Grief

Anywhere

Anywhere
Jackpine Sonnet

I knew you the first day
I saw you. I knew your heart
before you could open it up
and let me in. I knew your soul
before you allowed me
to touch its beauty’s depth.

Did I know you from another
life? I just don’t know. I only
know that I knew who you were
and what you meant to me.

Once I saw you, how could I let
you go? I reached across the bridge
that spans the ages and saw you
as you always were, clad in white,
shining like the Milky Way
across a universe of falling stars
and you the only one I wanted
to catch, put in my pocket,
 and keep safe in my heart.

Comment:

“Know thy self!” So easy to say, but not so easy to do. Sometimes it is easier to know others, to see them clearly, than it is to know ourselves. As Robbie Burns once wrote – “Oh would some power the giftie gie us / to see ourselves as others see us.” The mirror of the self, alas, is a fairground mirror, snatched from the hall of mirrors, and it is a distorting mirror that turns us into different shapes and sizes.

And what about the ways in which people change? Miguel de Cervantes wrote that “the most difficult role in the play is that of the fool, for he who would play the fool must never be one.” How many of us wear a mask, play the fool, and it is only the joker’s bells that are heard, the fool’s mask that is seen?

And we can change in so many ways. Heraclitus – “we can never walk in the same river twice.” Why not? Because we change and the waters of the river change and everything is in fluctuation and nothing stays the same, not even for one day. Nostra vita brevis est … and it is subject to change.

How do we change? Let me count the ways – but, like petals on a daisy or seeds on a dandelion, the changes are almost impossible to count. Guillaume Apollinaire also wrote about change. “Je ne suis plus là moi-mème, je suis le quinze de l’onzième.” / “I am no more myself. I have become the fifth of the twelfth.” How often do people say – “I am a human being. I am not just a number.” Yet numbers are what we turn into. Statistics. Figures in columns. Dates in note books. Telephone numbers. Number plates on cars.

Oh the joys of time. Today’s heroes so soon turn into tomorrow’s forgotten people. Seeds on a dandelion, petals on a daisy, ants beneath the traveler’s feet … change is everywhere. And one day, even you, might look in that mirror and no longer recognize yourself. So – know yourself – yes – but always prepare for change.

Windmill

Windmill
Jackpine Sonnet

When the scales fell from my eyes
I stood on them and wondered
what I weighed on the time’s great scales.

Miniscule. A featherweight.
A dandelion seed blown on the wind
that whirls the world through space.

Spiritus mundi – the great world spirit
inflating my lungs, each breath
a glimpse of the infinite
combining in my body and soul.

The sails of a windmill, my arms,
and the wind turning them,
dashing me down into the dust,
then raising me rejoicing to the skies.

Comment:

Moo said I needed cheering up, so he painted me a happy painting. “I know it’s not a windmill,” he told me, “but you can pretend it is. The leaves of the clover even look like they might be a windmill, and look, it’s got arms as well.”

“Thank you, Moo,” I said. My poem is a happy poem and it proves that the Black Dog of yesterday had been banished today, not by a happy dog, but by a four leafed clover standing beneath a shower of solver and gold.”

Intertextuality – texts speaking to texts. I wonder how many texts you can spot in this poem. I can count five, at least, and there are probably more. Milton Acorn, Miguel de Cervantes, Northop Frye, the Bible (not y Beibl Cymreig, unfortunately), Edmond Rostand. That’s quite the handful. Well, four fingers and a thumb, at least. Now all you have to do is spot the original sources which, blended, give my poem a saucy sauce of sorts. So, grab your AI and play hide and seek and see what you can find drawn from the dark recesses of my mind. Don’t give in too easily, now.

Mood swings – mood changes – Moody Me – Moody Moo – I’ll bet that you are Moody Too. Good mood, bad mood, who’s to say? We’ll leave that for another day!

Black Dog

Black Dog

The black dog leaps out
of the grandmother clock
and lands on my back.

His paws grip my shoulders,
then rake down my spine.

I try to shake him off,
but he growls, bares his teeth,
and won’t let go.

I love that clock,
its Westminster chimes,
the Roman numerals
standing guard
over the pointed arrows
of the hands as they march
round and round.

But I hate the hound
that makes its kennel
in the clock, leaps out,
snaps at me, bites and claws,
and grinds me
down into the ground.

Comment:

The Black Dog was Winston Churchill’s name for the depression that came over him, and overcame him, from time to time. It used to attack me when I was a young boy living in Swansea. My grandfather would point at the clock and say “He’s in there. He’s coming for you. I can see him. It’s the black dog.” Well, that used to drive me crazy and whatever it was that set me off became twice as bad when the black dog arrived. Alas, now I am entering into my dotage and my second childhood, the black dog has re-appeared to trouble my waking hours. I guess it’s the mood swings. Happy one moment, miserable the next. The good dog appears. The black dog drives it away. Then the good dog reappears and all is well again.

