Tag Archives: the farm

Day 14 – silences (& more silences)

14 view

Familiar theme. Unfamiliar ending.

*****

Sunday afternoon farm sounds

mostly sleepy silence
a suite of breezes
  of differing thicknesses
cartwheeling leaves
bone-crunching lawn dogs
young pup’s yips
  unsure what’s going on
mad gabbing of parrots
lonely cry of a duck
  searching for the lost flock
solitary desolation
  of the only crow around

the soporific drone of man
whether high sky, dirt disturbing
or distant roadway rumbling
a forgotten radio
  playing to a shed of ghosts
the irritating digital pings
  as new words arrive
  at my mother’s phone

& my beautiful grandmother
humming made up melodies
& starting sentences
memory won’t let her finish

 

 

BONUS POEM: April 14, 2018

Bit of theme developing. Oh well, it’s part of the reason behind the trip …
NOTE: minor 2019 edits to improve flow.

*****

looking for Ambrose in the Torringtons

start in lush Merton sunshine
where we are confident one is sown
yet six of us, crisscrossing, find nothing
except freshly cut grass, lichen
& boredom blooming like mushrooms
— so five leave as one goes on
to the Torringtons three: Little —
unclear if any were ever planted here
regular — where a football pitch garden
implies looking for needles that might
not even be in this granite haystack
for not a single 18th century date’s
visible beneath time’s smoothings
whereas ironically Great — no longer
seems to exist. realise I need simply to enjoy
the moss path beneath my feet
settling sunbeams on my skin
& be reassured that if Ambrose et al
even still care, I have tried.
moments later I pass a bus full of silly
young people preparing for a wedding
which seems eminently appropriate —
reassures me I made the right choice.

14b merton.jpg

 

Day 30 – first late poem of the month

Well the end of NaPoWriMo 2015 has arrived & I’m pleased to announce I have my first late poem for the month. I had intended to bookend the month with a less cheeky poem about Jazz (Day 1), & maybe even revisit “big angst over a relatively small number” (Day 15) & give you all a second BONUS POEM about the beauty of books/terror of how few reading days remain in all our lives. But my sickness, a drive to the country & back for a new job, & getting 4 poems into two competitions which closed today (30 April) meant it was all a best laid plans kind of day …

Instead you get a poem I’ve only really worked on since midnight (i.e. half an hour) but I’m simply too knackered to keep on with it — so you get it in its raw state.

Thanks for coming along the ride with me again this year. I had about 26 new people follow me this month which is delightful — & numerous likes from lots of my longer-time followers. Thanks NaPoWriMo for encouraging lots of lazyarse poets to get out & make some poems. Apart from the 31 I shared on here, I wrote another 20 or so, of which 3-4 are real crackers I hope could find themselves published sometime in the next 12 months. I’ve also enjoyed reading blogs of my fellow poeters around the world. Love ‘n’ light.

*****

missed

hammer horror films tell me
mist obscured landscapes
& skeletal silhouette trees
should feel funereal & spooky

but if i furrow deeper
into the fog of memory
which is my too-long-gone
childhood then i remember

deep cloud-descended days
brought comfort physically
& emotionally — warm inside
book reading by a wood fire —

when the valley filled
with smokewater
& my whole wide seemed
shrouded in the whispers

of imagination, the wisps
of dreams & the bleak border
between worlds blurred
as if i could step into it

arrive somewhere else
& never be missed

*****

pines