Hiraeth

Hiraeth

Hiraeth

If only the impossible could become possible.
I think we all experience these longings.
Maybe not everyone, but I certainly do.

I wish I could go back.
Back in time to a slower world—
Back to Highway 81.

Back to that warm feeling of innocence.
Back to the safety of my dreaming days
when wishes were made on stars each night,
when the skies were clear and stars were bright,
and fireflies were imprisoned in mason jars
with holes in the lids to allow them to breathe.

When was the last time I saw a firefly?
Or heard a mocking bird’s song?
How long ago since the nights were so clear
we could lie on our backs under the sky
and count each star twinkling above.

Remember the days of watching the clouds
that chased across the afternoon sky,
Forever changing as we named each one?
“Look, it’s a kitten, or puppy or sometimes even a cow!”

We lived in the country and knew every shape
from our hours of work and play
back in the day when children were children
even as teenagers
and guns were only for bringing home our supper.

I even miss the party line in those days 
when it meant four families
sharing the same telephone line.

“Hang up Miss Lockie, it’s private”
was always the first thing we said.
It never worked, she always listened
especially when we were talking with boys!

Ah, Miss Lockie, the party line snoop,
and the bane of children and parents alike.

If only–sad words indeed.
If only I could go back for a day
a week, a month.

All the things I would appreciate more,
the dreams I would rethink and change
to realistic wishes.

But for now the only impossible dream I have
is to return to the slow days of my youth.
Hiraeth!

Comment: A poem from my long-time friend, and fellow poet, Angela Wink, that I am so happy and proud to post on my blog. Great poem, Angela. Thank you for giving me permission to post it.

Hanwell

Hanwell

Here, in Hanwell Woods,
a seemingly abandoned chapel,
paint peeling, and two stark crosses
marked on barred doors.

The new copper spire gleams
as sunlight casts leaf shadows,
sending them dancing under trees.

Neither sight nor sound of bells
this sunny afternoon,
just the mosquitoes’ whine,
the black flies’ zip and buzz.

Across intervals of silence,
a far-off chain saw rips wood.
Trees and branches topple then fall.
Trails set free from winter’s debris.

The wind herds clouds instead of sheep.
Giant footprints drift shallow
across the shadowed land.

Sacred Moment

Sacred Moment


Evening falls, leads into night.
I search darkening skies
for the moon’s bright circle,
so meaningful, that light.

The moon, a thin wedding ring,
encircling a gilded cradle,
wherein five planets float.

Aligned, their circular lights
create such longing
in the observer’s heart.

The magic moment has come,
a moment forever sacred.
Whatever happens now
will be correct and right.

Pain and Pane

Pain and Pane

I am living in a Duke of York world
fraught with mood swings and random changes.
When I am up, I am up, and when I am down,
well, then I am down, and every so often,
I meet in the middle and am neither up nor down.

At night I swim among the constellations
and the stars net silver sequins in my hair.
By day, I walk along a piano’s keyboard
and replay life’s ups and downs like scales,
practicing them, again and again.

I no longer know who or what I am.
I only know I exist right here, at my desk,
my table, in my bed, looking out through
a window that has opened in my head,
a window that serves as a mirror.

I step through it, and go back to my childhood
in Wales. I recall the sunny days of sea and sand,
but also those days when sunlight fails, clouds
gather, and the west wind conjures rain and gales.
Such pain as I press my nose against the window
pane, and watch the raindrops falling again.

The Secret Fountain

The Secret Fountain

Go deep into yourself.
Search for the secret fountain,
the well with the sacred waters that renew,
replenish, and flow like sunlight.
Rest by its verdant banks. Here you can
find the self you thought you had lost.

Here, angels take wing and songbirds sing.
Telephone calls, e-mails, social media,
all such worldly things, lack meaning.

Rest awhile. The universe knows you.
Permit it to once again make friends
with who and what you are, what you were,
what you will always be, your eternal spirit
known, cossetted, comforted, and loved.

Your curriculum vitae no longer matters.
What matters is the heart of you,
that gold mine hidden deep within.
Here lies the mold of shining gold that will
enrich your soul, renew your life,
and gift you ever-lasting treasures.

A Darker Mist

A Darker Mist

Sometimes a dark mist marches over
the sea-salt marsh flats and, a sea-bird
come to land, nests in my heart. This lone
bird brings others and soon a colony sings
its chorus in time with the incoming tide
that threatens to overwhelm me.

My body’s weak clay responds to this
darkness and slips into the chaotic
cacophony of multiple voices
raised to shut me off from the light.

