True Love
True love flows so much deeper
than an exchange of body fluids
or a handing over of ritual rings.
Our advancing lives are no longer
ruled by nature’s primal urges.
Our bodies have been taken over
by old age stiffness, aches, and pains.
Some nights, I wake up to find
she no longer breathes. I reach out
in panic, touch her gently, and when
she breathes again, I heave a sigh
redolent with love and relief.
Listen to podcast here.
True Love
Spotify
Scroll down to correct episode.
Waiting
I remember pushing
my father around the ward
in the hospital.
Two weeks we had together.
My father sat in his wheel chair
and I wheeled him
up and down.
“Cancer,” they told me.
“But it’s kinder not to let him know.”
In those days, it was better to die
without knowing why.
Did I betray him by not letting him
know what I now need to know?
One day, he begged me for help
and I lifted him out of his wheelchair
and placed him on the toilet.
He strained and strained
but could not, would not go.
“Son,” he said, sitting there,
“Will you rub my back?”
How could I say no?
That strong man,
the man who had carried me
in his arms, on his back,
and me standing there,
watching him,
his trousers around his knees,
straining hopelessly,
and me bent over him,
rubbing his back,
waiting,
for him to go.
Comment: Thank you, once again, Alejandro Botelho of Diverse TV. This was a great reading. If you, dear reader, are interested, you can listen to it HERE. Alejandro’s reading of my poem begins at 40.52 and ends at 42.33. But remember, the other poems are also well worth listening to and Alejandro has a great voice and wonderful interpretation. A further comment: first there is the text. Then there is Alejandro’s excellent reading. Then there is my own reading. From each of these the observant reader and / or listener will extract a slightly different emphasis and meaning. In my own case, following Alejandro’s reading of the original text, I have added some minor changes, to add to the intertextual rhythm of the words. Tolle, lege et vade mecum. A Cancer Chronicle is available HERE.
Spotify
Scroll down to appropriate episode.
Bird’s Nest
Jackson Pollock No5 (1948)
This bird’s nest starts with a startling tweet
that wins a trilled, thrilled response. A flutter
of heart-string wings, creator, viewer, join
with the creation. Thin threads of life mix
and match their tangled weave, existential
tapestry, fathered in a feathered nest.
World without end, this labyrinth without
an entry point, without a beginning,
with a spaghetti-thread middle that meets
not in a breath-catch of the mind, but in
a brush-flick of coloured rain, a cycle
recycled of circled paint, circular
in its circumnavigation, its square
eight by four-foot globe of a new world whirled
in stringy whorls, reinvented beauty
drawn haphazardly from the bicycle
tour de force of this artist’s inner mind.
Comment: This is a tongue-twister of a poem, much as Jackson Pollock’s painting is a twisted vision twisting the viewer’s eye. And, no, it is not easy to read. Nor is the painting easy to view. Click here for a link > Jackson Pollock < to the painting. Click here for a link to Alejandro Botelho’s reading of < My Grandfather >. Note that Alejandro’s reading of My Grandfather begins at 17.58. And note too that the other poets are also well worth listening to. Once again, thank you for this, Alejandro: your work is very much appreciated.
Spotify
Remember to scroll down to correct episode.
My Grandfather
My grandfather gave me my first sewing lessons.
He sat before the kitchen fire and put a grey
wooden darning mushroom inside the sock,
stretching woolen threads to expose the hole.
He chose with care his colors: bright yellows,
oranges, reds, sky blues, anything that stood out
against the sock’s dark rainy-day drabness. If
the socks were thin, he split new wool, pulling it
into individual strands that he would dampen
with his tongue. Then he would thread the needle.
Wool in place, he would cross-hatch the sock’s hole,
slowly forming a life-raft that he’d fill with color.
All my life, I have darned socks, sewn buttons,
and mended my sweaters. I use bright colors,
to my friends’ dismay. I still have my grandfather’s
World War One sewing kit, all wrapped up in
a canvas bag with his needles and some wool.
It’s wonderful to touch where his strong hands were.
There are dark blood traces where he pricked his thumb
and deeper stains where he sewed up wounded friends.
Comment: My Grandfather, the poem, is available on DiversityTV where it is read by Alejandro Botelho. Thank you, Alejandro, for a great reading and a fine interpretation of this poem. Click here > My Grandfather < for Alejandro’s reading. Note that My Grandfather begins at 13.30. Note too that the other poems on this site are worth listening to as well.
Dance of the Spheres
Thursday Thoughts
26 August 2021
I thought for a moment that, yes,
I was an angel and I was dancing
on a pinhead with so many other
angels, and all of us butterflies
spreading our wings with their peacock
eyes radiant with joy and tears spark
-ling in time to the music that wanders
up and down and around with inscrutable
figures held spell-bound in a magic moment
… and I still feel that pulsing in my head,
that swept up, heart stopping sensation
when the heavens opened and the eternal
choir raised us up from the earth, all
earthbound connections severed and all
of us held safe in an Almighty hand.
