Ends, Beginnings,Thoughtful Moments

For some reason I keep reading the 4th part of T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets
(MY brown highlights are thoughtful reflections about time, space, resolving difficulties, cold, warmth, living and the dead)

Little Gidding (where was a former 17th century monastery)

I  
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?
              If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
              If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.


II
Ash on and old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
       This is the death of air.
There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
       This is the death of earth.
Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
       This is the death of water and fire.
In the uncertain hour before the morning
     Near the ending of interminable night
     At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
     Had passed below the horizon of his homing
     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
     Between three districts whence the smoke arose
     I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
     Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
     And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
     The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
     I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
     Both one and many; in the brown baked features
     The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
     So I assumed a double part, and cried
     And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
     Knowing myself yet being someone other—
     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
     And so, compliant to the common wind,
     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
     Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
     I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
     My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
     These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
     By others, as I pray you to forgive
     Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
     For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
     In streets I never thought I should revisit
     When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
     To purify the dialect of the tribe
     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
     To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
     First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
     Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
     He left me, with a kind of valediction,
     And faded on the blowing of the horn.


III
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.


IV
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.


V
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

With thanks 

Bats, Bumblebees and Ants

Yesterday evening 

I took a walk in the inverse direction from that which I normally take.

Now descending into the valley,

climbing la falaise,  all the while witnessing the river glistening below

 where the golden bronzed hue of last year's oak leaves shimmer in setting sunlight.

This path took me zig-zagging through the village, 

past the house where friends are going to live, 

down to the chateau, 

along by the river, 

where here I come to the mill, 

where here I stand and hear a rushing river, 

marvelling as it flows, 

mesmerized by frothy scum heading downstream 

to pass stacks of tree debris piled high in twisted mangles, 

wedged between trees that stand with heads aloft, 

not yet victims to pounding elements.

I collect a trophy from the river sand 

banked onto the bank with flotsam and jetsam of branches in various stages of river decay. 

This trophy is a very straight six feet long branch, 

useful for a tomato plant stake, 

too long and heavy as a walking pole.

Not joy to see teeny weeny ants on my kitchen floor 

but oh, how I welcome bees with different coloured bottoms,

not on my kitchen floor 

but visiting the purple flowering plant in my garden. Its name I do not remember.

Joy to see bats at dusk as moonlight shines. 

I leave my courtyard light on, door open, as it is warmer than inside 

just for a while,

 before I light a fire to keep me warm throughout the coming night.

Joy to see a newly-mown lawn making visible clumps of white violets and purple, 

leaves of cowslips a little late becoming into flower.

It may get colder again, so shall wrap up the camellias.  

My mother spoke to me of snow falling.  

She was surprised to know today I have Spring!

Happiness is The Arrival of Spring

Hope

One always needs to see
HOPE in LIFE
as much as possible
for truly
it is often hidden in small gems
just around the corner
out of view
waiting only to be recognised.

I love
rime, rhythm, rhyme,
thyme, time
again
when to create pleasure
I choose and use the flavour
of walnut oil and lemon
roasted seeds of fennel
basil leaves or any herbs
plus crumbled hard goats' cheese
in a mixed raw salad
of beetroot, carrot, celeriac
with slivers of William pear,
It' s a treat to eat and share.

Hoping someone will be there
even if only me.

© RestlessinFrance

Stone
invited me to sit down,

made for just my size,
invited eyes to look before me,
at a bridge above a river
to watch English empty barque of water,
whereupon
five people boarded,
rowed
laden, towards a weir,
walked across a dam
laughing, loudly speaking
as English often do.
On an island,

first Sunday August,
if early enough
to bag one's place,
spectacular fireworks can be seen
in an hour of an evening
from the very best espace.

Mouse no. 2

It had a little friend 

who also met its end! 

Should I laugh
when in the bath
I caught a thought
that
I can't be squeamish
When a little peevish.
I can't be amorous
when there's more than one mouseamus
mus musculus in my old stone houseamus.
Poor little mite, because
it didn't have a speedy loss
of life like its friend
but bait number 3 is set for another end.
It's really not a laugh!

