We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
childhood
Day 4 – Cavalier
That muddy hill seemed long
as my bike hurtled along.
We were playing at cavaliers.
I was way out at the front
shifting my gears,
yelling a homespun song.
The bike was my horse
(imagined of course),
it was half a mile
to the gates,
slammed shut in my track,
level crossings were always my curse.
A steam train was coming fast.
The centuries mixed
as my wheels spun around.
I skidded and fell on my arse,
straight into the ancient past.
I haven’t got back
Cromwell won’t give me a pass!
To Lizzie (when we were eight)
I remember you little girl,
I remember you so well,
(still with a smile in my eyes)
and our home in the hidden hedgerow
and your pink tray with painted roses
you’d dragged from a tangled ditch
and scrubbed clean as a whistle
to serve me tea, one day, long ago,
when i returned from my wandering hunt
in the unfenced, treasure filled hills.
I remember your bouncing braids
as you ran and skipped on ahead,
to the shade of the bluebell woods.
I remember your chapped lips,
dry, from long summers suns;
the lips that i kissed so chastely
and thought it a daring deed
that I waited for days to repeat,
knowing you wanted me
to practice more kisses in play.
my princess of summer meadows,
my princess of virginal snows,
my princess of warm rains and ice,
my princess of the beckoning
who thought she was only a girl
we knew how to savour life
we knew how to live for one day,
and never for yesterday.
we only wished our tomorrow
to be the same as today,
in the simple trust that it would.
now, i remember you, little girl,
i wish that it always was
Brave New World
No poem today – just this …………..
I just saw a news article saying that Amazon would like to deliver our parcels by drone. The advantage of this, to the customer, is to get packages faster – I don’t need them faster. Amazon Prime is fast enough and what’s so wrong with waiting?
I like to meet the delivery guy at the door. I don’t want to live in a fully automated world with a sky full of drones. The kids love the idea of course, but me? NO THANKS!
This set me to thinking.
I grew up in a world where the sky was for the sun, the moon, stars, stars you could see clearly at night, clouds, rain, birds and planes. It wasn’t full of satellites bringing us bad news faster or surveillance cameras protecting us from what the world has become.
I am so glad I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I grew up in both rural and urban locations and it was always safe to go out. True, I did meet a couple of pedophile predators but my instincts on that were strong enough not to be lured and that instinct works face to face. There were always more vulnerable children of course but it’s far more dangerous to be groomed on the Internet.
A friend of mine, who is a teacher, recently told me that she read one of my poems about rural peace to a class of Hispanic urban teenagers. The nature images in the poem were from my childhood and were things they had never experienced or seen. One girl had tears in her eyes by the end of the poem. She said she wished she could go to a place like that. I wish she could too.
I didn’t have a mobile phone or Internet until my late 40’s and I communicated just the amount I chose to communicate. I even chose at one time in my 20’s to have no phone at all. I survived! Imagine! Fancy that! I didn’t die in an emergency or get stranded. I knew people. I had nearby neighbours who talked to me. The people in the local shops knew me. I was not in any way ‘cut off’ despite the fact I lived on the moors then and had to walk to the village.
I pity the children now with all their gadgets and computer games and no real freedom. Wandering the outside world with your friends or alone and taking an occasional risk is part of growing up. I suppose they will be better suited to the world ahead than I am but at least I know how to live when the power goes off.
It was also so much healthier to be out in the fields building hedgerow dens. In the summer holidays I was out with my bike or playing in the fields and woods from 9am to 6pm when I came home because I wanted my dinner and my packed food supply had run out.
When I lived in town I was in no danger either. One stabbing in our town was a major sensation, totally unheard of at the time. So, OK, London had the Kray twins and their like but criminals basically fought each other for territory and would never have taken an interest in the likes of me or the general public. Look at the world right now. Look at the gun crimes. The Kray Twins pale in comparison.
I think we have to admit that the world has gone seriously wrong and we can be sure that every bit of bad news will bombard us very fast while we are told so little about good things. Stressful isn’t it.
I am very sorry for the kids, but I am selfishly glad I am getting old because it means I wont have to see so much of the future.
I say ”thank you so very much for my childhood” because I am one of the last of the paradise kids.
A Souvenir of Shakespeare
A Souvenir of Shakespeare
In a bay window, at a dark oak table, my grandfather sits after breakfast, in a room that smells faintly of pepper when the sun shines in and warms the white table-cloth. My grandmothers green breasted budgie repeats and repeats good morning as he gazes at himself in a tiny mirror. A laburnum branch taps on the window, glossy dark stem and yellow flowers.
The smell of bacon and egg lingers as my grandfather puts on his glasses and reaches for the newspaper. By his hand sits a heavy glass oval ashtray and under the glass, in the centre, a face gazes out, oval too, bearded, in sepia. The ashtray is always there and never used. Age four or five I ask,
‘Who is that man?’’
‘’That’s Old Will,’’ says my Grand-dad, as if it’s his best mate he rubs shoulders with often.
‘’Who is Old Will?’’ I ask, because I enjoy a story and I like to keep my Grand-dad talking to me.
‘’William Shakespeare, the worlds greatest Bard,’’ says my Grand-dad.
‘’What’s a Bard?’’
‘’He wrote wonderful plays for the theatre and poems and he told about all the things people think and feel and do and why.’’
‘’What did he say?’’ I ask, impressed because that sounded very clever.
‘’Oh, lots of things,’’ says my Grand-dad with a smile.
‘’But what things?’’
‘’All the world’s a stage and we but players on it, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, to sleep perchance to dream, to be or not to be that’s the question.’’
‘’To be or not to be what?’’ I ask, falling into my Grand-dads well laid trap.
‘’Well that’s the question, isn’t it’’ he says with a grin. ‘’Now go out and play and let me read my paper.’’
To be, to not be.
How can we ever not be?
Would we be again?
To be or not to.
Was I not before now then?
What if I wasn’t?
Being, not being?
Do they feel very different?
Could I switch between?
My head starts to hurt.
I think I am glad I am
here, now, being.
I run out to the garden to play.
The Dreaming Path 