Comment: This poem is from my book A Cancer Chronicle (2017) where it is published under the title Sewing Circle. While in the Auberge Monsieur Henri Cormier, in Moncton, undergoing treatment, I joined the quilting group. What fun, one anglophone man learning French from, a dozen Acadian women. What fun: and yes, I did learn a tremendous amount about so many things, including the peace, mindfulness, and inner concentration of sewing and quilting.
A Cancer Chronicle
The verse-story of one man’s journey
Click on the link below to purchase this book
A Cancer Chronicle
Spotify
Remember to scroll down to the correct episode.
The Origin of the World
Gustave Courbet
L’Origine du monde
The origin of the world and where I came from,
her deep, moist cave that cast me from dark to light.
She loved me, she said, depriving me of her warmth,
leaving me to go back to her lover, loving him more.
Was it guilt that drove her to drinking whisky?
A forty-ouncer a day at the end, sometimes more.
She would wake in the night, wander the house,
banging against chairs, tables, walls, and doors.
She ran up bills in local shops, and the keepers
would dun me for the money she owed. She also
borrowed cash and some days her fingers were bare.
She left pawn shop IOUs on the table and I drove
into town to redeem her rings. Once, in a drunken
frenzy, she cursed her only child. A mother’s curse is a
terrible thing. Living albatross, it claws lungs and heart.
Its weight drove me to the bottle. I too sought oblivion.
Joy came when blackness descended, the albatross flew,
amniotic waters rocked me in warmth and comfort,
and my body’s boat floated once again on an endless sea.
Reborn each day, mornings cast me back from dark to light.
Comment: Here is the link to the DiversityTV reading of The Origin of the World. The Origin of the World begins at 28.40. I will attach my own reading from Spotify, just as soon as I complete it. I always find it fascinating to compare the way others read with the way I do. meanwhile, I would like to thank Alexandro Botelho for his invitation for me to participate in his DiversityTV show. I enjoyed his reading very much and I wish him all success with this venture.
Poetry Readings
DiversityTV
Poetry Readings
In case anyone is interested.
Saturday – LIVE “Writings on the Wall” | Poetry & Creative Writing 8/21/21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKuNHs6nQRo
Sunday – LIVE “Writings on the Wall” Europe | Poetry & Creative Writing 8/22/21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaT5L1PQhAk
There will be more Moore poems later this week.
Calling it a Day
This auriferous sky, sewn with sharp sequins.
Is there a warp, a leaning towards meaning,
a lurch maybe towards the moon’s dark side?
Questions: knights-errant questing for answers.
Who planted our DNA into that first Garden?
Or did the garden fill us with its own seeds?
Why did those little plants take root and grow?
Why do they now wander everywhere, restless?
This auriferous sky, sewn with sharp sequins.
Is there a warp, a leaning towards meaning,
a lurch maybe towards the moon’s dark side?
Questions: knights-errant questing for answers.
Rampant feet patrol our castle’s heights
while we seek instant gratification, swift
possession, our fingers probe each passing
cloud, reaching for all, but grasping none.
A satellite glides its razor edge, slices
the night’s eye into pin pricks of light.
The moon balances her orange unicycle
on thin black lines, hills edged with trees.
Lesser incandescence of a departed sun,
that low, lone moon slowly climbs the sky.
Released from their earthbound burdens,
who knocks this night at heaven’s gate?
Here on the back porch, midnight slowly
covers me with its dark gray cape of grief.
My grief is your grief, your grief is mine, all
grief is one, why do we all then grieve in vain?
Man from Merthyr
Memory loss punched holes in your head
and let in the dark, instead of the light.
Constellations faded from your sight,
erased by the arch-angel’s coal-dust wing.
“I’m shrinking,” you said, the last time I saw you,
you, who had been taller, were now smaller than me.
Tonight, when the harvest moon shines bright
and drowns the stars in its sea of light,
I will sit by my window and watch for your soul
as it rides its coal-fired rocket to eternity.
My eyes will be dry. I do not want pink runnels
running down this coal-miner’s unwashed face.
I’ll sing you a Welsh lullaby, to help you sleep.
“When the coal comes from the Rhondda
down the Merthyr-Taff Vale line,
when the coal comes from the Rhondda
I’ll be there.”
With you, my friend, shoulder to shoulder.
“With my golden pick and shovel, I’ll be there.”
Farewell, my friend, safe journey, sleep deep,
as deep as a Rhondda coal mine may you sleep.
After the Floods
(2004 BC & 2018-2019)
as the crow flies
so the pigeon
holding straws
within its beak
time to rebuild
who now knows
the unknown
perceives the abyss
beneath egg-frail
cockle-shell hull
waters recede
islands re-emerge
bald skulls of hillocks
stripped of grass and trees
water-logged fields
old bones dug up
displayed in the ditch
mud walls fallen flat
warped wooden planks
water-swollen
so much stolen
by water wind and wave
rogermoorepoet 