Premonitions

Carved in Stone 67 & 68

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 & 62

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.”


Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny

Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny

Five Lysol wipes remain in the can.
As rare as hen’s teeth or Dorset Knobs
and old Vinny, they have become precious
items sold in marked up prices online
by people who stocked up at the beginning
of the crisis on commodities they were able
to seize before rationing stepped in
and limited quantities were permitted
to each purchaser who waited patiently,
in line, to enter the super-market.

I place my leather glove on my hand
and move to the gas pump. How many people
have used it, pumping gas with bare hands,
and the metal surface retaining how many germs
who knows for how long? I cannot wear my mask
while pumping gas. Cover my face and they will
not serve me for fear I may flee without paying.
I finish pumping, open the car door, remove
my glove, put on my mask, pick up my cane,
and walk into the gas-station shop to pay.

As I limp towards the door, a man, mask-less,
holds the door open for me, his face less
than a foot from mine. “There you are, sir,”
he says, showing his teeth. “Service with a smile.”

I return to the car, remove a precious sanitizing wipe,
clean my glove, the car door handles, every spot
my gloved hand touched. Then I wipe the handle
of the gas pump and dispose of the precious wipe
in the garbage can nestled between the pumps.

Commentary:

Well, I am willing to place a bet with my favorite bookmaker, at Covey’s Print Shop, that not many of you out there know what Dorset Knobs and Old Vinny is or are. Moo has joined me in my wager and he is willing to bet that very few of you know where the line “où est le papier?” comes from. Even fewer will be able to sing the whole song! Oh dear, our world is only artificially intelligent, not really intelligent. In my teaching days I would ask the class if we were in a smart classroom. “Yes, sir,” they would reply. I’d then walk to the wall, tap it and ask it “What’s 2 + 2?” The wall never answered. I’d try again. “What’s 2 + 2?” – Silence. “Not such a smart classroom then,” I’d say to the students.

But I bet you all remember Covid, the days of taking all sorts of precautions, of wearing masks and gloves, of washing everything that came into the house, of washing hands, and not touching surfaces in public places where the unwashed may have left a winning lottery ticket with your Covid Number upon it. Oh dear, those were indeed the days. And this little poem, a golden oldie, recalls them. Let us hope they do not return. And let us doubly hope they do not return with a mutating or mutated helix of sinister proportions.

Latch-Key Kid

Latch-Key Kid

In one room in my head, I stand on a stool beside my father’s mother helping her to mix the cake she will later bake in the wood-fired oven of her black, cast-iron stove. Every time she mixes a cake, she places a small piece in a dish and bakes it just for me. As a child, I spent hours in that kitchen, watching her cook. When she boiled vegetables, she never threw out the vegetable water, but used it for boiling other vegetables or for making rich, thick, delicious gravy.

Later, with both my parents working, I became a latch-key kid. I spent all day in an otherwise empty house and cooked my own breakfast and lunch. I also prepared supper for my parents so that it would be waiting when they came home. I grew up loving to cook.

When I went abroad to spend my summers in Spain or in France, I spent as much time as possible in the kitchens, watching, listening, learning. The women always had time for a small child. Then men seldom did. Children should be seen and not heard. They just got in the way. That was the male attitude. I learned so much in those kitchens.

Later, in Santander, my landlady would place one egg, one onion, and one potato beside the stove. It didn’t matter what time I came back from a night out with the boys, my supper was there, a Spanish omelet, una tortilla Española, waiting for me to cook it. Sometimes she left me a piece of chorizo, but I preferred the omelets. I did enjoy making shapes and designs out of the chorizo – that was always fun.

Not many people knew about my cooking skills. One of my aunties always cooked for me. She told me that her husband didn’t even know how to boil an egg. The men in my family seldom cooked, except for my maternal grandfather, who learned how to fend for himself in the trenches and dug-outs during WWI. He taught me how to make stews and soups, rich and nourishing, and always better on the third day. He also told me what he put in them – and you wouldn’t want to know about what he hunted and scavenged to stay alive in those cold, dark days. Nowadays, so many of us just don’t know how lucky we are. I do know how happy and lucky I am, not to be homeless, not to be living out on the streets, dependent on soup kitchens, charity, and fighting the elements just to stay alive.

Carved in Stone 56 & 57

Carved in Stone
56

I stand before the Tzompantli,
the Aztec Skull Racks
in the ruins of the Great Temple
in Mexico City,
and gaze in wonder,
at the multiple meanings
of these decorated deaths.

57

At Teotihuacan,
I climb the Sun Pyramid,
with its carved serpent,
slithering sideways,
as the sun moves.

I heave myself upwards,
panting, sweating,
and when I get to the summit,
I sit there, feet over the edge,
and I feel my heart thumping
as I fight to regain my breath.