My soul, a seagull seeking the sun,
rises upwards, ever upwards,
in search of the sunshine, that silver
lining that redeems every cloud, belying
the darkness of this gathering gloom.

“You will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over landscape.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 94.

Why am I?

Why am I?

A coast line
where sea and shore
engage in a never-
ending dialog
of silence and sound.

Who sees such things?
The man or woman
who has eyes to see.

Who hears such words?
The person who has ears
to hear and a heart
with which to feel.

And who am I,
this old man walking
life’s sands at the tide’s
foaming edge?

With a clarity of vision
that morphs light into shadow,
and then back out again,
would you tell me, please,
who, and why, I am.

“The chorus of the ocean, the silence of stone.”
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 78.

Poems for the End of Time

Poems for the End of Time

Here it is, and it is up and waiting for you! I already have my first copy. More on the way. The same artist who did the cover for People of the Mist did this one as well. He’s such a nice person – doesn’t charge me a penny.

Introduction

         Poems for the End of Time is composed of two linked collections, Meditations on Messiaen and Lamentations for Holy Week. They both have separate introductions in the body of the text.

         My graduate work at the University of Toronto (MA, 1967, and PhD, 1975) included studies on Golden Age / Early Modern Spanish Poetry (16th -17th Centuries). It enabled me to read and enjoy both the Renaissance and the Baroque poetry of Spain. My own interests lay within nature poetry, as expressed by the Spanish Mystics (St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila), the Neo-Platonic Poets (in particular, Fray Luis de León), and the Metaphysical poets (Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo). Echoes of their writings and thoughts are frequent within these two poetic sequences.

         I will write further on both sequences later in the book. Briefly, both sets of poems were written while listening to the music of Olivier Messiaen. Three of his compositions, Quatuor pour la fin du temps / Quartet for the End of Time, Éclairs sur l’au-delà / Lightning over the Beyond, and Petites esquisses d’oiseaux / Little Sketches of Birds, influenced me enormously. I listened to them every day while I was writing and revising these poems.

         These poems are not for the simple-minded. They form a contrasting tapestry of point and counter-point, filled with allusions, word-plays, internal rhymes, repetitions, and alliterations. They have a music all of their own.

Do not expect simplistic escapism. If you are serious in your efforts to read, listen to the magic of Messiaen as you turn the pages, much as I did while I was writing.

People of the Mist

People of the Mist

Cover Painting

Pale Face by Moo

Back Cover Synopsis

            What if you walked into a church in a foreign country and came face-to-face your dead father? In People of the Mist, Nemo, orphaned as a baby after the suicide of his unmarried mother, seems called to visit Oaxaca, Mexico, the city of the returning dead. Upon arrival, he visits the town’s main cathedral only to encounter his adoptive father, a man he had buried years earlier. Confused by what he thinks is a realistic vision, he seeks the help of a local witch doctor to explain his mirage. The shaman seems to hold the answer and presents him with a broken medallion. He challenges Nemo to find the other half, promising the quest and discovery will reveal the real purpose of the young man being called to Oaxaca.

Brief Biography

Roger Moore, is an award-winning teacher, researcher, poet, and short-story writer. His accolades include being a CBC short story finalist, as well as winning multiple awards from the WFNB. Born in Swansea, Wales, he now lives in Island View, NB, Canada. Between 1995 and 2001, he taught multiple classes in Oaxaca, Mexico, where he first encountered the Mixtec codices.

Click here to view on Amazon

The Return

The Return

“You’ve been here before,” my Welsh grandmother
told me when she first held me. At least that’s what
they tell me she said. She married into a Catholic family,
but she never converted, refused to give up her own religion.

As a result, they didn’t respect her and never gave her
the treatment she deserved. I would love to ask her:
“Gran, if I was here before, where was I until I came back?”
Maybe she would know. The others wouldn’t dare ask
the question, let alone answer it. The facts of life were
forbidden things, surrounded by a silence of myth
or else spoken gently, in secret whisperings, with nothing
ever revealed to the young and curious.

Once again I have returned here and can honestly say
“yes, I’ve been here before.” This room seemed strange
the first time I visited, and yet it soon became my home from home.
As soon as I open the door, I embrace the familiar.
This room knows me, as I know it.
I walk to the writing desk, look out of the window,
and everything is at it was the last time I was here.
The sea below me sparkles as it always did.
The tower still stands at the end of the island,
and I know full well that, tomorrow morning,
dawn will flood the room with light.

Each day I am here, I will be blessed with a no sé qué
of mystic mystery that will overflow, fill the well
of my inner creativity, and allow me to fulfill
my destiny and praise those things that enlighten
the world and help to fill it with energy and verbal light.

Click here to listen to Roger’s reading.