Hiraeth

Describe one habit that brings you joy.

Daily writing prompt
Describe one habit that brings you joy.
View all responses

Describe one habit that brings you joy.

Creativity. I was told, a long time ago, that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. When I started creating – poetry, mainly – I waited for the muse to arrive and lamented when she didn’t. Then I tried to force her to visit me – and that didn’t work either. Then, in 1985, I started a journal. I wrote in it every day that year and, as I wrote, I realized that most of what I was writing was gibberish. But – and it’s a big but – a few literary gems gleamed out from the rubbish. The question then became – how to recognize them. The answer to that has come more easily, the longer I have worked at writing. It’s not the muse who needs persuasion, it’s the artistic eye and mind that need to be trained so that they can see the creative art in the surrounding world.

Now, after 38 years of regular journaling – and I try not to miss a day – I can distinguish easily between art and rubbish. My poetic creativity, often via a streak of surrealism, has wormed its way from poetry, into poetic prose (short stories and novels), and from there into my style of quasi-surrealist, quasi-expressionist paintings.

Where is the joy? The joy lies first, in the work itself, the contemplation of the blank page, then the slow tidal flow of words that fill the empty spaces. Then comes the joy of recognition, followed by the joy of selection, followed by the joy of polishing, and eventually, the joy of publication. The same is true of painting. Here, the empty canvas, like a beach with the tide coming in, fills up with color and shape and, like Matisse, I try to make meaning out of those colors and shapes. Am I great artist? Of course I’m not. I’m a dibbler and a dabbler, unknown and unrecognized, but joyous in my joy of creating something that will stand, for a little while, against time’s rising tide.

Qué será

Qué será

Peace in the Peace Park,
here on the headland,
where cool grass slopes
down to the water’s edge.

Geese have nested close by
and gifted us with goslings.
Golden balls of fluff, they walk
on the land right now,
but soon will take to the water.

A thin, yellow line, they will
paddle behind their parents,
webbed feet invisible
beneath the water’s flow.

And I, in the metal coffin
of my over-heated car,
sit and watch them, envying
their freedom of movement,
waiting for whatever will come.

My beloved draws near.
I sense as much as see her,
as I covet her strong steps,
the ageless sway of her body.

Alas, I am growing old,
and not with any grace,
but fighting it all the way,
and qué será, será
is all that I can say.

Rebirth

Rebirth

“El mundo nace
cuando dos se besan.”
Octavio Paz

A new world is born
when two people kiss.
The hummingbird sips
at the hollyhock’s lips.
Bee enters the blossom
and, sated, comes out.
A butterfly perches,
flutters its wings.
The sun enters a cloud:
radiance is born.
Silver linings
morph to gold.
The sun’s needle stitches
the world together.
Oh to be a part of Eden,
Paradise born anew,
in the moment when
lip meets lip and the tongue
is a twister, touching down.
Two hearts a-whirl,
their world aflame.
Their world reshaped,
new shapes now born.
Wild flowers swaying
in an age-old dance.
Life’s journey renewed,
not always by chance.

If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?

Daily writing prompt
If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?
View all responses

If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?

Probably my maternal grandfather. He was always a bit of a fossil, ostrich-like, with his head buried in the past. A great-story teller, he spun a web of intrigue about things that happened in his youth, like when he ran away to sea, age 12, Swansea in the old days, and his time in the trenches during WWI. I would climb up the back of his chair while he was sleeping, and blow on the bald spot at the back of his head to wake him up. Then I would climb onto his lap and say, “Grandpa, tell me a story.” And he would.

My friend Moo painted a picture of the two of us together when I was younger. That’s him, on the left. I am the smaller one on the right. He would walk with me all over Swansea Sands, telling me stories as we walked. “This is where the medicine man would pitch his stall,” he’d say. Then he would tell me about the fraudulent way the doctor sold his bottles of cough mix. A miner, with no voice would approach from the crowd. One sip of the magic potion and he’d be singing hymns and arias, voice fully restored. “Bribed, of course,” Grandpa would tell me.

Next to the snake medicine stall, a travelling dentist would pitch a stage with a small brass band and his chair. Patients would handover their three penny coins, the band would start to play, the patient would open his mouth, the dentist would wield his pliers, and out would come the tooth. Then doctor and patient would dance to the band music until the patient stopped screaming. “No anesthetic back then, see,” Grandpa would chuckle.

