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Who do you spend the most time with?

Daily writing prompt
Who do you spend the most time with?
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Who do you spend the most time with?

My Teddies. I know, I know. Most of you will say “A Teddy Bear is not a real person. You can say what, but you can’t say who.” And most of you would be wrong. Teddy Bears are trained confessors – they listen to everything you tell them – in silence – and they never condemn you. They are a great comfort too, and are just as good and effective as a comfort dog. Also, they are very, very obedient. Tell your Teddy Bear to sit and wait, and s/he does, very patiently.

I sleep in the same room as my teddies. And since I am in that room for 8-10 hours almost every night, that doesn’t leave much time for spending with other people. Besides which, while Rose and Teddy, the big ones, Mother and Father Bear, so to speak, usually stay in the bedroom, while Basil Bear, the small pocket bear with the pink ribbon, often travels with me, in my pocket, and usually sits on the table with me at meal times and when I read and write.

And remember – Teddy Bears don’t eat your porridge, so you never have to look at your Teddy Bear and say “Who’s been eating My porridge?” I hate porridge, by the way, “Porridge, porridge, thin and brown, waiting for breakfast when I come down. They clean the table of every dish, eggs and bacon, cheese and fish. But however early, however late, porridge is always sure to wait.” Sometimes I wish my Teddy would devour my porridge, especially when it’s burnt. I wounder if I could train him?

Here’s Basil Bear, on the table with me, helping me to choose my wine. He reads the label, very carefully, and then tells me which one it is. Now that’s what a Care Bear does – cares for and looks after his human. And look at that Black Cat – I do think he’s envious of Basil, four green eyes filled with the light of jealousy. I hope he doesn’t scram my Basil – a gath wedi scrapo Basil fach.

I also talk to that friend , who always walks with me. As Antonio Machado says – “El que habla solo, espera hablar con Dios un dia.” “He who talks to himself hopes to talk to God one day.” Let’s hope that particular chat is delayed a little bit longer. I enjoy writing these prompts. So, happy thoughts, and may you all share a Teddy or two who really care.

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

Daily writing prompt
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
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List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

I guess Hymns Ancient & Modern is one. Not because I sang from it in the choir in school, but also because it was used to smack me on the side of the head when I got notes or words wrong. Quite the impact that! And not at all what you were thinking about.

I also remember How to Grow Taller in Two Volumes. That really worked. You put one under each foot. But it was very difficult to walk very far. They weren’t stilts and no handholds presented themselves.

I am struggling to find a third book that seriously made an impact. I guess it might be the Oxford English Dictionary that I dropped on my foot when I had a stress fracture. That really was an ow-wow impact.

Mind you, I have read other books that have had a serious impact – emotionally and intellectually. But I am not sure you would be interested in them.

If humans had taglines, what would yours be?

Daily writing prompt
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
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If humans had taglines, what would yours be?

I really only want a one word tag – poet, and that’s the name of my blog – rogermoorepoet.com.

An award-winning teacher, researcher, poet, and short-story writer, I was born in Swansea, the same town as Dylan Thomas, the famous Welsh poet, whom I emulated in my youth. I wrote poetry throughout my childhood, but I never took lessons, nor was I known as a poet.

Early in 1962, I sent a sonnet to the poetry competition of the Stroud Festival of Religion and the Arts. I left school and was studying in Paris, when the results came out and I discovered that I had won first place in that competition. In my absence, a deserving boy from my school was sent to pick up the award, a book of poetry, signed by Ursula Vaughan Williams. The poem was published in Trydan and I have a copy of it somewhere.

Throughout my undergraduate career (1963-1966), I wrote poetry. Much of my early work appeared in my university’s student arts review, The Nonesuch Magazine – the Flower of Bristol that giveth great light. Alas, I was not studying English, and only the English students seemed capable of being called poets, so I was always called something else. I wrote a lot about nature, back then. One day, when I hand delivered my poetry submission, the editor of Nonesuch, an English student, asked me if I was a pantheist. “Good heavens, no,” I told him. “I’ve got a girl friend.” This answer did nothing in university circles to affirm my wanna be status as a poet.

