes.
When I am up, I am up, and when I am down,
well, then I am down, and every so often,
I meet in the middle and am neither up nor down.

At night I swim among the constellations
and the stars net silver sequins in my hair.
By day, I walk along a piano’s keyboard
and replay life’s ups and downs like scales,
practicing them, again and again.

I no longer know who or what I am.
I only know I exist right here, at my desk,
my table, in my bed, looking out through
a window that has opened in my head,
a window that serves as a mirror.

I step through it, and go back to my childhood
in Wales. I recall the sunny days of sea and sand,
but also those days when sunlight fails, clouds
gather, and the west wind conjures rain and gales.
Such pain as I press my nose against the window
pane, and watch the raindrops falling again.