Oh yes, that’s the dinosaur I’d bring back. And I’d record his voice, and write down, in full detail, every story, each tall, or short, tale he told me.

Heartbreaking

Heartbreaking

How many have broken their hearts,
reading what I have written, as I have
broken mine, reading what others wrote?

My words reach out, naked, stripped
of false trappings, fake images,
my flesh and blood damp on the page.

Who knows where my words will land,
on fertile ground, on desert sand, or will
they lie on dry, stony paths, infertile?

So many people now scorn living words,
preferring those dull dry three-word chants,
fists clenched, or raised, that hypnotize.

Their love of words, thoughts, ideas, life
have been coffined in confining boxes,
cardboard castles, corrugated cans,
that they lock, then throw away the key.

Comment: Thank you Moo for your painting – Words fall like leaves and drift away. It make a fine companion to the poem.

Ghost Train

Ghost Train

I remember the little electric railway
that ran on a single loop around
the kitchen table, diddly-da-diddly-da,
just like a real train, except no smoke,
no puff the magic dragon, no sense
of a schedule or arriving and departing
when circular time is meaningless,
as are the numbers on the sundial
when the sun isn’t shining,
or the hands on the clock’s blank face
when the numbers are missing,
and you don’t know whether you are
looking in time’s distorting mirror
or are standing on your head
in the Antipodes, and all the while
the clock hands are marching round
and round, tick-tock, and there is
no track by which time can be tracked.

And the runaway hands go round the track,
and the electric train goes round the table,
 and the ghost train hoots whoo-hoo,
as it vanishes into the timeless tunnel,
then exits, the engineer, like Rip Van Winkle,
grown old with a long beard, and the carriages
all covered with cobwebs, and skeletons
leaping out of the compartments,
then sitting beside the travellers
as they snore on their seats.

Comment: Another poem based on a prose prompt. What a great source for poetry those prompts can be, when you don’t take them too seriously and allow your imagination to run riot and your memories to flow. Not automatic writing, but writing that springs from an absurd, surrealist approach to the crazy world that surrounds us. Rain that causes the yucca plant to grow, then falls so hard that it is battered to the ground by the very thing that gave it life. And so it is with my memories of the many trains on which I have travelled and with which I have played. Once upon a time, I couldn’t conceive of life without the railway. Where is it now? I haven’t been on a train for more than fifteen years. Strange how their ghosts flit through my dreams at night: fast trains, slow trains, the wrong train at the wrong time taking me to the wrong place in time. Ah, the poetry of trains yet, “ni temps passés ni les trains reviennent.” And you can give yourself a glow of satisfaction – thank you Tommy Reed – if you recognize the quote, and two more if you know who Tommy Reed is. I use the present tense because, although long gone, he is ever-present in my mind.

Today’s painting – another gift from my friend Moo.

Past Times

Past Times

When I was young, I used to watch
my fox terrier chasing his tail,
running round and round in circles,
never quite catching it,
but never giving up his high hopes
 of catching that little rag-tag of a bobtail
that dangles there behind.
 
Round about and out and in and out
all day that silly dog did spin,
spinning in prose and then in rhyme,
until I lost all track of time.

Comment: I loved a part of one of my prompts, so I turned it into a personal poem. The second stanza is based on a poem by Thackeray. I learned it in my youth. Learning poetry and remembering it, another past time from past times. I also love playing on words. Imitatio is one of the rhetorical devices used traditionally by poets. To imitate, is to express one’s admiration of another person’s work. It should not be confused with plagiary / plagiarism, which is something entirely different. Anyone who has followed my writing, on this blog and elsewhere, will know that I echo the words of other poets and that I do so deliberately, to praise them and acknowledge their creativity and their continuing influence upon my own poetic world.

Today’s Cartoon – A Time Apart – by my friend Moo who is very generous with his art..

Window Pain

Window Pain

I live in a world beyond the material world.
At night, I swim, a silver fish, among the stars.
Constellations net me in their glistening hair.

By day I wander along a piano’s keys.
I replay life’s golden dreams again and again,
its quartets, concertos, and its symphonies.

A harmonious blacksmith, I no longer know
who, or what, I am. I only know I exist right here,
at my desk, looking out through my window,

a window in my mind, that serves as a mirror,
reflecting all I was, and am, and ever will be.
Sometimes, the sun shines. Often the rain

falls cold against that window pane, and I press
my nose against cold glass, and feel again the pain.

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.