A Poem for Thursday...."The Turn of the Seasons"

The Turn of the Seasons 

My thoughts begin with water in the rill

Full-ferned and moss-muddlied. there sits

A crow on the topmost level of

A bowing birch. above it still the waning moon

Silver-sailing in a mourning sky.

*

The magi of mushrooms and

Pale greeness of lichen and I am

Mind-spinning at the turn of the seasons

There a gathering of starlings

Sitting slanted on an earthen roof and

*

Wood pigeons murmuring a pied -melody

Where trees scarlet and leaves bud

The turning prowls through my memories

Sometimes there are assembling hours

And heaven beckons. sometimes a glimpse

* 

Of seedful poppies in strawberry beds

Scattering feral banks on fecund land.

*

Here are the daffodils to give joy and bring hope.

We can but believe.

Hope remains.

Be kind.

A Poem for Thursday.

 I started blogging in 2010...I had no idea what I was doing!

But one of my weekly posts was..

"A Poem for Thursday"

Someone asked,  why?...well I was born on a Thursday...and Thursday's child has far to go.

I got as far from Belfast as Warrington...so not far!!

I thought I should start it again  now that lockdown is over, and I'm able to get to Bold Street Writers in Warrington,  and even Write on the Farm in Cumbria. 

The words are being set down in ink again.

This poem has been written after reading one by Gunter Grass..." Open Wardrobe"..suggested by Dr. Geraldine Green on Saturday's writing workshop.

 And I  took the line ..." a button is missing"..

a button is missing and

i'm missing the button

my coat can't be closed

the air is chilly and I want to close

 my coat. I chose a coat today

and a button is missing

search the floor, they said

i search the floor

under the coatstand

such a small inconvenience and

really insignificant at such a time

but a button would close the coat

and a closed coat is protection

the dark floor hides what it finds

squirrels away secrets like magpies

how little we need if we lose a button.

Geraldine Snape Feb 2022

An alley in Warrington town centre by Holy Trinity Church...and a pic photoshopped to honour the Ukrainians fighting for their homeland.

.Stay safe and be kind.

A Poem for Thursday...Driving to Donegal

Driving to Donegal

River Bann in flood  cattle on the bank

cloud and blue patches in an Ulster sky

red barn roofs curved and corrugated

Enniskillen          Omagh              Derry

on the green road sign.   Driving west.

Telegraph wires strung out on drumlins

measuring the miles and the messages

ancient gaelic town lands   anglish form

politics noted in the colour of a flag

politics  black    green     blue     red

and white  with a bloody hand

woven together like fine Sunday linen.

Fecundity found in every hedge and tree

mother Ireland at her most fertile her

green hills swelling as ample breasts

each rowan     ash     willow and oak

hazelnuts beechnuts and acorns with

meadowsweet  knapweed  fireweed and

net fences twined about with red rosebuds

over   under   around the edges of gardens.

Geraldine Snape

A Poem for Thursday...The Fall

The Fall

Watched rusty leaves turn brown

bend over in the autumn winds

hang on a little longer then fall

and lie in all their glorious

shades now safe from any

sudden squall that might

blow unexpectedly and hit

the birch trees. Old trees 

in the grove. Too tall for

this small garden.

Watched chestnut and oak trees
 against the end wall where 
conkers fall and squirrels

scurry to hide them all in

shallow holes for springtime feasts.

And acorns where striped wasps 

once flirted, laid eggs and changed

the cupped balls to magic creatures

we foolishly name galls. 

All this

from a saggy chair, through blue

painted doors, an autumn shawl flung

lightly round old shoulders. Recalling

the shout of children in the field

once young, now tall with lives

uninterrupted by the thwack of ball 

on bat or cry of yield.

Ahead of the game...it's only Tuesday.

a Poem for Thursday....Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March.

 If you don’t hurt crows

They won’t hurt you

My father said

And I believed him.

Chorus :-

While water drips

In a blue plastic drum

Water runs from

A pipe in the yard

Water brown bubbling

And smelling strong.

In the ring of trees

Black branched

Against a pearly sky

Crows weave nests.

Chorus:-

Ghost trees hover high

On early green hills

And mist and low cloud

Merge in distant perspectives.

Chorus:-

There sits a flatbed trailer

Unmoved by their caws

And rusty supports form

As iron oxidises.

Chorus:-

The inspiration for the first stanza came out of a poem by Vicki Feaver in her  book,

 “The Handless Maiden”…Cape Poetry

Wasps…

“If you don’t hurt wasps

They won’t hurt you

My father told me.

But I didn’t believe him,”

A Poem for Thursday....

I was asked by @neviepiecakes aka Natasha Collins...lovely daughter..if I would post some pics for seven days from the different series that I've taken on camera. Thankyou Natasha.
This photo is one of three from a travel series. It now belongs to a great friend. I'm sure that there are references in this pic from wonderful international photographers...and so I give them thanks for their blogs and hope that I may have learnt from them and their skills.

