after seven years
I still can’t believe
I wont ever see my father again
I still can’t believe
I wont see him again
this thought repeats and repeats
rolling circuits around in my brain
until it looses momentum
and comes to rest
like a roulette ball
in an unpredictable place
why am i even trying to imagine
I wont see him again
when all of my elders
as they grew older
told me we would
not one of us knows
until we go
I can think as I like
until then
one poem from many i liked on this site
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
I posted this because it’s my favourite sonnet and I believe in it not just in relationships but in life – Love is the star to every wandering bark
Having seen a phrase about a mountain path beset with tigers I recalled a dream I had in which my dream horse (a frequent visitor) was unusually allowing me to guide and choose our path (usually I just go where I am taken) and I began to ascend a very steep mountain track and my horse began to struggle but yet still obeyed me until I felt ashamed of the damage I was doing to the horse so I stopped and apologised. My horse immediately forgave me and turned to pastures and galloped to the sea. I took this dream to mean that if we ‘’go with the flow’’, that is Awen, we learn far more than by forcing our own view and decisions upon our life and the way – the sea is not high like a mountain (where perhaps I had foolishly wanted to ‘dominate the peak and look down on all’) but it is a symbol at the very least of the source of life and it ‘’goes with the flow’’, and the moon.
I have also written a poem about a year ago about encountering a dragon in a steep place and the Tower (interspersed with some comments from ordinary daily life when when my dreaming is not looked upon favourably by others). All I longed for was peace by the river (with my muse) in the realm of imagination and the natural flow of the path. Obstacles can be overcome with some determination but most of all with imagination.
Escape from the Tower
Climbing the mountain, trying to reach the tower
Confronted by a dragon, endlessly asking me riddles,
While a great storm gathers all about us
Thunderbolts roar, lightning reflects on my shield
(“What do you do in that room all the time?
What are you thinking about?’’
I stop and get the food
And gather the rubbish that needs to go out)
I am losing my footing on the slippery rocks.
The dragon flashes his eyes with desire
I have to succeed, cannot be overpowered,
I call on the rain to quench his fire
(“Always off in imagination,
What’s wrong with you?
You spend hours on that
And it’s not even true’’)
I answer the final riddle, the dragon steps aside.
My way no longer barred, I struggle on up the mountain.
The tower reaches up to the clouds
Eagles circle above, come to help me in my troubles
(“I know you have talent?
Why don’t you use it?’’
“I work too!’’ i say
“You could work more!’’ says she)
The eagle carries me up to the princess, we hover.
She reaches out to me. I swing her onto the eagles back.
My arm circles her waist, her hair flies in my face.
She leans back on me in relief.
(“You always were some other place,
Even as a child. No different now than ever.
Why can’t you just be normal,
And stay in reality?’’)
We circle together above the now sunlit valleys
Looking down from above, we avoid all the cities and castles
And land in a summer meadow by a singing stream
She adorns herself with flowers, I dream
After three days of sunlight
the May bursts forth,
shining white stars amongst hedgerow leaves.
In the marshlands tall grasses wave feathered plumes of gold and cream,
tender on green silken stems.
The sycamore bedecked in bright green catkin tails sways in a gentle breeze,
a reminder of lambs.
A blackbirds sings atop the cedars outstretched limbs,
a dark silhouette against bright blue sky.
Dandelions with sun-filled faces
spread across suddenly verdant pasture.
The air is filled with the scent of new mown grass,
fresh cut blades scatter at the grey roads side
as I wander home in the falling light.
At my door,
one dandelion forces its way upwards
through the red tiles of the doorstep,
spring strong, shining,
a signal that summer comes.
Life bursts into bud
quiet fanfare for summer
warmth, wonder, delight.
Love is equally enlightening.
I had a cat, shy and nervous,
afraid of big boots.
He had been kicked i am certain.
I had a dog, strong and loyal,
afraid of large crowds and noise.
He had been beaten for sure
My horse was afraid of nothing.
At the sound of a post-horn
he would be off, without me.
He would kick down any stable door,
and gallop, strong-headed for fields.
He could clear a five bar gate
when the wind blew his tale.
But gentle and mild to me, at rest,
as the dearest of lambs,
his ears twitching to the sound of my words
with his head on my shoulder,
falling asleep
I loved every one of them,
my horse, my cat and my dog.
They gave me themselves
bells ring out, fireworks blaze
bless the old, light up the new
bring the New Year in
from high above looking down on the land
there are signs of all that is gone
churches sit on old sacred sites
scattered across the earth
the motorway swallowed the village pond
the sea eats away at the shore
the old forests all gone to ships
gone to ashes and war
i see the ramparts of Rome
Legions lost in the earth
Saxon barrows and Norman walls
Celtic graves, the breaking of stones,
gone, in a battle for power
all for nothing
the land and the word lives on
the rhyme, the history, the song
deeper than dust
deeper than bone
finer, truer, strong
Where was it, who was I and when?
A dream, almost remembered on waking
But gone, almost, just out of reach,
There at the back of my minds eye
Imprinted, unfocused yet real.
Was it long, or in passing, brief,
When was it our fingertips touched?
Just beyond reach is a thought of you,
A word on the tip of my tongue,
A perfume caught, a breeze recalled,
A scent I know but can’t name.
If I don’t think about it, I’ll know.
Now it is, what it was, what it is.
I like it so.
I died out on these moors, my bones are here.
I feel them in the pooled reflections in mud,
the wind in the bare gorse and the crows’ flight.
Later, in the mines, under weight of rock
darkness enfolded around me. No hope.
I knew I would die when the lamp guttered out.
The next time I was spared the mines labour.
Instead they sent me off to their war in France.
No grave when a shell blows flesh apart.
Many times I have died at my fireside.
I once burned in flames for heresy.
Never have I died in the sea.
The death I would wish for is the pure one
with the mist and the crow on the moor,
to rest in my own land forever at home
The Dreaming Path 