Writing

Great White Egret

Great White Egret

            The Great White Egret is Yolande Essiembre’s first chapbook of poetry. The title poem offers an image, a white egret, that is central to the whole collection. Summarized in this one poem are the concepts of pantheism, mindfulness, self-questioning, and receiving lessons and inspiration from the natural world that surrounds the narrator and her poetic voice.

            Pantheists often consider the universe, or nature, to be identical to the divinity. In simpler terms, it’s the old Greek idea of Gaia, the world spirit – spiritus mundi, in the Latin of Moncton’s Northrop Frye – that links nature and the divinity. Pantheism can be found in both religious and philosophical contexts, with some branches of pantheism rooted in traditional religious beliefs and others stemming from poetic perspectives. In the case of The Great White Egret, the narrative voice sees nature as an all-embracing poetic concept that makes possible a life, both physical and spiritual, in the immediate present.

            The lessons the narrator receives in the course of observing The Great White Egret are (1) to take one step at a time, (2) to be still, and (3) to be one’s own reflection. This third lesson reaches out to include the cover photograph. Verbal and visual blend when the egret, reflected in the water, parallels the reflection of the poet in the stillness of nature. This is further complicated by the double meaning of reflection as mirror image and of the thought process involved during the observation of the bird. The visual and mental images become reminiscent of the hymn “on the wings of a snow-white dove.”

Part of the beauty of Yolande Essiembre’s poetic meditations lies in the extension of image and metaphor beyond the page and into the mind of the reader where they create a mirror universe of reciprocal reminiscence and creativity. Other poems that reach out in similar fashion to explore the deity manifest within the natural world include A Force of Love in Our Universe, Breath of Life, Glimpses, and In the Sanctuary. This last poem works on the basis of repeated images that stand strong and clear, for example, “Life pressing through a blade of grass. / Leaves shimmering, dancing, waving. / Light flickering, casting shadows.” Life and movement, especially movement – pressing, shimmering, dancing, flickering, casting – create a sense of wonder in the natural setting where the poet finds sanctuary.

            Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. It is often used as a therapeutic technique and can be compared with the yoga techniques which our poet practices. This yoga technique is compounded in the poems where breathing is emphasized, as in Breath of Life, for example, where we read “Who are you breath of life / Who fills my lungs with air”. It can also be found in the poem In Your Presence “In the stillness of the morning / I breathe / I listen / I breathe”.         

This chapbook is more than a mere collection of poems. It is a compendium of personal feelings, inner thoughtfulness, and natural observations. It is the work of a thinker and feeler, in tune with the universe and continually seeking answers to some of life’s most important questions. Reading The Great White Egret, you too may start asking similar questions. More important, you may even find some meaningful answers.

The Great White Egret
Sitting, rocking, gazing upon a lake,
Pondering, reflecting, wondering.
How one can choose purpose over comfort?
How does one remain true to oneself?

On a wing span comes an answer.
A bird, a Great White Egret
Lands at the edge of the water.
Tall, magnificent, breathtaking.

Steps in slow motion, into the lake,
Advances one long leg at a time.
Proud, confident, in no hurry.
My first lesson: “Take one step at a time.”

The bird stops, remains still,
Listens, stretches its long neck,
So still that I hold my breath.
We wait.
Second lesson: “Be still.”

The majestic bird gracefully glides
In the calm clear water.
Its reflection a thing of beauty.
Like a mirror, reflects divinity.
Third lesson: “Be my own reflection.”             

Silence

Silence

Pain stops at the edge of silence
and silence is the sound of sunlight
breaking against the walls of the room
in which I sit and listen, in silence,
waiting for the notes to begin again.

Silence, yes, yet my silence lies broken
by the renewed intrusion of the clock,
by the electric hum from lights and heating.

Ghostly noises break into my thoughts:
cheers from a distant tennis court,
those eternal advertisements
that invade my innermost being.

What triviality now shatters
the Messiaenic mood that wrapped me
for a moment in a many-colored cloak
woven from musical oblivion.

Time’s teeth start to gnaw again
and the grandfather clock
nibbles at my soul, extracting
its essence in a surge of sound,
tick-tock, tick-tock.

Westminster Chimes choke
life from the hour and ring
the tick-tock knell that files
my life away, second by second,
minute by minute, day by day.

Comment:

Silence is the fifth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.

