Gifts

Carved in Stone 36

Carved in Stone
36

Words, cast stones,
ripples spreading out
across water, reaching out
and beyond this shore,
traveling, how long,
in time and space?

Will they last longer,
than the sanderling’s prints,
their silent words upon dry sand,
wet, when waves come in
to wipe them all away.

Gone forever,
until next day,
when the outgoing tide
permits new birds
to create fresh messages.

Commentary:
La poesía se explica sola, si no, no se explica. Pedro Salinas (Spanish Poet, Generation of ’27). Poetry explains itself, if it doesn’t, it’s inexplicable.

The quote certainly works well for this poem! Not much else we can say about it. The phot (taken by Clare at Pointe Wolfe Beach, Fundy National Park) shows sandpipers, sheltering from the wind, not sanderlings. They are both beautiful shorebirds and can often be seen together.

Two New Poems

Two New Poems

1

My Words

My words are black print
on white paper.
My memories flare
 – an aurora borealis of senses
sent crackling down the spine,
in and out of the mind,
tumbling the brain into a world
 … what sort of world?

An unimaginable world.
One never forgotten.
One never re-recreated.
One that never existed.
One that never could exist.
One for which the young child,
six or seven years old,
yearns for the rest of his life.
His unsatisfied life.
His unsatisfying life.
His meaningless life.
His absurd life.

2

Puppy

Oh, pity the poor puppy,
not knowing
 what he has done wrong,
not knowing
how to put things right,
always inadequate,
always in fear
of the angry word,
the quick, sly kick,
the vicious blow,
whining and cringing
at his master’s feet.

“Into your box!”

And always,
that cold puppy bed,
often soiled,
 where the long, chill snakes
of frail, wriggling dreams,
remind him of
the next day’s
punishment.

Commentary:

Both these poems evolved from the comments I made yesterday to my blog post. I have started noticing that those words, beneath the poems, sometimes have a rhythm and a magic all to themselves. I guess it is a little bit of the unconscious slipping upwards and spilling out.

Discovered poems – I never set out to write these two poems. When I re-read my commentary, I thought ‘wow, there’s a poem in there”, and I found not one, but two new poems. Interesting. As I age, I discover something new every day. What a wonderful world it is, unless, like earlier this week, I discover my tap leaking and am forced to call my friend, the plumber, into my water world. Alas, if only that tap were tapped into a maple tree and it weas spring once more. Ah well, I am a dreamer, I can always dream.

Candle Light

Candle Light

Candle light
softens your features
brings out the bone shape
makes me forget
the minor flaws
of ageing.

Bone shape,
rock shape,
land scape,
your face contours
traced by the flame,
counting the years,
like tree rings.

Beneath the surface
you are as you always were
and always will be.

When I look into your eyes,
I see your soul
dancing in the candle’s flame.

It’s A Small World

It’s A Small World

Light returns to Island View after Monday’s eclipse. Here it is post the total eclipse and daylight is being restored. It was a wonderful experience, totally unlike the last total eclipse we saw, at Skinner’s Pond, In PEI, on 10 July 1972.

That one was unexpected. Nobody talked about it. Nobody said a thing. We travelled to Skinner’s Pond, the birth place of Stompin’ Tom Connors, just to see where he was born. We parked the car, put the dog on a leash, and walked on the beach. Normal sea-side sounds – waves, sea birds, wind among the dune grass – swallows rose and fell, twittering joyfully. A world at peace. Then it happened.

A shadow moved across the sun and the world started to darken. The dog went wild, strained at the leash, started to whimper. The bank swallows began to gather, then, as the darkness deepened, they dived for their burrows and vanished from sight. We shivered and wondered. We had no glasses of any kind. We avoided looking at the sun, and just experienced the world as it darkened and became colder and more silent, save for the sound of the wind in the grass. As the light returned, the dog settled down, the swallows emerged from their tunnels and took to the skies, twittering again. Life, light, and warmth returned to normal.

Monday’s eclipse was so very different. We weren’t intending to watch it, other than on the television. While I was out shopping, early that morning, I joked with the people I met that, during the eclipse, I was going to tuck myself into bed and hide my head under the blankets, in case it was dangerous. [Yes, I have read Day of the Triffids and seen the movie. Now that does date me.] On the way home, I met one of my neighbors. Was I going to watch the eclipse? Once in a life experience. Did I have the right glasses? He told me to avoid normal sunglasses. Told me I wouldn’t get the right glasses now. All sold out. He gave me a strange look when I told him of my decision to bury my head in the blankets – just in case – so no harm would come to me.

