Survivors

Bird

Bird

The bird came to me
on the wings of Hurricane Lee.

Carried along by stronger wings
he perched in my tree.

A new species, he was unknown to me.
Our own power lost, the usual ways
of searching were denied me.

He moved from the tree
   to the window feeder and gazed at me,
               eye to eye, as the hurricane’s eye
                           passed overhead.

Free. To come and go at his will,
but there is little free will
when the hurricane blows.

A sudden, strong gust
whisked him away.

Unknown, and a stranger still,
he soon was lost to me.

Comment:

All my good will and new resolutions went down the proverbial plughole when Hurricane Lee swept in, washed away one of the roads near to me, and left us without power for 52 hours. We lit candles, as much for warmth as for light, and, when dark descended outside, gathered in their flickering glow. The time has come, the Walrus said, to indulge in simpler things. Water saved in the bath upstairs and in an assortment of pots, pans, and buckets, served for the washing of hands, the flushing of toilets, washing the dishes. Food was served cold – but we indulged ourselves with perishables that needed to be finished quickly. The morning face wash and shave, in cold water, no shower, was a throwback to old times. The experience brought us closer together. Neighbors with generators dropped round with hot food and drinks, and all went well. After two days of picnics, we got a bit bored. I managed to write lots of poems though. The creativity of that experience will live on in words.

Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

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Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

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Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

Once upon a time, I lay in the sea, at midnight, in Brandy Cove, and I watched the moonlight lap over the waves as I lay there. I began to relax and felt the moon rise. Then I rose up with it, just like Cyrano de Bergerac, and I rose, rose, rose, up into the sky until I was level with the moon.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

Once upon a time I climbed with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza upon the back of Clavileño and I rose up, up, up into the skies until I danced among the seven sisters, the Pleiades, and counted them, one by one. Sancho told me they were little goats, all colored differently. “And look,” he said. “That’s the earth, down there, as small as an orange pip.”

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

A long time ago, I visited Stonehenge and marveled at the temple my ancestors had created there to tell the time and worship the sun. Seven thousand years ago, they told me. I closed my eyes and dreamed I was back there with them, digging the post holes and raising the stones.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

I also visited Hengistbury Head in Dorset. There I discovered the scrapes the Reindeer People had scratched in the chalky soil nearly ten thousand years ago. Older than Stonehenge, I lay down in the rocky soil high above what is now the English Channel. My mind went back in time. The waters slowly receded and I saw green grass where herds of reindeer crossed the meadows that still attached Albion to the mainland of Europe.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

Once upon a time, I truly traveled and visited Avila. I wandered among the ancient ruins of the pre-Christian monuments. There I stroked the granite of the Toros of Guisando, and watched the ever-lasting storks as they nested in the towers of all the churches. I also walked the Roman Road at the Puerto del Pico. When I ran my hands over the bodies of the verracos, I marveled upon how far away from home I found myself, and how small the world really was.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

Once upon another time, I really traveled, this time by plane. I flew to Oaxaca, Mexico, and went back a thousand years or more in time. I read the Pre-Columbian Mixtec Codices, climbed the temples, visited the tombs, consulted a witch doctor, drank mescal, ate chapulines, and entered a world beyond my world.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? I no longer know. But I do know that el mundo es un pañuelo – the world is a handkerchief, as the Spanish say. Yes indeed. It is a small, small world. Alas, too many people are blowing their noses into it right now and I see and grieve for this, even when I am at home.

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

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What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

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What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

The last thing that I searched for online was a prompt that I wished to be prompted by, but I promptly lost it before I could respond to it. Then I went looking, but still couldn’t find it, even though I searched everywhere I could think of.

I grow forgetful as I age, and now I can’t remember what the prompt asked for, and that’s a pity because I remember that I had a lovely answer. Now I can’t remember my answer either. So I am stuck in a sort of one-way street, going in the wrong direction, as I draw near to a roundabout that will lead me back the way I came.

