Absence in Presence
Just before her flight left,
she came up
from the basement,
her cleaning tasks
complete,
and smiled at me.
In the background, music,
a Golden Oldie,
the Rolling Stones playing
‘This could be the last time.’
Present in her eyes,
and in my heart,
the thought,
more than a thought,
the knowledge
that those words
might actually be true.
Clepsydra 11
11
… gone too
that Raggedy Ann doll
held together
by her patchwork heart
cross-stitched lovingly
with needle and thread
the sluggish drip-drip
of her cotton blood
proving
she is still alive
neither mummified
nor rat-and-mouse-gnawed
in limbo perhaps
but not dancing
asleep maybe
dreaming in the museum’s oubliettes
with their closed doors
their cellars and attics
stuffed with memories
all dusty and worn
memories
that only come alive
at midnight
when the full moon
awakens the shadows
boys and girls
come out to play
and walk and dance once more
beneath liquid moonlight
the celestial lantern’s
liquescent flame …
9
… what lies behind this attic door
ready to spring out
at the slow push of my hands
cobwebbed
this world revealed
a universe of memories
waiting to be called
back into life
what life
the flickering half-life
of shadows on a wall
or the alternate reality
of planets that lost their way
and forgot how to dance
around their sun
do they still move
in rhythm to an unsung song
an unstrung guitar
music no one else can hear
played by a wandering star
lost the glimmer
of life’s candle
adrift on distant waters,
but never forgotten …
10
… nor seen
nor heard
I am amazed by the maze
wandering
among cluttered objects,
my world takes shape
in a mad hatter’s workshop
where things grow legs
walk this way that way
constantly getting lost
I can hear them
chittering chattering
but I can neither
see nor hold them
like so many bats
they roost upside-down
little children lost
in memory’s attic
where everything ages
slowly gathering dust …
8
… those other faces fading
drifting away
their smiles their frowns
melting away into the dark
where no star glows
they cannot return
nothing walks the woods
save a silence
where once they strode
empty the hand
once held out to help them
silent the prayer
emerging from pale lips
and unanswered
where are they now
those who walked
this way before us
glum ghosts
hushed their chorus
I promised
to remember them
but I forgot them
as one by one
they slipped away …
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.
Clepsydra
WFNB 2025 BAILEY PRIZE: 3rd Place
Citation
Clepsydra relates a process of identity loss, as time’s passing removes the people closest to the eroding narrator. Its consistent form – the manuscript is one long poem made up of 48 sections of varying length, each of which begins and ends with an ellipsis – provides a framework in which the narrator strives to describe how their sense of self drains away, drop by drop, the way the liquid in a clepsydra (a water clock) marks the passing of time. Amazingly, the poems convey existential dread through remarkably vivid and grounded images of things like “seals basking in sunshine, / knowing themselves, being themselves, / thinking themselves safe, / kings and queens of their seal-dom, / never questioning” (19) and “…an osprey, sudden, the swoop, / turned into a stoop, water shattered, total immersion, then emerging, / lusty thrust of wings, claws clasping, / prey imprisoned” (20). Sense slides in and around the sounds of the words as well as in their dictionary meanings. In Clepsydra the author rigorously plumbs a difficult subject: the loss of subjectivity.
Exhortation
Thank you for the privilege of reading your poetry manuscript, Clepsydra. I was quite taken with all of its virtues: a meaningful concept, carried out in an impressive form which is followed both rigorously and nimbly in each section.
Introduction
The National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff, had a working Clepsydra that fascinated me. School children could enter free, and every week day, during the school holidays, I would visit the museum and also the Clepsydra.
I have built the structure of the Clepsydra into the verses of this book. The words flow down, from left to right, just like the waters of the Clepsydra. Sometimes they overflow the line, and sometimes they hold back, just a little. This visual construction fortifies the idea of the ebb and flow of time, water, and memories.
I first met the poetic image of the Clepsydra in the poetry of Antonio Machado – No temas. Tú no verás caer la última gota que en la clepsidra tiembla. / Never fear. You will not see the fall of the last waterdrop that trembles in the clepsydra. I have, for better or for worse, repeated this theme throughout the poetic dialog.