Several news items turned up on my computer. In one of them I read that approved special glasses – true specifics and details given – had vanished from the stores in Fredericton. Only one place still stocked them – Canadian Tire, South Side. Ha! I drove back into town and there, on the door of CT-South, I saw a sign – Eclipse Glasses available at Check Outs. I joined the line up of late buyers, bought two pairs, and headed joyfully home.

When the eclipse started, I drove around the block, looking for the best place from which to view it. I parked here, there, and everywhere, tried my glasses out – a small, black line, curved, was slowly and silently invading the sun’s disc. I drove back home and discovered, after an experiment or two, that our back porch was the perfect spot for viewing. We put chairs on the deck, sat down, and watched as the blackness on the sun’s face grew larger. No beach view this. The Island in Island View is in the St. John River / Wolastoq, on the other side of the hill. No sea gulls, no swallows, in our garden. In fact very few birds at all.

As it grew darker, we could hear the soulful hooting of some mourning doves. They soon grew silent. The crows, on the other hand, rose up to defend their territory, just like they do when a hawk passes over and puts its shadow between them and the sun. What a racket of sheer defiance.

Through our glasses we could see wavy lines of light flickering around the visible parts of the sun’s circumference. Occasional red streamers, flared up and out. Then the eclipse became total. We took off our glasses and for two minutes and seven seconds (or so) we basked in celestial glory. Breathtaking. Spell binding. A mystical moment of myth and magic. We sat in silence. Then, the spell broke. The sun emerged from its moon shadow and light returned. The earth warmed. Life was as it was. Nothing had changed, except for us. Light broke where no sun shone, and suddenly we realized so many truths.

How tiny is our world. How enormous is the space around us. How mighty is the universe. How fragile are we humans. How small and insignificant is our world. How glorious is our existence, the joy of life, of witnessing, of seeing such power and such glory. The joys of knowing that we are sentient, and alive.

Two images of partial eclipse – with clouds – Kingsbrae International Residencies for Artists (KIRA, June 2021).

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

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What is the greatest gift someone could give you?
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What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

The greatest gifts that anyone could possibly give me have already been given. Greatest of all, this life I live, this body I inhabit, given to me by my mother such a long time ago. Without that gift, and blessing, all other gifts would be meaningless. The second gift, chronologically, was the education that they provided for me. This included time on the continent during the summer and the school year to develop, in France and Spain, my knowledge of the languages and cultures.

The third gift has to be my meeting with Clare, and her decision to stay with me as her chosen partner. This includes my moving to Canada to study at the University of Toronto, and her decision to follow me here. Then, we got married, on Christmas Eve, and she became my greatest gift, giving me, in her turn, the gift of a child – our daughter, who in turn gifted us with a granddaughter. This last group of gifts includes the gifts that keep on giving, year after year.

So, a life viewed through rose-colored spectacles? Yes, in some ways. We have had our ups and downs but the gifts of life, love, and laughter have carried us through the difficult times when the winds blew, the sea rose, and we rowed on into brighter weather. There have been other gifts, of course. They include the gifts of family and friendship bestowed upon me by so many people in Wales, England, France, Spain, Canada, and Mexico. The gift of friendship, in later life, and my meeting with like-minded people who have walked with me, some for a little while, many for a lot longer. And we must never forget the gifts of adoration and love, bestowed upon us by our four-legged friends, the dogs and cats who have entered our various homes and enhanced our existence.

Having said all that, one moment, one gift, a much more recent one, does stand out. We lost power for three days, seventy-two hours, just before Christmas this year. At the start of the fourth evening, we were looking at temperatures of -10C to -15C. Our house temperature had descended to +53 F and we didn’t know whether we could face another cold night, or not. Then, at 7:15 pm, the exact moment when we had lost heat three days earlier, with a click and a whirr, the lights came on, the heating started again, and we received, from anonymous people, who we will probably never meet, the gift of power restored and the return of light and heat.

So, to the linemen of NB Power, those anonymous workers who strove to bring the light and spirit of Christmas to the dark homes of the cold and lost, we send our thanks. You gave us, without even knowing us, one of the greatest gifts that living things can receive – heat and warmth and light at Christmas Time, in the bleak mid-winter. Thank you, men and women of NB Power. You were the bearers of great gifts and you and your devotion to duty (under the worst of the weather), and the gifts you brought us are all truly appreciated.

What are you most proud of in your life?

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What are you most proud of in your life?
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What are you most proud of in your life?

The young lady in the photograph above. We met, at a boarding school dance, in England, when we were both seventeen years old. We have been together ever since. Why am I so proud of her? Let me count the ways.

When she discovered my love of Spain and the Spanish language, she took time out from her own career in order to learn Spanish. When I asked her why she was learning the language, she replied ‘because if I am going to be with you, I want to share your life, and that means loving the things you love.’ We became engaged in Santander, Spain, on her 21st birthday. Then, the following year, when I received an offer to study and teach at the University of Toronto, she promised me that if I called her, she would come out and join me.

