napowrimo
When you were a lop eared rabbit
and I was a battered old bear
we rattled around the countryside
In an unbalanced three wheel cart.
On a whim you broke my heart.
But when my arm dropped off
and all my straw stuffing fell out
you pushed it all back in.
Only a very good friend would care enough to do that.
Ob-la-di Ob-la-da was a happy song
Sung in a happy time
But we were tangled in blue.
La la la la life goes on.
I found a new love
but I’m still wrapped up in you.
Poems used to come easy;
I could refine them or not as I wished.
Now I have to struggle and strain using only six lines
To squeeze out some half-born attempt
That ends as a whimpering flop.
I should really know when to stop.
There’s poetry on the horizon
on a far away beautiful island
surrounded by golden light.
Peninsulas, oceans and islands
blending in shades of soft clouds
fading away out of sight.
Ocean meets air and turns with the tides
and reality hides behind dreams.
I am cheating a little today but I don’t feel too guilty about it because this song made me remember what I felt like when I finished writing my unpublished novel and missed the characters I left behind in Arcadia.
The foghorn off the coast of Trevone
Warns of shoreline and shallows.
It’s a sound that could always lure me back home.
Night or day, its sense of loss swings round the bay
Echoing distance and sorrow.
When my life ends I will hear it again,
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Where are the angels?
where is the child
too young to understand
the darkness of this world?
I have no evidence.
The image I saw is lost.
I don’t want to find it again.
I could paint a river
in a wash of gentle colour
defined by softest blue
and tender grey and green.
To give it strange translucence
a splash of silver light.
I could paint a river
and never get it right.
Brush strokes can be deceptive
but when described with words
the image you will see
isn’t mine,
it’s yours.
Old words are valued by some
But old thoughts are lost in translation
Or twitched and reshuffled to serve a new master
In tales that dwell on disaster
Dispelled, disabled, diverted
distorted away from the truth
as history turns a new corner
and books rot away on the shelves
stained with mildew and dust.
To enter with dignity
I begin an adagio
Played in a dark minor key,
Serious and sombre,
A step to the side of my natural presence.
It attracts your straying attention.
Then a plaintive air played without pity
Lures you to sleep
with lavender scent on your pillow.
Mellow with sadness you dream of the hills
And wish you were free to wander.
Swiftly switching we play an expanded cantata
In brisk and rippling allegro
Shifting to pizzicato
Through gladness and frenzy
to uncontrolled magical madness
where, without looking back,
I chain your feet sole and heel to the dance floor
And retreat to the windswept moors.
The Dreaming Path 