Some of these poems survived and a couple appeared in Stars at Elbow and Foot. Here is one from Last Year in Paradise.

St. Mary Redcliffe

Time and Temple Meads
have begrimed your wand-thin spire,
the tallest in England.

You waved goodbye
to the Cabot boys,
Nova Scotia bound,
as they set sail.

Starlings lime your belfry,
gift and inspiration
of Merchant Adventurers,
that gentlemen’s company.

Worms wriggle and gnaw
at your ship’s figure-head,
harbored now, bare-breasted,
sturdy in your oak-beam nave.

Rust rustles and creaks
at the Edney Gates,
wrought to last centuries
by Bristol ironmasters,
themselves apprenticed
to learn time’s laws.

I call myself a poet. I think of myself as a poet. In Santander, Spain, I was known as the mad Welsh poet! What an honour it would be to have Roger Moore Poet as my tagline. I’d rather leave the ‘mad Welsh’ out.

But why stop at one tagline? I am also an award winning teacher and researcher. And a long-term rugby coach. How would they be as tags? Roger Moore Coach? Roger Moore Teacher? Roger Moore Researcher? Not quite the same thing. No resonance and I can produce no links to attach to those names. They are much more run of the mill. Anyone can be a coach, a teacher, a researcher. Not everyone can be a poet, let alone a famous poet, like Dylan Thomas. Besides which, I live in Idlewood, not Milkwood.

There is one other alternative, however. Roger Moore 007. Alas, that one belongs to someone much more famous than me, even though we share the same name. But I might go one step further. How about 3M-007? That would do at a pinch – pretty unique – there aren’t many of them about! I love it. So there we go – a choice of two taglines, either of which fit – Roger Moore Poet and Roger Moore 3M-007.

Which one would you choose for me? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But remember, I ain’t no rose. So please don’t tread on the tails of my all-disguising, multi-colored 3M-007 poetry coat.

Coming Soon ….

Coming soon ….. to a Rollator near you.

Yesterday I checked the galley proof and all seems well. The distortion on the photo above is all mine (!) and the original cover is much clearer, better, straighter, and brighter.

I have not posted for two weeks, and yet some of my faithful followers have still clicked on this site to see how I am doing. Thank you so much.

Several things happened last month. (a) I started a stretching and exercise program. (b) I upped my walking to 4000 steps a day. (c) I used a combination of Rollator [Nexus 3] and shopping cart to build up, slowly, to an hour a day of aerobic exercise.

That’s all good news for the physical body and the mental state, but not such good news for the creative cycle. Blog postings have suffered and my online social presence has been greatly reduced. On the good side, I have been out and about, around the garden and around the block, and have re-established contact with neighbors, friends, and the local canine newbies and golden oldies.

I also managed to edit and correct and revise Seasons of the Heart and this chapbook of poems, based on my meditations on Anam Cara (by John O’Donohue) will soon be available to gift to my closest friends.

As you probably know by know, I do not sell what I call my “Covey Collection” of self-published chapbooks and books. If you wish to support my efforts as an artist, you can do so by clicking on this link and seeing if there is anything that fancies your tickle, sorry, I mean tickles your fancy.

B & W

“Slim words couched
in the empty whiteness
of the page.”
John O’Donohue,
Anam Cara

black words
          white page
thoughts
          floating in space

airs and graces
          whirlwind words
blowing through
          freshening
cleansing

cotton clouds
          silky sky
that one word
          waiting
to be spoken

that one thought
          soon to be word-borne
out from the dark

a new existence
          to brighten us
blind us with light

We’ll Rant and We’ll Rage …

We’ll Rant and We’ll Rage …

Spring is here. An election is near. Road repair season has started.

1. Spring potholes – they are terrible and they are everywhere.

It was so bad in one area of town that people filled them with water and put out little plastic yellow ducks to float on them.

That way they could be seen, which saved the loud clunk of them being heard and felt.

In one place, some street artist used the potholes as the centerpiece for porno pictures.