I called her as a Thanksgiving Gift from my Canadian family. She packed up her clothes and her career, bought a wedding dress, and travelled to Toronto that December. We got married on Christmas Eve. We had very little money. We didn’t have a wedding photographer. Nor did we have a honeymoon. I guess we never needed one. We had just enough money put by to last us until the end of January. So, First week of the New Year, she set out in search of a job. A qualified Diagnostic Radiographer, she was hired by the Doctor’s Hospital in Toronto, and she financed my graduate studies for the next three years.

Our next adventure was a Canada Council (as it was back then) Doctoral Fellowship that took us back to Spain where I completed the research for my thesis at the local library, with its trove of manuscript documents. We returned to Canada after two years, and took up residence in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where we still live. Her adventurous life led her to a certificate in accountancy, taken via a correspondence course. Then, she presented me with our daughter. We bought an American Cocker Spaniel and she started showing and grooming dogs, becoming Show Secretary of the Fredericton Kennel Club. She trained and groomed two Canadian Champions, an ASCOB (Willy) and a Parti-color (Smudge).

Our daughter decided she wanted to be a gymnast. Parents were requested to ‘get involved’ with the local club and my beloved became a gymnastics judge. She rose in the gym circles and became first provincial judging chairperson and then a nationally qualified judge, officiating at the National Gymnastics Championships and also at the Jeux du Canada Games.

She travelled with me to Oaxaca, Mexico, and fell in love with the Pre-Colombian Mexican Codices that we found there in abundance. She studied them carefully and then taught me all about them. I, in my turn, introduced them to my own students. When I took my first Multi-Media Courses at the University of New Brunswick, she followed them with me. The result was two-fold – our first web page which she built with with HTML, no templates in those early days, followed by our online Quevedo Bibliography. This, about ten years later, morphed into the online searchable data base that she built with the assistance of the technicians at the Digital Library in Harriet Irving Library.

Now, we are growing old together – such sweet sorrow. this Christmas we will celebrate 57 years of marriage. And yes, my beloved is still my most valuable Christmas present – and the person of whom I am most proud. I remember the old Worthington beer advertisement. “Behind every good man, there’s a good woman.” The cartoon shows a lady carrying a bottle of Worthington.

My beloved has stood behind me all my life. She has carried for me, not a bottle of Worthington, but the burden of assisting, helping, encouraging, supporting, carrying the load when it became too heavy for me. She has been a silent partner in so many ways, but one without whom I would be nothing.

If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?

Daily writing prompt
If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?
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If you won two free plane tickets, where would you go?

Wrong question – because I wouldn’t go anywhere. Now, I’ll ask the right question: If I won two free plane tickets, what would I do with them? That I can answer.

I am no longer a willing traveler. Even a trip into town to go shopping is too much some days. So, I wouldn’t use them, but I would look for someone who could. But before that, a question – are these single tickets – you go there and have to stay there or else pay your own way home? Or are they return tickets, there and back and again, or as they say in Spain, ida y vuelta? If they are the former, I have a couple of people in mind that I would bundle off to the other end of the planet and leave them there, stranded. If they were return tickets, then other options are family.

My Canadian family: a free trip home during these difficult financial times would be excellent. I guess that would be my first choice. But I have family in faraway place, with strange sounding names, and maybe my Australian family would enjoy a trip to Canada to visit me. Or else a trip back home to Wales where there’s always a welcome for the prodigals that return. And what if the family weren’t interested?

Then I would advertise the tickets for a local family that needed free travel for health purposes or family visits. If nobody came forward, I would raffle them or auction them, and give the proceeds to one of my favorite charities, the women’s shelter or the local food bank.

And there you have it. Meanwhile, courtesy of Moo, my favorite artist, the little green man goes sailing through the air in the painting above, flying into the sunset, and enjoying every minute of it.

Luminescence

Luminescence

Our world can sometimes seem to be a very dark place. Early yesterday morning, sitting on the back bumper of my car, breathing heavily, unable to shift the weight of snow, rain, freezing rain, ice pellets that had accumulated in our drive, I was gripped by the cold hand of old age and despair.

I remembered the talk show quiz games in which one option was to call a friend. So I did. He turned up after work, started the snow blower and did for me what I was no longer able to do for myself. He cleaned the paths round our house, at the back, to the bird feeders, and down the front the heat pump at the side.

He brought light and joy back into my world, made me realize I was not alone, and I gave him, as a token of my gratitude, this painting: Luminescence.

Those of us who are still capable of bringing light and joy to others must continue to do so. Whatever we do, we must not let the dark side and the shadows take over.

My friend – you touched my heart. I thank you.