The Face in the Mirror
Oh dear!
Is that really me?
What a way to start
the New Year,
seeing myself,
as others see me!
A Happy New Year
to all my readers
and followers.
I wish you health,
happiness,
joy
and
prosperity
in the order
you need them.
And if you live alone,
may you not be lonely.
“The olde order changeth lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
Tennyson – Idylls of the King.
A joyous New Years Eve to all my friends and followers. May the New Year prove to be Happy, Healhty, and Prosperous for all.
Lost
I took a wrong turn along the way
and got where I didn’t want to go.
Oh no! But there I was, stuck
in a land I didn’t understand.
Snow fell all around. No sound.
The forest silent. Trees asleep.
Snow rising higher. Ankle deep.
Obstacles. No path around.
I tried to speak. No sound came.
I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t hum.
Silently, I cried, but no help came.
I saw so many things I couldn’t name.
When I tired of playing this lost soul game,
I knew I was the one to blame.
Comment:
And yes, I have been lost. Absent without leave for a whole month – 11 November – 11 December. Where did I go? I still don’t know. I owe the above photo to my friend and Beta reader, KTJ.
Poppy Day
Remembrance Day
11 November 2024
I wasn’t there
I never saw the gas clouds
rolling over our positions
never felt the barbed wire’s bite
nor the bayonet’s jab
I never hung out my washing
on the Siegfreid Line
(“Have you any dirty washing, mother dear?”)
never broke out of barracks
never did spud bashing
nor feasted on bread and water
nor heard the rifle’s rapid rattle
I wasn’t there
to see them carried away in carts
coughing spluttering vomiting
or bandages over their eyes
walking slowly to triage a hand on
the shoulder of the man ahead
the sighted leading the blind
I wasn’t there
but both my grandfathers were
both decorated
one mentioned in dispatches
signed by Winston Churchill
that one uninjured
the other one gassed
coughing up his lungs
bit by bit for forty years
I am here now
to remember
and to honor them
though so much
has been lost
Comment:
My friend, the painter known as Moo, painted this poppy today. My generation, unless they served voluntarily, as many have done, was never conscripted. As a result, the horrors and tragedies of combat were never known to us, except as seen through they eyes of other people. I think of Wilfred Owen and his magnificent, heart-rending poems from WWI.
Today, I pay tribute to those members of my family who served in the armed forces by land, sea, and air. I also pay tribute to the veterans who survived, and to those who gave their lives in the defense of our country.
Divinity
outside us or in us
the divine is always with us
green god
of the mountain ash
garlanded now
with autumn berries
lady hollyhock
and her flock
of butterflies and bees
colibri
martyred soul
reborn
as a hummingbird
our garden
a paradise
where the creator
still strolls
some of her
many faces
glimpsed
among the leaves
in this half-light
as the sun
goes down
In Laud of Light
Sun, moon, and stars
wait, day and night,
outside my window.
I sometimes glimpse
the crackling shimmer
of Northern Lights.
They crown me
with joy and pleasure,
treasures I will treasure
until the natural end
when stars, sun, and crown
come tumbling down.
I will be left alone,
seemingly naked,
yet clothed in
an eternity of light.
Comment:
Hunter Moon in Island View, NB.
Pure chance – I looked up, and there it was.
Oh to be clothed in such a glorious light!
Chuck Bowie
(June, 2019)
We met at St. Andrews, at low tide, on
the underwater road. In secret we
shared the closed, coded envelopes of thought,
running fresh ideas through open minds.
Our words, brief vapor trails, gathered for
a moment over Passamaquoddy,
before drifting silently away. Canvas sails
flapped white seagulls across the bay.
All seven seas rose before our eyes, brought
in on a breeze’s wing. The flow of cold
waters over warm sand cocooned us
in a cloak-and-dagger mystery of mist.
We spun our spider-web dreams word by word,
decking them out with the silver dew drops
proximity brings. Characters’ voices,
unattached to real people, floated by.
Verbal ghosts, shape-shifting, emerging from
shadows, revealed new attitudes and twists,
spoke briefly, filled us with visions of book-
lives, unforgettable, but doomed, swift to fail.
Soft waves ascended rock, sand, mud, to wash
away footprints, clues, all the sandcastle
dreams we had constructed that afternoon,
though a few still survive upon the printed page.
Comment:
This is a ‘get well soon’ post for my friend, Chuck Bowie. Let us hope it gives him that little boost all artists need, when they feel a little bit down. An excellent writer, I am pleased to support his work and bring it to the attention of the readers of this blog. The poem, incidentally, is taken from my own book, The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature.
Chuck and I met at St. Andrews, on the beach, and spent a pleasant hour or two discussing both art in general and the structure and characters of this book in particular.
Was that really in June, 2019, more than five years ago, when he was resident artist at KIRA? So many tides have risen and fallen since then. So much water has gathered and flowed. Vis brevis, ars longa – life is short, but our art outlives us – long may both authors and their art survive and flourish!