Success –  early next morning, the potholes had been filled in.

2. Spring road repairs – horrific – and all too abundant.

We have a sign at the bottom of road saying “Caution – Construction  – drive carefully for the next 6 kms.”

At the 1 km mark, a lollipop person with a STOP sign. 

Ahead of us, 24 cars – behind us, the traffic line up is building. 

We wait 15 minutes.

A white half ton appears, followed by a line of cars. 

The half ton pulls into a drive ahead of us.

We count the cars as they drive past.

99 of them. Then a pause.

The white half ton reverses out of the drive and pulls up in front of us.

On his tail gate a sign that says “FOLLOW ME”.

He pulls away, and the first car follows him, as do we all.

He drives at 10-15 kph.

After 1.4 kms, we see the road works – the actual working space is less than 200 meters long.

We keep driving. 

At the 3 km mark, the white half ton turns off, into someone’s drive.

Alas, the driver of the first car has no sense of humor and doesn’t follow the leader into the drive but sets off at speed down the road.

I count the cars that are waiting to return – 59 of them and more arriving.

It has taken us close to 25 minutes to negotiate 200 meters of road repair.

3. Bridge closures – there are three bridge crossings from the south side to the north side of the river.

One is at Mactaquac, over the dam, about 15 kms up stream from the Westmoreland Bridge, the central crossing point. 

The Mactaquac crossing has been reduced to ‘one way at a time’ traffic for the last two or three years, and will stay like that for most of the summer. 

Don’t ask, they won’t tell and I can’t tell, because I don’t understand.

The third bridge is the Princess Margaret. 

It is closed to all traffic for the next five weeks and this is the third year that someone has been working on it.

So, for the next five weeks, we are all reduced to crossing the river by one bridge, the Westmoreland, unless we drive 15 kms to a ‘one way at a time’ crossing or 20 kms down river to the Burton Bridge at the Town of Oromocto.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!
My thanks to my good friend, Dana Webster who inspired me to write this by sending me a rant of her own. NB Click here to link Dana’s Creative World.

Silence

Silence

silence
          between words
tranquil movements
          the world
stands still
          suspended
in space

silent space
          between the stars

Aurora Borealis
          soundless night
drenched
          in silent light

listen –
          can you hear
your heart beat

can you hear
          the silence
of your house

time
          sifting silent
through an hour glass
         filled with light
drifting into
          night

What does freedom mean to you?

Daily writing prompt
What does freedom mean to you?
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What does freedom mean to you?

When I look at that one word, alone on the page, I think, above all, of the multiple meanings attached to such a word, then I think of how it can be twisted in so many ways to make it mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. So, let me begin by asking, what does freedom mean, in general, not in my own specific case.

Freedom – “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” Interesting – no mention here of right or wrong, of truth or lies, of harassment or of perjury. Freedom – speech with no hindrance or restraint.

Freedom – the “absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government.” Wow! The first is very interesting but the second is extremely problematic. We need a definition of despotic and of government. We also need further clarification as to who decides what governmental despotism means. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if there is no arguing about taste, is the definition of despotism purely subjective? Who shall guard the guards? Does a despot consider himself or herself to be despotic? Do his or her followers? Or is it only the people who suffer and become victims of the despot’s hands, feet, orders, laws, commands, bullies, or general conduct?

Freedom – “the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.” This is certainly much clearer. Thank you.

But consider where this very brief analysis has led us. And we haven’t even started on the Biblical meanings of freedom – “freedom from sin” – “and the truth shall set you free” – and here we are only scratching the surface of the possible religious and philosophical meanings of what the Spaniards call libre albedri’o, or free will.

What does freedom mean to you?