I am afraid some Minotaur or other will seek me out, because I am lost in a labyrinth without the thread of Theseus to lead me out. And its no good searching online, because I no longer know what I am looking for. And that’s a bit like my life at the present time – a pointless search for meaning as I wander, amazed, through a baffling maze of days, seeking, I know not what, and never finding it. I don’t want to give up on it yet, because I know that the answer lies just around the corner, lurking like the last sardine in a sardine can, or the last piece of squid, cowering blackly in its own ink, in the tin, not wanting to be eaten.

Life leads me a merry dance, as king-like, a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, I rule my world. For, en el reino de los ciegos, el tuerto es rey / in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And no, I didn’t search for that online. It came to me in a sort of dream because, as Goya says, el sueño de la razón produce monstruos / when reason sleeps, monsters are born. And now I see them everywhere, those monsters, and I search online for solutions, but none appear. And so I continue on my merry-go-round way, leading my ragamuffins around those ragged rocks.

Coal Face

And Every Valley

And every valley shall be filled with coal.
And the miners will mine, growing old
before their time, with pneumoconiosis
a constant companion, and that dark spot
on the grey slide of the sidewalk a mining
souvenir coughed up from the depths
of lungs that so seldom saw the sun
and soaked themselves in the black dust
that cluttered, clogged, bent and twisted
those beautiful young bodies into ageing,
pipe-cleaner shapes, yellowed and inked
with nicotine and sorrows buried so deep,
a thousand, two thousand feet down,
and often so far out to sea that loved ones
knew their loved ones would never see
the white handkerchiefs waved, never
in surrender, but in a butterfly prayer,
an offering, and a blessing that their men
would survive the shift and come back
to the surface and live again amidst family
and friends, and always the fear, the pinched
-face, livid, living fear that such an ending
might never be the one on offer, but rather
the grimmer end of gas, or flame, or collapse,
with the pit wheels stopped, and the sirens
blaring, and the black crowds gathering, and
no canaries, no miners, singing in their cages.

Comment: A friend wrote to me about the closing of the pits in Nottinghamshire and how the mining communities had suffered, were still suffering, and might never recover. This poem is the first one in a sequence on the mine closures in South Wales and other mining communities. Poems For the End of Time – the book is available here.

Low Ebb

Low Ebb

We have been apart too long, my love,
night’s dark corridor lying between us
and neither of us approaching the other
when doors close and blinds are drawn.

The way to the heart of the matter is not
an easy path to walk, not any more.
Our secret ways and dreams lie cold
upon chill, empty sheets and pillows.

Each day the tide revives the beach,
flowing out, abandoning its wet debris
for the sun to perform its magic: fresh
seaweed drying above warm sand.

Sea-birds bury their beaks, writing claw
letters as crabs burrow, dig deep, waiting
for the tide to return and re-create
its alternate reality of dreamy waters.

Half of my bed performs its nightly duty.
The other half lies cold, empty, lonely.
No sea-life wanders there, not even in
my most creative dreams of sun and sand.

Comment: The loneliness of old age is compounded by many factors, including ill-health, sleeplessness, and the need to sleep in separate rooms. How many homeless people suffer that loneliness, and more, and at ages much less than ours? And then there’s the distress of trying to live in poverty, to survive from day to day, with safety net that will not protect us, if we chance to fall. A sad world then, as Polly Toynbee points out in today’s Guardian.

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

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What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

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What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

Well, first of all I want to define the age group that outlines the meaning of ‘kid’. Here’s one definition: What age range is a kid? Children (1 year through 12 years) Adolescents (13 years through 17 years. They may also be referred to as teenagers depending on the context.) If we start with the 1-12 year old age group, then I can safely say I had no favorite TV shows as a kid, quite simply because during those years, we didn’t have a TV. Ipso facto, not having a TV, I couldn’t watch one.

That said, our first family TV was bought by my maternal grandfather in June, 1953. It was very small, black and white, very grainy, and was the only one on the street where he lived. I remember all of us crowing into the sacred room where the TV stood and watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. I was 9 years old at the time. I don’t remember much about the Coronation, but it was my first TV show.

Early TV. In the beginning, there were black and white sets. The BBC had only one channel. It came on from 12 noon until 1:30 or 2:00 pm, then shut off until 5:00 pm when it opened for evening programming until 9:30 pm or 10. I was safely tucked into my bed by then. And since I visited my grandparents at odd times, I rarely saw any TV shows. I do remember Sooty, a hand puppet, hitting Harry Corbett, the puppet-master, with a hammer (!), and I have vague visions of Muffin the Mule, a string puppet, dancing on a piano.

