Collaboration

Clepsydra 41 & 42

41

… fire flares on the water
     rivers and lakes blaze
          that sound is a monster
               a dragon descending
                    breathing fire

so swift so powerful
     come sudden
          from nowhere
              yet another disaster
                   with its ravenous roar         

the dragon refuses to move on
     until sated
          but who could satisfy
               that monster
                    destroy its will
                         defeat its power

will Lac Megantic
     ever be the same
          after all these years
               of grief and tears

will fading memories
     be all that remain …


42

… a stillness between words
    tranquil movements
         the world suspended in space
               soundless the night
                    drenched in silent light

 Aurora Borealis
     draws gaudy curtains
          across the night sky

I can hear my heart beat
    as time softly sifts

a celestial hour glass
     this sky filled
          with unimaginable light
               breaking coloured waves

lit up
     with mysterious flowers
          so graceful
               when decked out
                    in light

 the moon returns
     turns into a mirror

          its silver boat
               suspended in space

silent its light
     enlightening
          the heart’s dusky craters

dawn’s silent glory
     will be here soon
          pointing the silent path
               to even more light …

Commentary:

Ten years or so since the disaster at Lake Megantic. I am sure it affected everyone who followed the news, saw the pictures, and bore witness to the power of conflagration. Moo offered me his painting called Burning Birbi. A Birbi is a Koala Bear in one of the Aboriginal Languages. When the fires hit New South Wales, the Eucalyptus Trees started to fire. When in danger, the Birbi climbs the eucalyptus trees, higher and higher, followed, of course, by the fire. A fate inescapable. Just like the Megantic Disaster. Word has it that it could, and should, have been prevented. I cannot (will not) comment on that here. I will just stress the fear that we all have, those of us who live in a drought stricken province (New Brunswick) surrounded by trees.

The closest wildfire to us, in Island View, was about 31 kilometres away. The closest trees are about 30 feet away from the house. Much too close for comfort. Curtains of flame and smoke, rising up to stain the skies. And the smell of burning also inescapable. Stay indoors, I say. Shut the windows. And hope that nothing comes your way!

Fire, controlled, brings heat, warmth, light. The Northern Lights bring spectacular light flooding down from the skies, not rising up. You can almost hear the sky crackling as the light curtains shift and shimmer and dance their way across the horizon. Fire and Fire Light – beautiful when we can control them, but oh-so-destructive when they flame and flare, out of control.

Do not despair. Just remember we need each other, all of us, each one of us. Together we can overcome most things. Isolated and alone, like the lone koala at the top of his tree, it is much, much more difficult to survive. Select your friends carefully. Maintain contact with them. And be there for each other in times of need, for, as we say in Wales – “a friend in need, is a friend in deed.”

Clepsydra 39 & 40

39

… all too soon I too shall move on
     leaving behind me
          fading memories and cloud shadows


yet I recall
     standing beneath the cathedral’s
          great rose window
               on a sunny day
                    my body dressed
                         in a harlequin suit
                              of glistening lights 

in such splendour
     mortal things like words
          cease to flow

I held my breath
     shocked by an enormous presence
          that filled me then
               as it does now
                    with the knowledge
                         that nothing happens in vain …

40


… illumination
     I must find it for myself
  were another to tell me
      where it dwells
            its light would be untrue

only I can strike the match
     ignite the flame
          and trap its warmth
              in my body’s bone cage

when it flowers within me
     I’ll need no candle
          not even in the darkest mine

in Alma, I have seen
     the tide lower
          Fundy fishing boats
               down into the mud

like those boats
     I lack the power
          to resist both time and tide …

Commentary:

I asked Moo for a painting of boats from Fundy, preferably from Alma, lying on their sides at low tide. “Let me see what I am meant to be illustrating,” he said. He read the above excerpt from Clepsydra and told me “You’re navel gazing again. I thought I told you not to do that. Now, have I got a painting for you.” I didn’t dare refuse to post it – he’s had a bad couple of days and it has sharpened his sense of humor – so it’s here it is. Moo calls is – now don’t laugh – Naval Gazing.