“So,” said Moo, “today I offer this painting where the title, Sound of Silence, fits well with the title of your poem. That said, I am not sure that the painting itself, qua painting, is as suitable as earlier pairings. De gustibus non est disputandum / there is no arguing about taste. I guess you either like something or you don’t.”

“It certainly isn’t in your usual style. In fact, it looks more like a colored pencil sketch than a painting. Where did you draw the title from?”

“Actually, it’s from one of your poems about Avila, in Spain, the city where, or so they say, you can hear the silence. You complained about all the noise that you found, especially the church bells, in that otherwise silent city.”

“Ah yes. I remember that poem. And I’ll never forget the sound of the bells echoing from wall to wall in those narrow, medieval streets. Bells from all the churches inside the walls of the city, tolling at exactly the same time, calling the faithful to prayer.”

“And that is one of the differences between us that I mentioned yesterday. My paintings, whatever they depict, are always silent. I have heard you read your poems out loud on Spotify and I have also heard other people reading them on your behalf, not always successfully. Poetry is designed not only to be read silently, but also to be read out loud, before an audience. Painting, on the other hand, is always silent. It does not speak, nor can it be heard. A painting is just there, in two dimensions, powerful, if you are lucky, weak and wobbly if the artist does not fulfill his task.”

“Interesting, dear Moo. And the images that I draw from Messiaen’s music are interesting too. For musical notes, without words, change into images within the listener’s mind, and then, when heard by the poet in me, become verbal images upon the page. Fascinating.”

“It is. Some time soo we must talk about intertextuality, the ways in which one artistic form or text can influence another. Hopefully, you’ll find a poem and I’ll find a painting that illustrate just that.”

Transitions

Transitions

Modes of limited transitions,
moods of time tapped in time
to time’s rhythmic piano.

Scales fall from my listening eyes
and all-seeing ears.
A transitory awakening,
this glimpse of the composer’s vision,
each note a new version
extracted from abstracts
perceived in color,
each note a hue, and chords
a rainbow spectrum of light
glimpsed darkly through
the raindrop’s distorting lens.

Birdsong and sunshine.
Notes perched
on the matinal branch,
each in tune with the other,
at times in seeming discord,
yet the morning chorus
diluting the day
with the liquidity
of light and sound.

Comment:

Transitions is the fourth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.

“How on earth did you create that painting?” I asked my friend Moo. “And how do you relate it to this poem?”

“Good questions,” Moo replied. “Difficult to answer, though.” First of all, this is not a painting. It is the background cloth, always changing, always in transition, upon which I create my post card paintings. The idea of transition summarizes the movement from paint, to brush, to painting, and the haziness of the creative moment. It relates directly to your lines ‘Scales fall from my listening eyes / and all-seeing ears.’ This is the point in time, the magic moment, when the painting declares itself. I assume you have the same moment when you write poetry.”

“The two processes are very different, I think. In my poetry, a thought leads to a verbal image, and then each of the words turn themselves into little worlds in which verbal gemstones appear. I try to catch those verbal gemstones and to transform them into poetry. If I listen carefully, then my ears see and my eyes hear the words forming themselves into the right order.”

“Interesting. And yes, that’s what happens in my painting too. The initial mood captured in that first color, and then the minor moods that emerge from the first one gradually woven into the painting.”

“That is somewhat similar to how I write – by listening to the words and doing what they tell me to do. Then I do what they want me to do, not what I want them to do.”

“Fascinating. But there is one huge difference between us.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you next time.”

Dark Angel

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 the third poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time. The painting, by my friend Moo, expresses his impressions of how he reacts, in paint, to my poem, in words.

“Well,” I said to Moo, “you’ve gone and done it this time. Do you think that painting really represents my poem? I see no darkness in it and certainly no angel.”

Moo gave me a long, strange look. I felt like I was looking in the mirror and seeing parts of my own soul fragmenting and falling away, like scales from my eyes.

“It’s not what the poem says,” he replied. “It’s what I think you feel as you’re writing that poem. I see the tension, the cry from the heart, the struggle to accept, and the realization that, in the end, everything is inevitable and must turn out as it will. That said, more than anything, it is the cry, de profundis, from the depth of your self that I feel. My painting depicts that cry and your suffering.”

“What if it’s not my suffering? What if it’s the suffering of Messiaen and his musicians as they play the soul music that keeps them alive?”