By the age of nine, I had been removed from my first boarding school and was attending my second. There were no television sets in boarding schools in those days. So, guess what? There were no favorite programs. In the holidays, with both parents working, to make enough money to send me to boarding school, as they so frequently told me, I often spent time with aunts and uncles (no TV) or with my paternal grandmother (no TV). The bungalow was our favorite summer residence, and that didn’t even have running water or electricity, let alone a TV set. It had one radio, an item of religious importance, that ran off a battery, and was for the sole use of my uncle. It sat on a high shelf and was untouchable. One bungalow in the bungalow field actually had a telephone, and that was only used for emergencies.

So, in the age group I am writing about, age 1-12, I rarely, if ever, saw a TV set and I certainly had no favorite programs. Radio programs, yes. But that is a different story, one that tells of a single radio in the dormitory, to the sound of which, eight or ten or twelve boys, in rows of beds, fell asleep to the sound of music. It also tells of prowling masters who would enter the dorms and switch the radios off. I will not go into the horrors of boarding school life during those formative years. I have done that elsewhere. But the shows that I remember were all true life horror shows where real flesh and blood, in the 6-12 age group, suffered appallingly, at the hands of older boys and brutal masters. But those shows, and I remember them well, were never seen on TV and were denied vehemently by the perpetrators, boys who had been bullied in their turn, and masters who claimed they were only doing their duty and making men of us. Men, indeed, and an adulthood that I, among many others, never wanted to enter.

Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom

“You can’t write about life if you haven’t
lived it.” Words of wisdom from the poet
who wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

“But,” I hear you say, “what did he know
about writing? He never took any courses
that taught him how to write, nor held a certificate
from a prestigious school that guarantees quality.
Nor was he a poet, he only wrote prose.”

And yet, the prestige of that ivy-covered,
ivory tower leads poets… I pause for a moment…
– to where exactly? Into debt, of course, and also
down the paved path of their own destruction.

What kind of life do they live, those writers,
who only exist within their cerebral boxes,
and never step outside them unless they are
ordered to build an even bigger box?

Have they walked with street-walkers in Madrid?
Have they sat beside the poorest of the poor,
in Oaxaca, shivering in thin cotton clothing
beneath falling snow? Have they visited Madrid’s
Plaza de España, stepping high to avoid the blunt,
bloodied needles, shared, to take away the pain?
Have they pan-handled in Yorkville or slept
in sleeping bags, by the Royal York, in the snow,
at 40 below, on the gratings above the Subway?

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” some say
Socrates said. But what I think is ‘the unlived life is
not worth examining.” Tear down the walls that
inhibit and limit you. Go out into the world and see
what others see and feel. Only then, come back,
stab your pen into your veins, fill it with your blood,
and set before us what was done to you, what you
experienced, how you survived, and what you felt.

Comment: Once again I thank my friend Moo for his illustration – Building Bigger Boxes. It goes well with the theme of this rant, or is it a poem? A verbal rant to echo a visual rant, perhaps, or vice versa.

Modern Society

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What would you change about modern society?

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What would you change about modern society?

Good question – what indeed? First, define society. It’s not as if a single society dominated the world. Do we then distinguish between the world, this geoidal planet on which we live, and the multiple societies that inhabit this world? If we do, then what right do you, or I, or any other individual have to change any or all of the world’s cultures and societies? And how do we change them?

Many ways have been tried in the past, very few successfully. The Spanish Inquisition burned many books and censored others. Other book burnings and spurnings have taken place, and in some places, they are still happening. But are they effective in the long term? Good question. Short term, maybe. Long term, I am not so sure.

Do we limit education, and by extension, knowledge, to a few , limited people, who believe what we believe, and do what we want them to do? That has been tried as well. Short-term successes, but long term disasters. As well as depriving people of education and books, we can also enslave them. This is still happening in many places.

So, another definition: what do we mean by change? Change for the better? Change for the worse? Change for change’s sake? Change for the betterment of our own selves and the devil take the hindmost? And what do we mean by modern? So many questions – so few answers.