“Nothing happens in vain.” So maybe I was predestined to ask Moo for a painting he didn’t have and to end up with one that tickled his fancy. Now that set off a light bulb in my skull. Mr. Dimwitty came to his sense – I have been navel gazing. Naughty, naughty. How many of you remember Mr. Dimwitty, the not too bright schoolmaster on BBC radio? Hold up your hands, and I’ll count them.

Meanwhile, things happen to Moo and me, and like the boats on the Fundy, we lack the power to resist both time and tide. And that’s why we help each other, carry each other along. “We few, we few, we band of brothers.” That was Shakespeare. Nowadays we have to say “we band of siblings.” It pays to be inclusive. Speaking of bands, I saw a man walking down Main Street yesterday, blowing a rubber trumpet. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was looking for a rubber band. Joy to the world and help spread the joy. If you don’t like joy, spread Marmite. And if you don’t like Marmite I am sure you’ll love Vegemite. Ma might, but Pa won’t. That’s why it’s not called Pa-mite.

Raven

Raven

When Raven flies through his trap door in the sky, a light bulb clicks off in my head and I fall into darkness. Is there some safety net before oblivion? Raven’s claws scar crow’s feet on a fingernail moon. His bleak black beak widens the hole in my head and the Easter egg of my skull shows thin blue cracks. Outside my window, the river moves backwards and forwards with the tide. Raven shrugs at cancerous creatures, promising nothing. He soars into clear skies in search of his private exit and extinguishes sun, moon, and stars, plunging our world into blackness. The light on the point picks out a heron, mobbed by a clacking ring of gulls. The sea mist wraps the real world tight in its cloak. Now sea and lighthouse, heron and gulls, are distant things of memory. Raven, shoulders hunched, stands like a stone, an anthracite block hacked out from the coal seam in my mind, hand carved from feathers and my forefathers’ blood.

Commentary:

I had forgotten all about this poem in prose. It comes from Fundy Lines, if I remember correctly. Photo credit (below) to one of my former students, an excellent poet herself, who took the trouble to locate the correct rock and then take a photo of book and rock together.


Moo thought his painting of a dark shape that looks a little bit like a bird of ill-omen would be just what this prose poem needed. Maybe he’s right. I trust him with his choice of paintings. Well, most of the time anyway. He can be a bit ‘off’ from time to time, but mostly we form a good team, especially where Surrealism is concerned.

I guess Raven formed part of my Surreal sequences. I really do enjoy Surrealism. The mixing of metaphors, for example, the unexpected meeting of a sewing machine with a carving knife and an umbrella on an operating table. And look what Raven’s up to. He discovers a trap door in the sky. Well, that would be very useful, if we had wings and could fly. Then he turns off the light bulb in my head. I didn’t even know I had one in there. I guess Raven, like coyote and zopilote is a bit of a Trickster. Next he changes into a woodpecker and widens the hole in my skull. Poor old me – avian trepanning – no wonder I have problems! My head becomes an Easter Egg and has cracks in it giving birth to what? Some mad ideas, I guess, pecking their way out into the wonderful world in which Moo and I live in perfect harmony with my beloved and our cat. And look at all those Welsh mining memories – lignite, house coal, steam coal, anthracite, jet – and remember, when the coal comes from the Rhondda down the Merthyr – Taff Vale line, I’ll be there.

It will be a long way from Canada to Taff’s Well. Maybe Raven will be kind and fly me there, through his Island View trap door that has direct access to the trap door just above Castell Coch, the Fairy Castle of my childhood. That would be faster, and easier, than my old two-wheeler Raleigh bicycle with it’s Sturmey-Archer three gear click on the handlebars. I bet Raven can fly faster than I can pedal. And if I could have pedaled as fast as Raven flies, downhill and uphill, I would have been King of the Mountains and an all time winner of the Tour de France. Now that would have been surrealistically surreal, seeing me as a cereal winner, with my snap, crackle, and pop! Not that my dad would have been happy. He never was happy with anything I did!

Dog Days

Dog Daze

1

A dry storm lays waste 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 that ghost through my mind.

Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are lost in a Mad Hatter’s
dream of a dormouse in a teapot on an unkempt table.
Hunter home from the hill, I awake to find my house
empty, my body devastated, my future a foretold mess.