Moo understands me and my patterns very well. In fact he painted two paintings for me – Twin – the one above and Niwt – the one below. You can see evidence of the good dog and the black dog in each of them. But which is which?

I’ll leave you to guess which is the good dog and which the bad one. Really and truly, they are two sides of the same coin – heads and tails so to speak. Moo tells me you can think of the paintings as a mirror image, one of the other.

It’s like mood swings – either my mind or my body flips the coin and one of the two dogs jumps out visit me. Luckily, after a bit, the good one chases the bad one away, so it’s all swings and roundabouts and all the fun of the fair. Until I fall off the Ferris Wheel or see my own shadow while riding on the Ghost Train.

Twin, of course, is Niwt backwards. Or is it the other way round. Dylan Thomas, my favorite Welsh poet, set the standard for word reversal. After all, the town of Llareggub is bugger all backwards. What fun we can have when we twist our words, double up on our language, reverse words and their meanings, and generally weave the tangled webs of linguistic double-talk. Oh the mystery of missed and mixed up meanings. But are meanings meaningful or meaningless? Now that is the question. And when you have answered it for meanings, start thinking about double-meanings and their twins – or should that be quadruplets?

Striations

Striations

Striations

There are striations in my heart,
so deep, a lizard could lie there,
unseen, and wait for tomorrow’s sun.

Timeless,
the worm at the apple’s core
waiting for its world to end. 

Seculae seculorum:
the centuries rushing headlong.
Matins: wide-eyed this owl
hooting in the face of day.

Somewhere, I remember
a table spread for two.
Breakfast. An open door.
“Where are you going, dear?”

Something bright has fled the world.
The sun unfurls shadows.
The blood whirls stars around the body.
“It has gone.” she said. “The magic.
I no longer tremble at your touch.”

The silver birch wades at dawn’s bright edge.
Somewhere, tight lips, a blaze of anger,
a challenge spat in the wind’s taut face.

High-pitched the rabbit’s grief in its silver snare.
The midnight moon deep in a trance.
If only I could kick away this death’s head,
this sow’s bladder, this full moon
drifting high in a cloudless sky.

Comment:

La poesía se explica sola. Si no, no se explica.

Pedro Salinas.

Poetry explains itself. If it doesn’t, it’s inexplicable.

Outsider

Outsider

Outside their window
nose pressed to the pane
always an outsider

Cold rain turned
to sleet then snow
dark outside
inside fairy lights
the fire’s warm glow

I never cried
I accepted sleet and snow
just stood outside
watching the fire
the sparkling tree
gifts at the foot
children playing

I turned for home
my cold empty house
no lights no fire
just me all alone
my parents out partying
me left on my own

Comment:

Poor Moo – he’s been having a bad time. Winston Churchill’s Black Dog of Depression leapt out of the grandmother clock on the wall in the kitchen, draped itself round his shoulders, and wouldn’t let go. Well, that’s what he told me, anyway. Personally, I think he was silly enough as to check his pension plan on the stock exchange – bad idea. That descending red arrow is worse than the Black Dog and equally as likely to drag one down, down, down. Is there a rock bottom? Who knows. What I do know, from my own hard-won experience, is when it’s darkest and all seems lost, that’s when the you know dawn will soon come and the light will break through.

In 17th Century Spanish Mysticism, this is known as the dark night of the soul. Stick with it. Do not despair. That dark night leads to what the Mystics call the Via Iluminativa – the path of light that leads you back upwards, into your normal self and your daily life of sunshine and happiness.

Anyway, in a cri de coeur – a cry from the heart – Moo showed me this painting and asked me to write a poem, just for him, so that he could wallow in his sorrow for a little bit longer then pull himself out of the Slough of Despond. Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress – don’t tell me you haven’t read that? You’ll be on Santa’s Naughty List if you haven’t. Anyway, I offered him a hand to pull him out, but he said “No, not a hand. I want a poem.” And here it is. Moo on the outside, looking in. As you can see, he’s wearing Blue. So he’s a Blue Moo. Good job he isn’t from Kentucky – “Blue Moo of Kentucky, keep on shining.” If he was, he might never recover!

This poem is also dedicated to my good friends Ginger and Michael. They live in the Sunshine State and are never left out in the cold. Now, if they lived in Nova Scotia, they might become true blue Blue Nosers. As for me, I am just a reborn New Brunswick Herring Choker. And I think one of those two might be as well.

No Man’s Island

No Man’s Island

It’s so easy to lose
our true selves
or to be carried along
by the flow of another’s
rhetoric because we
no longer possess
(or never had)
that inner conviction
that makes us different.