Albert Camus once wrote that he was ‘optimiste, quant au monde, pessimiste quant a l’homme‘ – an optimist where the world is concerned, a pessimist where humankind is concerned. Personally, I am not sure that this particular thought stands up any longer. Is it still possible to be optimistic about a planet that we are capable of blowing to smithereens, a planet, moreover, that is currently suffering from wind and rain, fire and flood, famine and war, pandemic and a pollution like none we have ever seen before?

How can I change the world? I am just a single human being. Well, I am a married one, actually. But I only have one vote. I rather fear that single vote (votes don’t marry and produce offspring) will have little effect on my ability to make any change at all to modern society.

Pass the soap and a towel, please, as a certain person said a long time ago. I want to cleanse my hands and purge my soul. I am too old a dog to try and learn new tricks.

What foods would you like to make?

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What foods would you like to make?

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What foods would you like to make?

Walking round the supermarket the other day, I was astonished by the high prices now written on labels. Meat is virtually unaffordable, especially the good cuts. Butter at $9.00 a lb is a shock to the system. Eggs are up to $6.00 or more for a dozen. Wow! So much of what I used to cook I can now no longer afford. So What foods would I like to make?

Good, wholesome, cheap, nourishing foods. Foods that could be distributed to the city’s poorest people, at very little cost. Foods that would support those who are struggling with high rentals or rapidly climbing mortgages. Foods that would give a genuine opportunity to do both, to those who are wondering whether they should heat or eat . Foods that would allow people to stay on their medication and not be forced to choose between eating, heating, or skipping their pills.

Now, with these enormous heatwaves, house-cooling is also a priority, as is clean air, and clean water. Our food preparation, sooner or later, will have to take so many different factors into account. ‘Brother, there’s a reckoning comin’ in the morning’ – the spiritual says it well and speaks true – ‘better get ready ‘cos I’m giving you the warning’.

And remember, the percentages of people who can no longer afford to live a decent, respectable life is rising, not falling. Food Banks are on the rise and more people are using them. Soup kitchens too. In the United Kingdom, now known as the Untied Kingdom, it is rumored that government is cutting sponsorship to food banks so that more people will return to their daily gigs and fulfill their duties of supporting themselves financially by seeking multiple employments at minimum wage or less. Alas, even then, with multiple jobs and moonlighting, they cannot necessarily sustain a decent life-style.

So, what foods would I like to make? Good, cheap wholesome foods that would support a maximum number of people for a maximum span of time. Pax amorque.

Which activities make you lose track of time?

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Which activities make you lose track of time?

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Which activities make you lose track of time?

I guess it depends on how you define activities. Sleeping certainly makes me lose track of time. But sleeping is not an activity, you say. So I say, what about sleep walking? A track to walk on, and sometimes sleep walkers lose track of themselves, and hands of the clock lost in the dark ahead of them, on they go, tick-tock, little clockwork soldiers marching until someone or something wakes them up. Where am I? They ask. And what time is it?

Watching my fox terrier chasing his tail as he runs round and round in circles, never quite catching it, but never giving up his high hopes of catching that little rat-tail of a tail that dangles there behind. And round about and out and in all day that silly dog did spin, spinning in prose and spinning in rhyme, until I lost all track of time.

Same thing happens with that little electric railway that ran on a single loop around the kitchen table. Diddle-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 on time, when circular time is meaningless, as are the numbers on the sundial when the sun isn’t shining, or the hands on the clock when the numbers are missing, and you don’t know whether you are looking in time’s 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 went round the track and the ghost train hooted whoo-hooo, as it vanished into the timeless tunnel of darkest night, and then exited. like Rip Van Winkle, the engine driver with a huge beard, and the carriages all covered with cobwebs and skeletons peeping out of the compartments and sitting beside some of the travellers as they snore on their seats.

And wow, the activity, if it be an activity, of walking my fingers over the keys has just made me lose track of the last ten minutes. And now it is time for me to drive to hospital, have a needle stuck in my arm, and allow a nurse to draw my blood. And the moment from the first sight of the needle to the moment it is withdrawn from the end is e-n-d-l-e-s-s and takes an eternity.