Desperate I lap at salt-licks of false hope but
they only increase my thirst and drive me deeper
into thick, black, tumultuous clouds. Dry lightning.
The drought continues and no raindrops fall.

Dog Daze
2

The drought continues and no raindrops fall.
Desperate I lap at salt-licks of false hope but
they only increase my thirst and drive me deeper
into thick, black, tumultuous clouds. Dry lightning.

Tarot Cards and Tea Leaves are lost in a Mad Hatter’s
dream of a dormouse in a teapot on an unkempt table.
Hunter home from the hill, I awake to find my house
empty, my body devastated, my future a foretold mess.

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 that ghost through my mind.

A heat wave lays waste the hopes that dog my days.
Carnivorous canicular, hydropic, it drinks me dry,
desiccates my dreams, gnaws me into nothingness.

Dog Daze
3

The drought continues. No raindrops fall.
No fresh water. None at all.

Dark clouds gather in the sky.
No rain falls. The ground is dry.

Grass all burned. No more hay.
How much livestock will they slay?

No rain comes, but a flash of light
sets the woods and fields alight.

Home from the fields, some farmers confess
their future is an unpredictable mess.

Desperate farmers are losing hope.
Out in the barns, they keep some rope.

The roof beams are sturdy and built high.
One little jump and problems good-bye.

Commentary:

Dog Daze 1 is a reverse sonnet. Instead of being structured 4-4-3-3 it moves in reverse 3-3-4-4. What fun to pretend to be Milton Acorn, and to turn my sonnet upside down. It should rhyme, but I abandoned rhyme in favor of metaphor a long time ago. Was I right to do so? What, if anything, catches you unawares in Dog Daze 1? Does it work for you? What would happen if we turned it upside down? You be the judge.

Dog Daze 2 is more or less the same sonnet returned to its normal stanzaic shape 4-4-3-3. In what ways has the poem now changed? Clearly there is a structural difference. Obviously some of the lines and images have changed. Is the poem stronger? Weaker? Does each one affect you in a different fashion? Do you prefer one version to the other?

Mission Impossible – How many more adaptations can we make to this poem and how would each one affect the poem and the reader’s reception of it? For example – Dog Daze 3 sees our sonnet turned into a poem composed of seven rhyming couplets. Couplets are easy to rhyme. But do they simplify the thoughts too much? Is the poem now too dark? Can you lighten the mood? How? Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to rewrite the poem in seven non-rhyming couplets. That will make a change from the Daily Sudoku and the Cross-word puzzle. If you do take up the challenge, let me see what you do! And remember, you can make it personal to you, your life, and your garden.

Time Flies

Time Flies

… bends like a boomerang,
flies too rapidly away,
limps back to the hand.

Endless this shuffle of unmarked
days dropping off the calendar.

Hands stop on the clock.
The pendulum swings:
time and tide stand still,
do not move.

The print in my grandma’s house:
seemingly moving seas,
sails swelled out,
the ship stays firm in its frame.

‘As idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.’

Our garden fills
with brightly colored birds
and red and grey squirrels.

Light and dark
switch back and forth
each day
a twin of the day before.

The TV screen hangs out
the daily washing.
Tired, worn out shadow,
their faces boring us
with shallow wit
and hand-me-down wisdom.

Time:
an albatross around the neck,
an emu, an ostrich, a dodo,
an overweight bumble bee,
too clumsy, too heavy to fly.

“Time flies?”
“You can’t.
They fly too fast.”

Commentary:

My friend Moo told me he was ‘all shook up’ when I read him this poem. I don’t think Moo’s too smart. He thought All Shook Up was written by the Rolling Stones when they went out moss gathering during the Fredericton Harvest Festival, but I said no, it was definitely written by Buddy Holly on an off-day when he was playing cricket. It wasn’t okay in those days to play croquet.

The last three lines come from an examination question in the General Paper, “S” Level, as it used to be. “Punctuate this sentence – time flies you can’t they fly too fast” – of course, they should have said, “in exactly the same way we want you to. Corrections and alternative versions will not be accepted.” What did they think I was? A mind-reader? I wasn’t. I was a teenager having a field day in the national examinations. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they marked my paper.