I would like to thank the judge, the poet Kathy Mac, for her comments and her excellent suggestions. I have followed most of them in this revision of the original manuscript. My thanks go to all who have read Clepsydra at one time or another.
Clepsydra
1
… time, and my own place
not this dry museum
filled with dust
its ghosts, running rampant,
raging silent
over ancient artefacts
the clepsydra dreaming
time like its liquid
slipping
through clay fingers
runnels of water
ebbing flowing
continually running down
earthen-throated
its hour glass structure
each terracotta bowl
lower than the one before
a mini-cataract
a constant waterfall
second by second
time dwindling away…
Fall Folly Age
Fall Folly Age aka Fall Foliage is a play on words.
Thank you, Moo, my painter friend, for putting this title
on your painting and allowing me to use it for one of my book covers.
After intense heat
the garden is dusty dry.
The hollyhocks,
stressed out,
bow their heads
and tumble down.
Before the heat,
heavy rain drenched
the flowerbeds.
The yucca subsided
beneath waves of water.
One hollyhock,
regally proud,
stored so much liquid
in its flowery crown
that it bent and broke.
The mountain ash
bears a host of berries.
Bright orange,
they are already turning
to their winter shades.
I see so much stress
in the little world
I inhabit.
I no longer listen
to the news
or watch TV.
So much is beyond
my control.
Yet I can control
the radio and the TV
by turning them off.
The friends I meet
now have white hair.
Like me and my flowers,
they are dried up
and bent, held up
by sticks and canes.
My beloved and I
are growing old together.
We watch each other
with great care
wondering who
will be the first
to topple and fall.
Comment:
It has been a long, long time since I last wrote on my blog. Many things have distracted me, including editing books for friends, working on my own books, journaling, painting, and surfing the web in search of something positive to read. As for my own books, I published four this summer. Clepsydra – Chronotopos I, Carved in Stone – Chronotopos II, Rage Rage – Chronotopos III, and No Dominion – Chronotopos IV. Maybe I will try to post on a regular basis and copy some of those poems here, in my blog.
Crystal Liturgy
Here, in the abyss,
where song-birds pluck their notes
and send them, feather-light,
floating through the air,
here, you’ll find no vale of tears,
no fears of shadow-hawks,
for all blackness is abandoned
in the interests of sunlight and song.
Here, the crystal liturgy surges,
upwards from the rejoicing heart,
ever upwards, into the realms of light,
where color and sound alike
brim over with the joy that, yes,
brings release to head and heart.
Here, seven-stringed rainbows reign,
the everlasting harp is tuned and plucked,
and an eternity of music cements
the foundations of earth and sky.
Here, the master musician conducts
his celestial choir, their voices rising,
higher and higher, until they reach
the highest sphere, and song and voice
inspire, then expire, passing from our eyes
and ears into unbounded realms of light.
Here, the seven trumpets will sound
their furious dance, a dance that will announce
the end of this singer, the end of his song,
but never the end of song itself.
Comment:
Crystal Liturgy is the first poem in the first sequence of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time. My friend Moo, the painter, supplies the paintings for the book covers. He and I have decided to hold a dialog on our views of how the painting and the poem relate to each other. Hopefully, we will continue this dialog throughout Septets for the End of Time.
“I have tried to join the ideas of sound, light, song, and voice to the idea of the Platonic Universe, where the planets dance to the music of the spheres. I wrote these poems listening to Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. I allowed the music to flow through me and I responded, in words, to the images that came from the sounds, and the silences, of the music.”
“I see no sorrows here, no woes,” Moo told me. “I only see the the joy of light and existence. The shadows have been dispersed, and my painting contains a generous helping of sunshine and light. I find it very suitable for this particular poem. My painting’s starburst of energy enhances the poem’s sense of movement, strength, and light. It also contains the message that all will be well.”
Empty Nest
Who are they, these ghosts who flit into my life
and leave me foundering in treacherous waters
as I search for enlightenment and meaning?
Why do they return, revenants, to disturb
my peace and quiet, and to trouble my sleep?