I often think poetry when I take pics...and this little poem is very apt for the feelings often there when on a long journey...and you are really nowhere!

To Travel

To travel is to be nowhere.

You’re not here

And you’re not there.

So,

If you get the wrong train to somewhere,

Or you get off at

The wrong station for somewhere,

Does that mean

That you have completely disappeared?

And when the train gets to somewhere

Will they find that you are nowhere.

And how will you get back from there?

I'll post the other two in the series for you. 

 The start of the journey

All change at Euston

The Knothole

When the weather permits , I still like to take myself down the field to the summerhouse and as there is no wifi...there's no chance of being able to hear anything at all about the state of the world!!

This afternoon I sat in the old blue and white striped sofa and listened to the hypnotic buzzing of a fat bumble bee looking for a cosy hole to overwinter.

He must have found a suitable one as the buzzing stopped and the quiet was almost tangible.

The Knothole

In the darkened knotholes 

Of the summerhouse roof

A bee searches for a winter retreat.

Then the steady hum of its wings

Grow  quiet 

With  the blessed finding

Of its chosen one.

While the earth grows still

As it turns with the season.

A Poem for Thursday

We spent some time in Aldeburgh last week.

 This is by the Aldeburgh Beach Lookout Tower which often has Art Exhibitions in it.

 You can see lots more on their Face Book site.

The potter is not known for doing nothing...but this pic caught him in pensive mood!

Homeness

Homeness is his nose, his ears, his brow.

The sweater he wears, the shoes he buys

From the cheap shoe shop across the road.

Homeness is the breakfast that he makes

And the silence as we read the daily news,

His the sports report, mine the gossip page.

Homeness is the familiar sag in the bed

Where my body fits snugly and

The duvet falls effortlessly around me

While sleep creeps up on me easy.

Homeness is knowing where everything is

Stored in the kitchen cupboards when

I want to make a pot of coffee or

Break a square off a hidden bar of chocolate.

Homeness is the spicey smell of rosemary

And sage In the stoney paths as I meander

Through summer's scented herb garden.

Homeness is me waiting for the swallows

To return and in the homecoming then

                                 To know everything will be alright.

A Poem for Thursday

The Midsummer Knight's Dream

This morning at the Thursday morning writers group the prompt was  from Margaret K.

" Brush up your Shakespeare"

.

But some of us were grieving for another writer of both comedy and tragedy ....

Victoria Woods. 

Then on top of it being Shakespeare's birthday this week...a double whammy with The Queen's 90th. today. What a week! Now whether you are for or against the Monarchy...to celebrate a 90th birthday and be the longest reigning Queen ever, deserves at the very least a mention.

 But my thoughts were about Victoria...the Queen of Comedy since the 70s......and this one is for her...and for her beloved Morecambe...and in particular Lubin's...a place of inspiration. We were lucky enough to eat there  many times before it closed its doors for good. 

I have read that..." Is it on the trolley?"... maybe a quote from Lubin's !!!!!

Some artistic licence in this mad sonnet.

The Midsummer Knights Dream

We sat on the crimson red sofa,

The potter, the daughter and me.

We ordered a platter with cheeses

Some bread and a big pot of tea.

When who should come in through the doorway

With her children and husband in tow

Victoria and the Magician

In his best Sunday suit and his bow.

The sun caught the top of his bald pate,

She heaved up her boobs from below.

Her kids ordered meat pie at Lubin's

And icecream to have on the go.

But the dream was just Midsummer Madness

For she's gone, and we're left with our sadness.

Writer's Workshop and A Poem for Thursday..."I can't write like Stephen Berg".

 ...Thursday writer's workshop is always a joy...not because of what I write ...but to hear the amazing stories and poems that emerge from each of the writers' pens over less than two hours work....
The prompt this week was the word.."Red"...ohhh...red mist...red carpet...red flowers...red blood!!!