That’s why we must join hands
and link together:
a chain of bridged
and ferried islands
to insulate us
against our loneliness.

Comment:

I first published this in 2017 with the title Islands – I have changed the title, very slightly, to move closer to John Donne’s No Man is an Island. What I have noticed more and more recently is how we tend to isolate ourselves. Birds of a feather flock together – true – and nowhere truer than in this bloated Soccer World Cup with its 48 teams to be expanded next time, 2030, to 64 teams, unless we have 64 teams in 2028, because this circus demands to be offered more frequently so it can make even more money … or is so that more teams can compete in the final stages. Remember – the finals are meant to be the ultimate challenge – the best 32 teams in the world – until Quatar (2022) 42 teams and now USA (2026) 48 teams.

Il gruppo della morte – remember that? It’s when three top teams were drawn together in a group of four – and one of them was doomed not to get out. Didn’t happen this time. No gruppo della morte this time – 24 top teams all got through, and the next eight third best place finishes. There were some very one-sided games. And there were many games in which one team parked the bus – all ten players inside their own penalty area and no way to get through. This led to some very negative defensive football. And don’t forget that terrible off-side law – no portion, not a hair or a fingernail of the attacking player could be seen on the – bow your heads in submission – Video Assisted Referee’s screen. And how far back do you go when searching for that minor infringement that will disallow whatever happened to whomsoever it happened to?

Before the days of the electronic spy in the sky, the rules of rugby were fairly straightforward. “The referee is the sole judge of fact and of law.” In addition, in those days, the advantage needed to be immediate. No five minute wait while the players bang away at the goal line from the one yard until an infringement takes place, the attacking team fails to score, and we all go back to the original infringement. And no five minute wait while all the moves leading up to the try are checked and double checked so that there are no imperfections. For those without memories – check the Barbarians versus New Zealand in Cardiff, way back when, in 1972 or 73. Look at those high and dangerous tackles leading up to that wonderful Gareth Edwards try. Guess what? That try would never have taken place with a VAR check for dangerous play.

Writing these words, I feel myself to be isolated. A man with a memory who has been left out in the cold by a world that has moved on and left him behind – with all his beautiful memories. “See that house?” My grandfather asked me, when I was an avid collector of autographs. “Knock on the door and ask for the autograph of the man who lives there.” I did. He was old. He was asleep. Leave the book. He’ll sign it when he wakes up. And he did. I have the book here in the house and the autograph standing in isolated glory in the middle of a page. W. J. Bancroft – aka Billy Bancroft. “Who’s he?” you ask. Well, just go and look him up. You may be surprised at what you find down memory’s lane where my grandfather and I wandered hand in hand all those many years ago.

As for Moo’s painting, he calls it Craters with Creatures. But I call it In search of times past. Look closely. You can see many of them within the picture’s frame and they are all searching for something they have lost and would desperately love to cling on to.

Blood from Stones

Car tire over a pothole containing small monster figurines with aggressive faces
A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.
Image AI generated.

Blood from Stones

The road ahead a bandage
leaking grey blood from stones.
The snow plow brutal,
carelessly lifting scabbed edges
until the gore overflows.

Spring always promises renewal,
but freeze and thaw also open
old wounds making them bleed.

A merry, mazy life we lead,
threading the car’s needle through
holes torn in the asphalt’s fabric.

Some holes are so large they have
lives of their own, and names –
Grand Canyon, Yawning Gap,
Patty’s Peril, Big Bertha, each one
well-known to neighbors.

Others are pornographic,
their open orifices painted,
laughing in scorn, dentated
vaginas ready for anything.

Such decorated potholes
 are soon filled, their crude
messages swiftly erased.

Comment:

Three flat tires in the last month and spring’s potholes still out there, waiting to trap me. Apparently, one neighborhood on the North Side of the river decided to decorate their potholes with pornographic drawings. These were swiftly filled and their messages totally erased. Alas, we on the South Side are not so daring. We don’t go out and paint our potholes. Personally, I wish we did. July – and many potholes are still there.

Not only that, the road into town is being repaired. Hooray! However, the tarmac was stripped off two weeks ago and has yet to be replaced. Boo! More than that, at the end of our street, just before the highway, one or two enormous potholes still gape. They lead directly to a dip that rises abruptly when it meets with the now stripped highway. A champion clunker that – a genuine tank-trap. I think at least two of my flat tires occurred after going over that one.

