Poetry

We talked to our kids about souls

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

hard to be a parent sometimes when they ask these questions but good for your own clear thinking and lovely too, especially when years later you realise they took all you said on board and kept it
(except my son wanted to come back as a teddy bear and i imagine he must have changed his mind about that by now)

Andrea Badgley's avatarButterfly Mind

Swinging Bridge at Babcock State Park, West Virginia, autumn on andreabadgley.com Swinging Bridge at Babcock State Park, West Virginia

“Hey Mom, are trees living things or living beings?”

Our nine year old son looked into the forest then up at me as we hiked side by side along a gurgling brook. His dad and sister walked a few steps ahead of us. Upstream was the Glade Creek Grist Mill in West Virginia, a rustic wooden building with a pitched roof. Today its wet planks were framed by yellowing autumn trees.

“I guess that depends on what you mean by living being,” I said. “I think of a being as — ” I tried to think of words that would be familiar to him. I failed. “As a sentient being — something that has a soul.” The path was littered in gold, red, and toast brown leaves, and I kicked at a drift with my leather hiking shoe.

“Personally, I think of trees…

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Reunion

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

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

Sonnet 116 – Shakespeare

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

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

At the Water Meadow

/ A. Gouedard / 1 Comment

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.

 

Animals

/ A. Gouedard / 1 Comment

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

Beyond the Loss

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

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

Fingertips

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

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.

The Death of my Blood

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

 

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