Mine was blood and DNA....
"A Phone Call"
The phone rang and I answered it. Just a phone call, like any other phone call. A call from the sister. I say THE sister as I only had one sister. She was the little pet of the family. Seven years between us meant that I was the big sister. I was the "can you look after your sister love?" person designated to take her to whatever I was going to myself. Friend's house...shopping in town...rugby match at the sports ground down the Ravenhill....Can you imagine a seven year old standing in the crowd when it swayed left and right as the ball alternated up and down the pitch? Mum had no idea what a rugby crowd was like. So I'm yelling part time for the school team and the rest of the time for the sister to "watch out!"..."stop standing on my toes!"..."leave go of my legs!"
Anyway, back to the phone call. Well we're great friends now. Although we've gone in very different directions, we're closer than ever. And it's a bad week if we don't chat and catch up on family news, and find something to have a belly laugh about. All the years of memories good and bad, happy and sad with the three major adults in the family gone now. So we cling to our relationship and recognize the stabilizing effect it has on our everyday existance.
Everyone has things that happen to "upset the apple cart". The unexpected, round the corner things. You know..illness, separation, divorce, finance, redundancy....need I go on! So it's always good to have absolutes to keep your feet firmly on the ground of life. We find normalising situations as quickly as possible a good premise to go on. After all everything is normal when you add up your experiences and divide by the number you first thought of!
And phone calls are such a great normaliser in our modern world. Especially now that we all have our mobiles....mobile phones that is...not mobile homes! Too normal I think when I see the young gazing into screens or business people in cafes or on trains instructing and pontificating in loud important voices...bah!
The sun was shining in through the french windows as the phone rang. I pulled the curtain across to stop me squinting in the bright sunlight. Apart from that I often pulled it across just to see the cicadas in the pattern of the cloth. I bought it at a flea market in Provence many years ago. I find it good to have happy memories around..oh and also good if the phone call should get a bit boring or one-sided. 
But that's not normally the way with the sister can I say...too much to gossip about. Family goings-on to relate. We trip over ourselves wordily getting so much into the call.Outdoing each other in funny anecdotes and dissing those others whose antics make us shake our heads. It's the same in every family. There are those you are glad are members and then there are others who although not on your wavelength actually make for an interesting conversation..you know what I mean...sometimes we call it a rant...it eases the tensions of life!
"Hi!" I said. "How's things?". There was silence. "Are you still there?". "Yes". The sister sighed. "Something up?"...I anticipated a bit of a rant. Nothing. "Speak to me...."
 She spoke."It's true....we have another sister!". 

Then this afternoon I read Antony Wilson's wonderful poetry blog..."Lifesaving Poems"..blogs like this...so full of information and poets that I've yet to explore, have been a veritable godsend in the blogger world...and so I said...I can't write like Stephen Berg...and then promptly wrote ...like Geraldine Snape!!!


I can't write like Stephen Berg
But Margaret says,"I like your asides."
Those are the funny bits I put in the writing
At the Thursday workshop.
I think women are good at asides
It takes the sting out of the parts of life
We want to normalise.
Normalise...what's that all about?
I learnt that from Doreen years ago
She needed it.
And the"professionals" said
"That how you'll cope with everything."
They were dead right there.
We took it on as a mantra.
You know those words the Buddists talk about?
But we didn't think George Harrison's
Hari, Hari, suited our situation.
So we took on,"normalise",
That's all we needed to say to one another.
George put the shelves up in the off license
When he was just seventeen we heard.
That's an aside, things were getting too serious,
So I put that in.
But I like the story anyway.
The potter took them down as soon as we bought the shop.

A Poem for Thursday..."A Time in Times"

 

There are times in all of our lives when we have to stop on the road we are travelling...look around at the circumstances...and review the situation.

 

It can be a change of direction is needed...and a change of priorities

 

This was our experience...it made us the people we are today.

 

A Time in Times.

We disappeared into a nether world.

Became invisible and without form.

People who had known us passed by unblinking

Those who sensed our presence were few and far between.

All that we had been had disappeared with the mists of time.

Persona non gratis is what we became.

Even Harry Potter could not have gone as completely as we did.

So new rules had to be formed.

New priorities and timings worked out.

This nether world was to us an enigma.

And so we set to learn the laws in our new country.

A Poem for Thursday...."The Aunt"

AUNT HELEN
I once heard them call her the weak one,
The youngest, the runt of the pack.
Without grace they said, weak-boned
Hen-chested,  round backed.
Taken away from her mother perhaps
Taken away too soon?
Taken away from family
And the comforts of her home.
I loved her, I love her still,
It was never a slight for me
To get the sharpness of her tongue
Or the sting of her repartee.
Dympsy pink, eau de nil!
Mauve and duck egg blue.
Cherry trees in the late spring
From the veranda viewed.
Garlic flowers in the woods behind
And the heady perfume of bells.
I gathered up armfuls in April days
Of the blueing crooks in the dell.
Now all I have is the ground I stand on,
That and nothing more.
And fast fading memories of our walks
On the  lough's grey stoney shore.
And the smell of tweed skirt from Donegal,
 Damp in the moist-laden air.
With a whiff of the essence of violets
That told you the aunt had been there.

Piel Island...A Poem for Thursday

 

 I'd been wanting to go to this island for a few years. The last time we made the trip the weather was windy and the Ferryman refused to take us across...who can blame him..the currents alone are treacherous between the mainland...Barrow-in-Furness and the island. This is no ordinary place..it has it's own King and Throne and also  Piel Castle. The Abbott of Furness Abbey owned the rights to all the takings from the sea going craft coming from both Ireland and The Isle-of-Man. It's not touristy and apart from some terraced houses the pub is the only occupied building.
We spent a day just wandering the edge and listening to the skylarks which are everywhere on this little piece of land.

 

Piel Island

 
The skylarks are rising
Drawing me far away
From the nest low in the
Tufts of maran grass that
Grow out of the mussel beach.

I stop to watch their ascent
And listen as the lark
Song joins the soft keening
Of an April wind 'til
Wind takes over and
The bird is lost to my eyes.