It reminds me of my grandfather’s stories about WWI and ‘going over the top’. Now, each time I approach it in the car, I call out loudly, “Look out, grandpa, here I come.” I call that particular pothole Grandpa’s Revenge. My own personal name. I don’t know what the neighbors call it. And I don’t know why grandpa is seeking revenge! But below the tires, the pothole awaits, gnashing its teeth.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness

alive in the moment
a momentary cloud
crosses the sun face
brings shade to table

soon page and tabletop
ripple with light again

the pen’s shadow
pushes across the page
while the nib weaves
its spider fine lines
of well webbed words

meaningful mindful
each letter a moment
caught and held in time

Comments:

I caught myself forcing myself to write a poem – and it just wasn’t working. Meaningless words upon the page, each wound up, struggling like a little black fly in a spider web that promised only oblivion. Then I caught the one sentence that ends the above poem – each letter a moment caught in time. I had found what I was looking for. For the next half hour I played back and forth with a whole sequence of dibbles and dabbles that eventually led to what I have written above.

I showed it to Moo. “Tranquility,” he said. “I have just the painting for you.” Love at first sight – poet and painter, painting and poem, blissful in a true moment of blended tranquility and mindfulness. “Why, thank you, dear Moo,” I said and all our previous squibbling and squabbling was laid aside. We gave each other a big hug – I should add that we don’t often do that, as one or two of you out there might well know. But we did it today.

Meanwhile, I have received another set of fake invitations – oh, I would be so famous in the world of fakery if I gave away what little money I own to make myself truly famous – for my folly in believing the permanence of fakery. Why, only last week, I got an email mistaking me for my namesake and offering to help me publicize his most famous book – My Word is my Bond. The person involved was asking for a cool $250,00 for making the videos.

Oh dear. 007 is one thing. 006.5 is something else and someone else. Never mind – maybe one day someone real will call me and make me a genuine offer that I really can’t refuse. I probably wouldn’t believe that if it happened.

On Re-reading Quevedo’s Poetry

On Re-reading Quevedo’s Poetry

Was that where my life went,
a spent candle trailing dark studies
among the packed lines of your poems?

What about you, was your life gutted by that
same guttering candle by whose light you
scrawled your tight black spider rhymes?

Are they all meaningless, your insights
and my words? Few people now know who
you were and what you represented.

Am I, your scholar, a mere shadow
of your shadow struggling in the straggling
half-light of your existence?

Yet, I’m still intent on sharing light
and the word with a world that thinks
the two of us are out of date and absurd.

Avalanche

Avalanche

A single stone
starts the avalanche

The boy in the kitchen
bare legs held to the fire
‘this is what hell will be like’

The cupboard under the stairs
cold dark locked from the outside
an oubliette
the young boy left there
forgotten

Running upstairs
to safety beneath the bed
hands grasping at legs
and ankles
pulling him back down
for appropriate punishment

The belt the stick
the little red brush that cleans
the fireplace
with its foretaste of hell
beating battering
an avalanche of blows
the boy buried beneath them

Commentary:

Another unsigned painting by Moo. He told me that he calls this one Orange-U-Happy. Well, it is a happy painting, until you read the poem that goes with it and discover that all the stones of the avalanche are floating around in Moo’s painting, including a nice selection of sticks.

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” But names do hurt. Names can be cast like stones, and the thrown stone, like the spoken word, can never be recalled. Liar. Cheat. Thief. Little Lord Fauntleroy. Bite the hand that feeds you. Are you laughing at me? I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget. I’ll shake you until your teeth rattle.

Stones can be thrown into ponds. When they are, the ripples reach out, spread further, spread far and wide. Thrown words can enter the soul, ripple through the blood, and they can lodge in heart and brain, forever memories that never fade and never fly away. Heart stones, they are, that strike at the stroke of midnight and leave the victim suffering, gasping for air.

So many silent memories, buried deep, only to rise and parade around in dreams at night, revenants come to haunt and hunt, sharp words made even sharper than flint or obsidian to cut and fracture, and splinter, and slowly, slowly wear down the prey. Words – the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch. Think twice before you throw, speak, wound, injure …. then think again, bite your tongue, stay your hand, drop the stone, think rather of the hand of friendship, of comfort, the feathered wing of the guardian angel that consoles and brings succor.

Succour (or succor in American English) means assistance or support given to someone experiencing grief or hardship. It is a formal, often literary term used to describe help that offers actual relief or comfort to people in difficult situations, such as disaster victims or those struggling emotionally – Wikipedia.

And remember – many words have double meanings – spare – to forbear: deciding not to hurt, destroy, or punish, such as “sparing the life” of a captive or sparing the the rod. Spoil – to indulge: to treat someone, such as a child or pet, with pampering. It can also mean treating oneself to a luxury or relaxing day.

So, what does spare the rod and spoil the child mean? Clearly it is a phrase with a double meaning. Choose which one you will. But remember – “Let us pray” is a better prayer than “Let us prey“.