Looking Back..to look Forward...

This time we are all sharing is very strange indeed.

Some days I'm feeling normal...some days seem very dark, even in all the sunshine we've had here in the North West of England.

Talking to friends it seems they are also looking back at their lives.

I've had a long life and mostly a good one...noone has a perfect life!!

I'm looking through files of art that I've made over many years and am amazed at how much I'd forgotten...and how much achieved.

By that I don't mean that any of it was remarkable in some Oh My Goodness...way!

But today I'm posting a few of the life drawings that I've made in various studios and galleries.

Penketh

 Liverpool

 Warrington

Warrington

Florence

Birkenhead

Hope I manage to get back to some studio again one day!

A Poem for Thursday....."Antibiotics"

My mother lived alone after dad died even though she was the one who had been ill.
Looking back to when I was still living in the family home in Belfast and rebelling if not outwardly ...definitely inside...I'm thankful for this woman who was a rock formed in the fire of extremely difficult circumstances.


                  Antibiotics

She never cried, she was as solid as a rock
Except on the days she remembered her sister
And the fun they had shared in the big house.
But apart from that she was a stoic and
I knew that the winds of life would not bend her.
Except on the days we made the beds together
And she sighed as quiet tears wet her marshmallow cheeks.
A memory of her mother tucking white crisp hospital corners
Around striped ticking mattresses.
But that was all there was to it then.
I could never hope to come up to that steely reserve
And be the unmoved.
Though there were occasions when the armchair in the corner
By the fireplace seemed too big for her.
Too big, and she filled  the edges of the cushions
With lace edged hankies damp and tucked away and hidden.
Then her brother's name was whispered quietly
As if such a thing could never have happened.
Though it did, for those were the days before the miracles.
We call them antibiotics and warn our families against taking them.

A Poem for Thursday...dVerse openlinknight week 106

Today

we met again

after forty years

this shrunken woman/child

with the monkey grin

who backed away

even as I stepped forward with

“Do you remember me?”...

“Oh yes”.

Once, she walked

hippety hop …up on her toes

once beat on a drum

‘til my eardrums screamed

STOP!

though through it all

my monkey smile

stayed

fixed round my teeth.

Memories

strummed memories on my heart

when I saw her again

taught and taut

the strings of lost feelings

singing out .

Word on the street is

she’s become a poet.

so two years up and moving forward in the poetry cyberworld is dVerse...and this one is for openlinknight week106. have fun everyone!!

The Story of Ballyferris.Chapter Fourteen.Carrowdore 100

Official photo..Commando 961

I love  the growly roar of a powerful motorbike ....what could make me enjoy a noise like that?

Perhaps it was because when I was young the infamous aunt, Helen, took me north on the train to the seaside town of Portrush up on the Atlantic coast of north Antrim. And there we watched the North West 200, and if I remember correctly, it was held every year on the narrow roads of the county. 

Possibly still is!

 Aunt Helen worked for an engineering firm  servicing and selling  Daimler cars, Norton bikes and David Brown tractors. She was a woman in a man's world ....and she was fiesty with it! The company also owned a greyhound racing track and a speedway track in the city..... but that's another story and nothing to do with Ballyferris..... so I mustn't get sidelined !

Anyway, I  really loved the eardrum-splitting noise of the engines as they screamed around the track on the roads of Co Antrim. And I lay on my stomach on the top of a roadside verge with my nose literally inches away from those gloriously smelly monsters absolutely unable to hear anything that aunt Helen might say to warn me to be careful...what did I know of danger!

A gang of friends waiting for the start of the race.

So therefore in Ballyferris, at the top of the lane that lead down to the caravan field having motor bikes speeding past in a major race...that was a delicious joy!.

The Carrowdore 100.

It was so called as the bikers started from  the little town of Carrowdore...you remember Carrowdore... and filled the roads along the shores of the Ards Peninsula with noise, dirt and a smell of oily excitement.

 Not raced over as many miles as The NorthWest 200, and perhaps not thought of as important internationally, but it was ours and and a day to remember.

   A farmer's field was always set aside for the riders and their growling steeds.We made it our job to be there in the field. Tough men in their leather biking gear, scuffed boots with straps and buckles and unnumbered unknown acoutrements, had our eyes popping out of our  heads...and our hearts beating wildly with excitement....wondering...what could all that gear be for?

The smell of  hot engine oil,  the sound of a never-ending accelerator noise as the competitors prepared riding up and down the field waiting for their race, waiting for the signal that summoned them to the starting line, had us too jumping with anticipation.

As townies we always hung around with the farmers' lads, they knew many of the riders by name. And if you were lucky there was a possibility of  getting up close to one of the bikes or even being allowed to sit pillion behind one of these "gods of the road".... though I must sadly tell you, it was not my fortune ever to be chosen!

Such innocent days. Yet in that little tucked away spot of nowhere, death and tragedy struck most years.

 As in the Isle of Man T.T. races nowadays young men died, striving to be the first to cross the line and win the accolades from those who stood around adoring! I don't think the fear of dying was ever as strong, is even now as strong, as the longing and love for excitement and danger.

At the end of the races we trudged down the lane towards the sea and gathered in one of the caravans ...excited, noisy and smelling of  fast engines and fresh air. A wonderful combination! The noise was still going on in our heads......

zoom...zoom...zoom... 

...while outside the windows of the van, the grey Irish sea whooshed us into a dreamy quiet state.

*

The last death stopped it all. Now there is no more Carrowdore 100.

 I 'm sure this is right... and yet... those  "magnificent men on their racing machines", and the

memory of the noise and the smells, went into the rest of the mix which made my teenage years  ever more memorable.

*

A Poem for Thursday

Vincent van Gogh

Graeme Roberts sat in his usual chair

And I sat nearby in mine.

And behind his head it was always there

The van Gogh in the frame of pine.

 He lulled my brain with his smokey words

And the passion in all that he said.

But the thing I remembered was Vincent's art

On the wall - behind his head.

It was only a print of course , I knew

As I sat in the Georgian room.

But I longed to see more of the painter’s skill

Of the joy, in the clouds and the moon.

And I did one day in the Amsterdam

In the gallery given his name.

And the shock of the real as I stood in front

Of the scene in it’s golden frame...

Left me weeping and moved, though I couldn’t say why.

Did it take me back to that room?

To the girl and the man and the frame of pine

And the trees and the clouds and the moon.

This poem is for Poetry Jam...they wanted a poem about an artist...well Vincent is always my darling!..even if I wander away to other poets ..I eventually come back to all that he was and is! so thankyou Poetry Jam for inspiring me to go back to that place and remember my feelings!

A Poem for Thursday.

The End of the Line

Let’s go and live at the end of the line.
Where breakers fall over rolling stones.
We’ll board the train that we rode when young,
Watch how the steam mists our view of the sea
As it hisses and cools on the iron and the brass.
And the cry of the gulls as they dive, as they soar
Will welcome us back
Will welcome us back.

Let’s board the train that we rode long ago,
Where the end of the line will have water and sand.
We’ll be welcomed again by the crying of gulls
The smell of spun sugar and hot lardy chips.
There, will be space enough for our thoughts
And salt winds that blow away stale urban fog.
To welcome us back,
To welcome us back.

They say that the crust is beginning to crack.
That the cold winds of change are blowing our way.
Yet when I take the journey again to the end
Of the line, where the seagulls are soaring above
To the edge of the tide, to the line in the sand.
The memory of all of things, of all being well
Embraces me back
Embraces me back.

 
This one has been linked to the gooseberry garden random poems week 17 ..."nostalgia"