In the biology exam, they gave each one of us a Brussel Sprout and asked us to draw it and tell us as much as we could about it. Of course, I ate mine, and I said it tasted a little bit dry and needed some salt. Then I drew a mess of potage, all yellow and green with chewed up squiggles, and added “That’s what the sprout probably looks like right now.” I failed that exam too. Didn’t even get a part mark for ingenuity, though the science teacher said I could have a glow of satisfaction. Very useful after lights out in a boarding school, I can tell you.

I can’t remember if Moo went to that school with me or not. I don’t think he did. I think he drifted into my life a little bit later. He wasn’t a painter at that stage, just a half-starved philosopher doomed to live in a garret. Of course, once he started painting houses, he made money. It’s amazing how many people will pay you for painting their houses. Of course, that was before they invented plastic siding.

About now you realize that I live in a strange world all of my own and a lot of people live in it with me. You, too, if you enjoyed reading this. Long may the ‘strange world of me, you, and Moo’ continue. I’d send you a penny for your thoughts, but they have gone out of circulation. I can’t even sing you a song of sixpence these days either. Silver sixpences have walked the dodo path too.

This Vessel in which I Sail

This Vessel in which I Sail

Trapped in this fragile vessel, with the pandemic
a passenger waiting to board, I drift from port to port,
looking for a haven, safe, to have and to hold me.

No harbour will let me dock. “No room at this inn,”
they say. “No haven here.” They wave me away.

Now I have no destination. Aimless, I float and every
where I go the message is: “No vacancy: no room at all.”

Unwanted, abandoned, I wander with wind and waves,
my only friends seals, porpoises, and whales.
I walk the whale road, leaving a frail, white wake behind.

This vessel has become a gulag now, a prison
camp where I exist just to survive. Each hour of each day
endless, boundless, like this shadowy, haunted sea.

Today there is no motion, no goal. What is there to achieve
but survival? Each day’s journey is sufficient unto itself.

Commentary:

Moo’s cartoon, Naval Gazing, dates from 2015. That year I spent eight weeks in Moncton at the Georges Dumont, gazing at my navel while waiting for my anti-cancer radiation treatment. Naval gazing / navel gazing, indeed. Good one, guys. You make a great pairing.

The poem dates from 2020 when Covid stalked the streets and we wore masks when we were not confined to our houses. I thought of the tour ships, wandering the seas, with the disease on board, and no port wanting them. It was a strange time.

Golden Oldies, then, both poem and painting. There are signs, small at present, but still visible, that such days are on their way back. We must each ask the question – What is there to achieve but survival? Hopefully we will come up with a similar answer – Each day’s journey is sufficient unto itself. Journey well and journey safely, my friends.

What would your life be like without music?

Daily writing prompt
What would your life be like without music?
View all responses

What would your life be like without music?

Very quiet.

I consulted Moo, my favorite artist, on this one and he said that the above answer was much too brief and slightly cynical.
“Look,” he said to me, “this is today’s painting. It’s called Walking on Air.”
“Walking on air?” I queried.
“Yup,” he replied – “I hear music, but there’s no one there.” Then he told me to listen quietly to his painting. And I did. But nothing happened.
“I can’t hear a thing,” I told him.
“How many people do you see inside the painting?” he asked.
“About four,” I replied. “A girl with long red hair, a little girl with a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, an old man, all hunched up, running away from something, and someone on the left hand-side, at the bottom, but I’m not sure what they’re doing.”
“Idiot,” he said to me. “Open your mind, not just your eyes. Look again. Now what do you see?”
“The same people, and there may be a couple more. How many people do you see, Moo?” “None. That’s why I hear music, because there’s no one there.”
“You’re having me on, aren’t you? You’re pulling my leg? You’re taking the…”
“Easy now,” he grinned maliciously, ” you don’t want your next word to be taken and used in evidence against you, do you? Now, look out of the window. What do you see?”
“I see blossoms…”
“But the trees are bare,” he smiled. “Do you toss and turn in your bed at night?”
“I do. And I’ve gone and lost my appetite.”
“I bet those stars shining in the skies last night, will be shining in your eyes tonight.”
“My golly, Moo, I think they might be. You know, you are a genius.”
“I am indeed. But I usually travel incognito. And listen…”
“Wow. I hear someone singing softly, and the voice is coming from the painting… but…”
“I know. There’s no one there.”