And now we move into the personal and the personal circumstances will change for each one of us. In my own case, freedom is my new Nexus 3 Rollator. It allows me to put aside my canes and walk around the block, something I have been unable to do for several years now. Wow – freedom to walk on my own, just leaning on my wheeled walker. Freedom to talk to my old friends, many of whom I have not seen or spoken to for a long time. Freedom to meet and talk to new neighbors, many with their lovely children and wonderful dogs. Freedom to breathe in the fresh air of early spring and to visit the flowers as they start to grow. Freedom, for me, is also the ability to see with my own eyes. Last month, I had my lenses laser-polished and now I can see again with 20/20 vision. Wow – that is really freedom, to to be able to read all but the tiniest print, without needing to use glasses. Freedom, for me, is also the ability to be able to cook, shop, move, live, without excessive pain. My new powers of walking have helped me with that. Long may it continue. It is also the good fortune to have enough money and strength to live in my own house and not to need a care home or regular home help.

Freedom – Such a magic word – such a powerful word – such a personal word. The freedom to choose to be myself, dependent on nobody else – and long may that freedom continue.

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

Daily writing prompt
What public figure do you disagree with the most?
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What public figure do you disagree with the most?

Some definitions please. What is a public figure? There are several statues in my local park. Are these public figures? If they are, how do you, or I, disagree with them when they can’t reply to our questions? Their mere presence, is that enough? Their historical past? Their figures now cast in bronze or stone? The crimes they committed (in our current opinion) from a time in which they did good (their society’s position)? “Judge not lest ye be judged!” We are all walking on thin ice and I do not wish to be the one who casts the first stone.

What is a public figure? A politician – provincial, regional, national, international? A TV personality? A film star? A rapper? A musician? A teacher? A preacher? A newscaster? A hockey player? A baseball star?

And how do you define disagreement? How do you disagree, and in what ways, with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Song of Joy, even if you are a Beatle and can sing “Roll over Beethoven” or mimic it on a Tuesday night in the local bar at a Karaoke show?

How do you define the most without defining the category and nature of disagreement? Mozart vs Bach vs Beethoven vs Vaughan Williams? Wordsworth vs Byron vs Donne vs Dylan Thomas? So let us go back to the beginning, and ask again “What is a public figure?” “How do you define disagreement? And how do you categorize “the most”?

Goya vs Velasquez vs Turner vs Dali vs Picasso?

“What’s the definition of Baroque?” “When you’re out of Monet.” Come on, you’re joking, aren’t you. “You’re having me on, aren’t you? You’re having me on.” “Pull the other leg. It’s got bells on.”

And I offer a nod of gratitude to The Two Ronnies and my good friend, Moo, who painted the painting that leads into this blog. He called it “In search of enlightenment.”

And no, I don’t disagree with him. But is he a public figure? Or just a figment of my imagination? And if he is a figment of my imagination, what, dear reader, are you?

What is your career plan?

Daily writing prompt
What is your career plan?
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What is your career plan?

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on,” as the comedian said on our old black and white TV back in the late fifties when the television shows first started. My grandfather bought that TV in 1953 in order for us to watch the Coronation of Elizabeth II. I was nine years old at the time. Now I am – hold on – “How old am I? Let me count the days” – as Shakespeare might have written, if he had actually written his own plays and poems. Or were all those glorious words written by a conspiracy of authors who then had their work claimed by some else aka Willy the Shake? Snake oil, all of it, or as they say in some parts of Wales – blydi hel.

I wonder how many of my readers know how to play Tute, a Spanish card game, slightly akin to whist? Well, in it you score by singing – Canto las veinte – o canto las cuarenta – well, I am well on my way to winning my game of Tute because Canto las ochenta!

So, at eighty years of age, after fifteen years in retirement, what sort of career plan can anyone have? Plan – is it a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something? Or might it be – an intention or decision about what one is going to do? As for career – is it an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress?

So, in my retirement, what opportunities are there for progress when I seem to be regressing most of the time? And what plans can I make when the unplanned knocks on my door at irregular, uncomfortable intervals?

And that’s the problem with prompts and life in general – one size designed to fit all and I do not fit in. Never have. I no longer have a career. I no longer have any plans. I drift with the winds and the waves “as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”

I guess my only plan is to stay afloat for as long as possible and to avoid, if I can, that deadly dive down, down, down, into Admiral Brown, and down to Davey’s Locker.