“But surely,” Moo replied, “that’s the whole point. Orde Amoris, according to the recent Pope who has just passed away, is love felt for the person suffering, no matter who he or she is. Pope Francis spoke in praise of the parable of the Good Samaritan. When you see someone suffering at the wayside, you stop and help that person. You don’t just walk on by. Your suffering is my suffering. When I paint your suffering I also paint my own suffering and when you grieve, then I grieve with you.”

“And when that happens, when we all grieve together, we do not grieve alone and in vain.”

“Exactly.”

Where did my mojo go-go?

Where did my mojo go-go?

Wow! My first post since January 8, 2025. What on earth has happened to me? Good question – I just don’t know.

Today’s painting, from the last day of 2024, is taken from The Idylls of the King, Tennyson. “The olde order changeth lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

This quote is used in my Old Boys magazine at the end of each school year when the students leave the college and go out into the real world. This happened to me in 1962 – 63 years ago. Certainly I changed, and for the better, without the college. Whether the college changed or not, in my absence, I really don’t know. I suppose it did. It became co-educational, quite the thing for a boys’ boarding school. It expanded into larger grounds. It tore down at least two of the old houses, including the one in which I boarded for four years. I read about these things, but I have only been back on one or two occasions, so I don’t really know. And living in Canada, I rarely see any old boys from the school. They don’t cross the pond to visit me.

I receive the old school magazine regularly, by e-mail. However, I no longer recognize faces or places, unless the places are totally unchanged since I was there. And not many of them are. The most important page for me has become the obituaries, and I study with care those who have passed on before me and those who remain. I grieve when I see the names of old friends. But I grieve even more when I see the names of people so much younger than me falling by the wayside.

As for that mojo of mine, well, I guess that writing on a regular basis has become more and more difficult. “Don’t sit with your head in your hands thinking of time past,” says the Spanish poet. Yet time past seems preferable, in many ways, to time future. I am beginning to feel a bit like a pin-cushion, on account of all the needles now being stuck into me. Perhaps that’s where all my mojo went? Still, for anyone interested, I am still here. Still happy. I am working on my latest novel and I have two books of poetry waiting to be published. So maybe my mojo hasn’t done a bunk, just my blog mojo! I shall have to kick start it. Or maybe I’ll get that little yellow duck who wears blue gumboots to stand on a brick and give me a hearty booted boost. Yup! That should do the trick.

And so, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “I’ll take a bow, and say ‘good-bye’ but just for now.

What is your mission?

Daily writing prompt
What is your mission?
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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.

When are you most happy?

Daily writing prompt
When are you most happy?
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When are you most happy?

What on earth does that mean? When? Are we talking time of day, or time of night? Are we talking a season of the year? Are we talking mood swings – happy now, oh dear, mood swing, not happy now? Are we talking Hen Wen, the magic white pig at the feeding trough? “I am at my happiest, oink-oink, when I am eating a big burger from …” – and here you name your favorite burger outlet. None of that Hen Wen nonsense applies, of course, if you are vegetarian, vegan, or have an allergy to burgers or buns!

I can tell you when I am least happy – 7:30 am, on a wet, damp, cold, icy, snowy winter morning, when I have to get up, get dressed, and go out in the mush and the slush to have an early morning blood test – no food or drink for 12 hours – at the local hospital. Last time I did that, I couldn’t find a parking spot, and drove round and around until eventually one opened up, as far away as possible from the hospital of course. No, I was not a happy camper on that occasion. Especially when I slipped on the ice, returning to my car, and then found someone had driven into my side while I was parked there. Oh, that made me so happy and so jolly, I laughed until I cried. [I do hope you can recognize sarcasm when you see it.]

So, let us reverse the question and reframe it by saying that I am perfectly happy when the things that make me miserable do not happen. No fender-bender in the ice and snow – I am a happy man. Caught speeding or jumping a red light – totally by accident, of course, – and the man in blue asks me for my license, sees that it’s my birthday, and lets me drive away with a verbal warning and a jovial ‘happy birthday”! Ah yes, reverse psychology, that sort of thing does make me happy.

So, above all, it’s the little things in life that go right, and not wrong, that make me happy. This morning’s boiled egg, boiled to perfection – not too hard, not too soft. My coffee a perfect blend designed to bring joy and happiness. Marmalade on blue cheese, the Welsh equivalent of Chinese sweet and sour – oh yes, and actually making someone laugh or smile when they read this nonsense I write. Even Hen Wen grunts with joy – oink! oink! – at that one. So if you have enjoyed this post, please take the time to send me an oink or two, and I will be happy. Thanking you in advance is, yours sincerely, Hen ‘oink!’ Wen ‘oink!’ Wink, ‘oink!’