I watch them wandering through the coal mines
of my mind, while yellow canaries twitter rage
from their cages. Oh, praise the blind pit ponies
whose blinkered eyes will never see the light.
They are so lonely, so distant, so lost in deep-down
galleries that I no longer know them.
Memory’s fish-hook cannot snag them,
cannot haul them back into daylight reality
far from night’s net of silvery dreams.
A place… a time…the sudden scent not of presence,
but of absence. The absence of movement,
noise, of that other body that once walked the rooms,
floors, opening and shutting doors, windows, a robin’s
whistle, a thrush’s trilled song… gone now, gone, all gone.
We drift through silent sadness, avoid each other’s eyes,
sit with our heads in our hands or knit our fingers together
in desperate gestures that express our emptiness,
the emptiness of an empty nest…
Comment:
So many people, leaving, drifting on, out, and away, so many empty nests left behind. Why do I grieve, when I know that this is the natural path of life? And for whom do I grieve, for myself, or for them? I do not know. I only know that when that last visitor leaves the party and the door finally closes, the walls close in and I am left alone in this emptiest of nests.
To sleep, perchance to dream. And that is when they return, those broken ghosts who visit me at night and fill my empty head with memories, some happy, some beautiful, some ugly, and some of them sad. They fly, tiny silent birds, when the first rays of the sun, hit my window and awaken me. But they endow my day with memories – each morning marked by the rawness of a nightmare, or the sweetness of a midsummer night’s dream.
What is your mission?
Let us begin, as usual, by asking, what do we mean by ‘mission’? Here are some examples of the meaning of mission. (a) an important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes, typically involving travel. (b) the vocation or calling of a religious organization, especially a Christian one, to go out into the world and spread its faith. (c) any important task or duty that is assigned, allotted, or self-imposed. (d) an important goal or purpose that is accompanied by strong conviction; a calling or vocation.
I can happily dismiss (a) and (b) from the start. I do not consider an assignment to be a mission, not in my case anyway. I am not one to wander the world, good book in hand, heart on sleeve, convincing people to believe what I believe. That said, I can work with (c) and (d) because, as a life-long teacher, who was offered, at various time, an array of other jobs, I am happy to say that I was a teacher by vocation, by calling. Teaching was my mission. My mission was accomplished.
I taught, in Canada, from 1966 to 2009. Then I reached retirement age. On June 30, 2009, I was a teacher. On July 1, 2009, I was nothing. The shock was enormous. It took me a long time to recover and discover that no, my life was not over, and yes, I had many other things to do. Thankfully they all involved teaching, in one way or another. I used my teaching / research experience to sit on the editorial boards of various learned journals. I even edited a couple of them. I also translated, usually from Spanish to English, and worked with the translations of other people. I also wrote articles on teaching and on creativity.
Creativity gradually took me over. I offered workshops on prose and poetry, wrote and edited books, penned introductions for other writers, and even published some books by other people, usually my family or close friends.
There was never much money in teaching or in creative writing. I always did it for love – love of the subject, love of learning, love of the students, love of watching them grow and develop. When I work one-on-one with another writer, or with a small group of writers, that love is still there. Alas, as I grow older (much older!), I feel the ability to motivate slipping away. The will, the vocation if you like, is still there, but body and mind are growing weak, and that, my friends, is the saddest thing of all.
Dark Angel
He will come to me, the dark angel,
and will meet me face to face.
He will take all that I own,
for my wealth is only temporary:
health, wealth, possessions are all on loan.
My house, my wife, my car,
my daughter, my grand-child,
my garden, my trees, my flowers,
my poetry, my works of art.
I use the possessive adjective
knowing full well that these things
are only on loan. I will never be able
to preserve and possess them.
I even rent this aching heart,
these ageing, migrant bones,
this death that has walked beside me,
step by step, every day
since the day that I was born.
My death alone is mine.
It belongs to nobody else.
It will be my sole possession.
It will soon be the only thing
I have ever really owned.
Comment:
Dark Angel is from my poetry book – Septets for the End of Time / Poems for the end of Time. The lead painting in today’s blog is by my friend, Moo, and he calls it Storm-Me.
rogermoorepoet 