Now, I feel purified,
cleansed, sweated dry,
as I watch poor mortals
struggle as I did
to take that final step.

I imagine them laid
on the sacrificial stone,
their chests carved open.

Each beating heart,
when extracted,
will cover altar, priest, and sky,
with a fountain of blood,
so hard those hearts
are pounding. Blood seeds
shoot into the sky
to revive the setting sun
as it drowns in its own blood.

Commentary:

Incredible, looking back, those moments in Mexico when I came face to face with a culture, so old, so alien to me, that I had difficulty coming to terms with it. I do not understand human sacrifice. Nor do I understand the mentality of the conquistadores who held the Aztec Emperor’s feet to the fire and burned them to the bone, leaving him alive. And still he would not tell them the secrets of the kingdom.

“The setting sun as it drowns in its own blood.” A nod to Charles Baudelaire, of course, – “Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.” Wonderful how these images stay with us. Sunrise – and the sun is born in blood – sunset and the sun sets in its own blood. And was it really true that only the blood of humans, drawn through human sacrifice, sometimes voluntary, sometimes not, would keep the sun in the sky?

And there we go – in blood we were born, in blood we will probably die – all hail the power of blood – unless of course / wrth gwrs – it is contaminated. And what will happen to us then?

Dog Daze

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.

Carved in Stone 54 & 55

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

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.

Carved in Stone 51 & 52

Carved in Stone
51

Time, shape, and location –
the Templars’ Castle
in Ponferrada,
considered impregnable,
but it had no water works,
no moat.

Napoleon placed his cannon
on the hills above
and fired down into the bailey,
shattering walls, gates, and doors.

Again, only the ruins remain
inhabited by choughs
that nest in the walls,
and rise up in stormy clouds
when visitors disturb them.
 
I go there on a sunny day
and wonder when the castle drowses
if it dreams of its former glories,
ground down into the dust.

52

I climb a ruined wall
and watch white clouds
as they gather over the hills,
then roll down into the valley –
a cavalry charge of plunging horses.

So easy to see
Santiago Matamoros,
St. James the Moor Slayer,
descending from the clouds
to rescue the Christian army.

I study the skies
and see something secret,
almost mythical,
carved from the mists of time.

But this not my land
and these are not my people
nor my legends.

I sense I am not welcome here,
that I can never belong,
and I decide to move on.

Commentary:
“I sense that I am not welcome here, that I can never belong, time to move on.” Sad words – but we live in a world that, all too often, has turned its back on people. More, it has turned them into numbers and statistics, and number sand statistics are not flesh and blood. Tragic really. And doubly tragic the labels that are stuck on people. So hard to get off, those sticky labels, for they are designed not to come off easily, but to linger, like sticky plastic wrappers in the grocery store.

James Bond – 007 – interesting – but I am not a number, though I have had numbers attached to me all my life, as have you and all the people you know. Number plates on cars, telephone numbers, Medicare numbers, dental care numbers, bank account numbers, driving license numbers, student numbers, graduate student numbers, library card numbers – and now passwords, a mixture of numbers, letters (small and capital), and signs, all jumbled in such a way as to make things inaccessible for those who do not know the numbers. An alien world, my friends, for the numbers, those numbers, are much more important than we are, and each of us, like it or not, is reduced to a number, or a label, or a recognizable feature or nick-name.

So, how do we belong? How do we fit in? How do we survive? If we are lucky, we have small communities that thrive around us and look after us. But sometimes we are left alone. All alone. And then we have nothing to belong to, no sense of being, of belonging, no sense of a valued place in life, of being worthy. And when our worthlessness sinks in, then we sink lower, and lower, and we wake up one day and realize that it is all over and that the end is near, for we have nothing, not even the desire to live on.

Fire Storm

Fire Storm

Yesterday, it was difficult to breathe.
We inhaled dust and ashes as smoke
from forest fires scuttled towards us,
carried piggy-back on a strong west wind.

Today, the wind herds clouds into aerial castles,
pinnacles and pyramids piled upwards,
tall ships’ canvases painted dark, thundery,
raised by fierce wedges thrust beneath them,
lofting them into darkening skies.

Beyond a certain height, water becomes ice.
Particles group together. Hail stones form,
small at first, growing ever larger
until the very air can no longer bear
their weight. Golf ball big, they tumble down
the sky’s steep ladder and fall to earth.

The dry drum roll of distant thunder rumbles.
A scissor-slash of light shreds black skies.
An executioner’s hay wain rolls towards us,
a runaway train destined to tear our lives
apart. It leaves us helpless, clamoring for safety,
our world torn apart, our earth sore wounded.

Death scythes away, downing rich and poor alike.
Who now knows which way thrown dice will fall?
The dye’s sharp edge, once cast, cuts like a blade.
Hail stones clatter on the roof, battering us down.