Poppy Day

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.

What could you do less of?

Daily writing prompt
What could you do less of?
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What could you do less of?
I shall deliberately misinterpret that prompt / question and answer it my way. I could do less of listening to stupid adverts, repeated ad nauseam, sometimes with gimmicky tunes – one to two lines maximum – again and again, all day, every day. Surf the channels to escape an ad, and what do you get? A synchronized set up where almost every channel is blasting out the same, or similar, ads at the same time. Have you noticed that when you leave the TV room, and retreat to the kitchen to get some limited peace, the ads follow you because the volume is turned up at ad time so you just can’t escape.

I remember my grandfather, back in the sixties, with the advent of ITV in Wales – the Independent TV channel that used ads – sitting before the TV set, his foot up before the screen and his fingers in his ears so he would not be able to see or hear those ads. Alas, once heard, seldom forgotten, and I can still sing most of those meaningless jingles heard back in my childhood. How it I hate when I go shopping in the supermarket and shoppers tunelessly whistle a TV ad as they shuffle along behind their carts. Alas, ad free programming, all too often, is either expensive or non-existent.

And what about those telephone calls when they put you on hold until the next agent is free to attend to you? I won’t mention names, because I don’t want to get sued, but I guess we have all had the same experience. I had a ninety minute online wait one day, with horrible music, an exhortation to stay on the line so I wouldn’t lose my place in the queue aka line-up, and a 90 second ad that glorified the joys of the company’s product, repeated once every five minutes. I suffered through that ad 18 times on that one call alone. Another local firm gave me the similar treatment, except that it was a one minute ad, repeated once every ninety seconds. I suffered through 10 repetitions in a wait of 15 minutes, got fed up, and hung up the phone.

Look at the peaceful scene above. That’s the view from my bedroom window in Island View. Even the crows are absent, and the early morning silence, like the sun, is golden. Two birds with one stone – a morning person or an evening person? A morning person with dawns like this, but an evening person when a sunset like this one miraculously occurs.

What is one thing you would change about yourself?

Daily writing prompt
What is one thing you would change about yourself?
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What is the one thing you would change about yourself?

Only one thing? I remember a story about a boy who boarded in a monastery school, and there, like the monks, they all changed their dirty habits once a week. So, is a dirty habit a thing? Probably is, if its a brown, sackcloth habit, tightened around the waist with a white cord by a man wearing open-toed sandals and no socks. So, there we go, once a week, on Wednesdays, like those monks, I also change my dirty habits. I also change my shoes, my socks, my shirts, my sweaters, my jeans.

More important, as I grow older, I have permitted myself to change my mind as often as I like. So, yes, I also change my mind, and not just on Wednesdays. And I really do change it when, like my habits, it gets dirty. “Oooh, you’ve got a dirty mind, you have.” “Well, so I do. Never mind, I’ll just go and change it.”

“What did Big Ben say to the Leaning Tower of Pizza?” – I’ve got the time, if you’ve got the inclination.
“How many ears did Davy Crocket have?” – Three – a left ear, a right ear, and a wild front ear.
“What’s yellow and deadly?” – Shark infested custard.
“What’s black and deadly?” – A crow in a tree with an AK47.
“When is a door not a door?” – When it’s a jar.
“What time is it Eccles?” – “It’s eight o’clock.” “Here, how do you know it’s eight o’clock?” “I’ve got it written down on a piece of paper.” “What do you do if it’s not eight o’clock?” “I don’t look at the paper.”
“Ding-a-ling” – That’s my ear ringing. I’ll just pick it up and answer it.
“What’s the first sign of madness?” – Hairs in the palm of your hand. “What’s the second sign of madness?” – Looking for them.

So what is one thing I would change about myself? Possibly the absolute necessity to tell awfully bad jokes. Easy to say – I’ll probably keep adding to these as I remember more of them. Take care – you have been warned.

“How many – men – does it take to change a light bulb?” – Five. One to hold the bulb and four to turn the ladder. Jokes like these can be good or bad. Good because they are occasionally funny. Bad, because it so easy to insert an adjective before – men – and to turn the joke into something more devious and not necessarily very pleasant.

“And that is the end of the gnus,” said the lion on BBC television, as he licked his paws. “Enough, no more. It is not as sweet now, nor as sour, as it was before. Pass the chow mean, please.”