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.
What are your future travel plans?
When Covid struck in Avila, Spain, a small walled city, the abulenses (the Spanish name for people who live there) were confined to their houses and apartments. They got their exercise by walking on their balconies, or walking around their living quarters, however small, again and again.
When I was young, I traveled regularly to Bristol Zoo. The lions and tigers paced restlessly in their cages, or else just lay there, soporific. Maybe their food contained the drugs that curbed their violence. I never asked. But I do remember that relentless padding from one side to another. In the aquarium, the fish swam around and around going nowhere. The same with the seals and the penguins. Alas, they were only animated by feeding time, when the attendants appeared with their buckets of fish. Then the animals came alive and dived, jump, swam, and responded to the food thrown to them to entertain the watchers.
And it was somewhat similar in Avila – the restless pacing, the circuit of the room, the movement to the kitchen or the fridge. Some people lost weight, but many put it on. They got up from the chairs in which they were sitting, walked to the fridge, opened the door, took out a beer or two, and returned to their chairs in front of their tv sets. Language is always renewing itself and, in times of difference and stress, we invent new words. This routine became known as El Paseo de la Nevera – The Stroll to the Fridge.
Now, as my age increases and my energy grows less, a similar thing is happening to me. I count my steps as I limp around the house, hobbling from room to room. I aim for 2,000 steps a day, but sometime manage more than that. I go out, in good weather – not raining, not too hot, not too humid – and time my walks around the garden. I am unable to count my steps when I lean on my Rollator as my hands do not move and they must be in motion, if I am to keep a record on my watch. When walking, I stay as close as possible to the shade and try to keep cool. Each day, I try to walk two or three times in this fashion. Sometimes I even manage four outings at 15 minutes apiece. Occasionally, especially if I go shopping as well, leaning on my shopping cart, I may even manage an hour’s walk or more. When I achieve my targets, I feel fulfilled and satisfied.
While walking in the garden, I do one of two things. (a) I concentrate on the flowers, the ants beneath my feet, the weeds, the moss, the birds, the way nature grows and blesses me. Or (b), I pretend I am back in Avila, or Santander, or Brandy Cove, or Pwll Ddu, or Bishopston Valley, and as I walk, I visit my favorite bars and talk to the family and friends that I miss so much and haven’t seen for so long, most of whom I never hear from nor will ever see again.
And these are my travel plans – to continue doing this for as long as possible. To walk regularly. To continue to dream as I walk. To rejoice in the sunshine of my garden. To survive – and to enjoy each moment that I am permitted to do so.
AMDG – Ad Majorem Gloriam Dei.
Do you still sleep in your childhood bedroom?
Good question. A better one might have been – “Did you have your own bedroom as a child?” The answer is “No, I didn’t. Not that I can remember.” As a war baby, I was moved around quite a bit in my childhood. I remember sleeping in three different bedrooms in our first house. Then we moved in with my maternal grandparents, and I slept in three more bedrooms, often in the same bed with one or other of the grandparents, sometimes on a makeshift bed on the floor. Later, or it may be around the same time, those early childhood memories are so hazy, I went to live with my parental grandparents – three more bedrooms there – same conditions. The family also had a bungalow close to the beach on the Gower peninsula. It had three bedrooms and I slept in all of them, under similar conditions, and seldom alone, until my later years.
I was bundled off to boarding school while I was still a child. Two dormitories at the first boarding school. I was between six and eight years old, and the memories of that school are not sharp, though I recall with total clarity the canings and the shaming of myself and the other young children. It was a religious school. And I need say no more on that subject.
My second boarding school , a preparatory school, saw me inhabiting four dormitories that I can remember. My clearest memory of that place is running away one night, only to be brought kicking and screaming back to the place. Both my parents worked. During the holidays, I was shipped around to various members of the family – aunts, uncles, and grandparents. When I left that school, for the last time, age eleven, my grandparents drove me to my new forever home in a city far from my birthday place. There, three bedrooms witnessed my sleeping habits.
My third boarding school, the Junior School of a larger college, provided me with two dormitories, one per year while I was there. This was the time at which I started to travel with my mother during the vacations. A coach tour on the continent once saw us visiting six countries in two weeks, and that wasn’t the only coach tur I did with her. A succession of hotel bedrooms, then, and no nocturnal stability at all.
I stayed in my fourth boarding school, the Senior School of that Junior School, for five years and received a new dormitory each year. From there I went to study in Paris – more bedrooms – then down to Spain for the summer courses at the International University in Santander, but by now, age eighteen, my childhood was over.
So, a quick count shows that I slept in at least twenty-five bedrooms during my child. And that’s without counting holiday hotels, flats, apartments, and other forms of lodgings, including Youth Hostels.
So, remind me – what was the question? Ah yes, I remember now. “Do You still sleep in your childhood bedroom?” Well, my friends and readers, the answer is a very loud “NO!” Think about it – how could I have? I am not sure that I even had a childhood bedroom!
rogermoorepoet 