How quiet would my life be without music? As quiet as it would be without art, poetry, a sense of humor, friends who laugh with me, not at me, and people like you, who read this, and don’t think that I am totally insane. Oh yes, and if there was no music in my life, there would be no Great Starts to the Day, and no Poems for the End of Time.

A Touch of Frost

A Touch of Frost

1

Cooler nights
have brought
a touch of frost
to higher ground.

At night,
temperatures fall.
By day,
they build.

I watch as Autumn,
finger on lips,
tiptoes
through the garden.

2

With a wave of its wand,
winter threatens.

A gust of wind
swirls the leaves,
bears tufts of snow
dancing round the tree.

I watch
as my grandchild grows,
my child grows older.

She has a gentle
touch of frost,
a grey fringe
at the curl’s roots.

When I glance
in the mirror,
I see the full effects –
drifts of snow
gathered on my head.

I look
at my beloved.
Her hair –
a crab apple tree
in full spring bloom.

Comment:
Nice to add a new poem of my own to this poetry page. Today’s poem came as a result of discovering Moo’s painting – A Touch of Frost. Painting and poem, painter and poet – a great collaboration.

And then there’s the nights – KTJ

Then There’s The Nights … KTJ                

As a child my days were good.
Full of wonder and being misunderstood.
Growing and learning without knowing love.
But always guided by the Lord up above.
The days were filled with hope in my sights.

Then there’s the nights.

Trying to make sense of my life in a bed I did not own.
Fighting demons no child should ever fight alone.
Dreams of monsters under the bed.
Thoughts of not belonging filling my head.
Longing for a normal Mom and Dad.
Crying myself to sleep and feeling sad.

At 14, I thought I was grown.
Stealing my food and living alone.
Leaving behind a brief life with my dad.
Street life was hard, but it was all that I had.
The days seemed to pass by all right.

Then there’s the nights.

Fear of passing by where the dead lay to rest.
I’d stand with my thumb out and hope for the best.
I was told it was the living I should fear.
But my mind was confused
and my thoughts were unclear.
Sleeping in ditches and dreaming of a home.
No one to care for me, I was alone.

Years passed by as if in slow motion.
People came and went, playing on my emotions.
More than one marriage, with hopes of a happy home.
Each time I was sure I was done being alone.
I kept telling myself life was sunny and bright.

Then there’s the nights.

Sleeping once again in a bed I didn’t own.
Waiting for a husband who does not come home.
Anger and confusion running through my head
Wondering if he was sleeping in another woman’s bed.
I wanted to scream and demand he be true.
But you don’t have that option if someone’s abusing you.

I’ve finally made it to the last quarter of my life.
I no longer desire to be anyone’s wife.
I have my independence and a loving heart.
I want love, but I also need time apart.
To grow and learn and miss the ones I love.
I have been truly blessed by God above.

Then there’s the nights

Sometimes sleeping in a bed, I don’t care if I own.
Nights full of contentment for me and me alone.
I’ve let go of the dream of two hearts and souls
intertwined as one.
Finally, my worries and grief are done.
The rest of my journey will be full of peace and love.

Once again, I thank the good Lord above.

Comments
Yesterday, I posted a painting that KTJ associated with one of her poems, Addiction. Last night, my friend, Moo, painted this painting which accords with one of KTJ’s poems entitled And then there’s the nights. This is the lead poem in her first poetry collection, I am my tattoos. This linking of the verbal (poetry) with the visual (a painting) has been a technique I have used before. The movement between visual and verbal often generating a shifting pattern of colors and images in the reader’s / viewer’s mind. These collaborations between artists are very productive. Long may they continue.

NB If you, dear reader, would be interested in writing for one of Moo’s paintings, just drop me a line, or leave a note in the comments section.