Leisure

... for me is difficult to achieve. Really I am not sure what it means.  It is hard to sit and do nothing these days, although certainly this kind of heat helps.  BUT I DO... I sit and browse the internet until I am BORED... and this doesn't help me as the screen becomes an addiction. Working at a friend's house for four days has caused a certain exhaustion,  but I will rebound.  There are loads of jobs to be achieved, including sitting still if I can to do accounts, paperwork, planning, domestic duties, etcetera.
Exhaustion brings the first line of this poem into my head as I wonder about the meaning of life, which I know IS: BE HAPPY, HAVE FUN, KEEP MOVING, BE KIND TO OTHERS.
However, I envy those who appear to LIVE and JUST BE whilst seemingly having fun, doing not a lot. Oh, in England when in the company of a lot of people... there was time to natter, time to play with children, time to eat, time to have fun, time to have Leisure. 

Leisure by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care, 

We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

The internet allows access to information, although I take some with a pinch of salt because not all of it is always factual. However, on Wikipedia we can read about this Welsh born poet.  The life of  W.H. Davies was quite remarkable for the man's determination to succeed in whatever he did, despite his atrocious injury. He had a colourful life which makes mine seem so dull.

Which brings a reminder of a traditional ditty that I used to play on the accordion when I was about 10 years old! Evidently it pre-dates the reign of James II, originating from a French chanson. I wonder which one? There are many versions but this one is from Yorkshire. 

  Begone Dull Care    
Begone, dull care! I prithee begone from me;  Begone, dull care! Thou and I can never agree.

Long while thou hast been tarrying here, And fain thou wouldst me kill;

But i' faith, dull care, Thou never shalt have thy will.

 

Too much care Will make a young man grey; Too much care Will turn an old man to clay.

My wife shall dance, and I shall sing, So merrily pass the day;

For I hold it is the wisest thing, To drive dull care away.

 

Hence, dull care, I'll none of thy company; Hence, dull care, Thou art no pair for me.

We'll hunt the wild boar through the wold, So merrily pass the day;

And then at night, o'er a cheerful bowl, We'll drive dull care away. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land

A friend says that I live in Cloud Cuckoo Land with a fanciful imagination and unsatisfied desires. This is true.  There are so many things I would like to do in life but feel held back by fears or lack of funds, courage, time, skills and talents!   Maybe this is the same for everyone?

Although I know what the phrase means I thought I would turn to my great educator, the world wide web, and so Wiki says:

The reference comes from The Birds, a play by Aristophanes in which Tereus helps Pisthetairos ("Mr. Trusting") and Euelpides ("Mr. Hopeful") erect a perfect city in the clouds, to be named Cloud Cuckoo Land.    That is just so fascinating.  I have improved the poem for the friend:

Cloud Cuckoo Land perfection is grand.

Hinting that I may, be unaware or fey,
Deranged and marginised, naive on every side.

Ever an optimist, it's true, happy is better than the horrid blues,

Living needs a hint of hope,  than to go to bed and mope! 

Life is lovely in a daisy dream world, more fun than being an unhappy bunny girl

When reality brings me to earth with a fall, Lovelier to have dreamed than not dreamed at all.

Two hares loping

The rain is thrashing noisily down as I type....... now 21h42 and after 2 minutes it stops!!!!! (the pluviometer recorded 18mm of rain between then and the morning)

Earlier today I wrote:

I have never ever thought of using the expression “drunk with tiredness” but to day was such a day. I'd had only 33cl bottle of beer the previous evening to accompany a quarter of a salmon flan quiche and very simple salad.  So alcohol was not involved. When one lives alone one can do what one likes!!!!

Then later:

After almost 12 hours in bed I awoke at 9am and returned to bed an hour later, awoke after two hours sleep and returned to bed another 2 hours later then awoke at 5h30pm! I felt quite wobbly and drunk..... really weird ..... ashamed at the waste of a day so decided to drag the boots onto my feet, don the plastic lightweight mac and take an umbrella to walk, to split the mind of thought.  It was hard to start but I progressed along the chemins for two and a half hours (10.60km) without seeing a soul….. “just walk” was a message to myself.  I became quite hungry but told myself this was good for the stomach to yearn for food.  I planned the quickie meal I would cook.  I thought about what could happen if I were to ever just get up and walk south!  I need an ultra lightweight tent, an ultra lightweight bedroll and sleeping bag, simple clothing and boots.  Would I be brave enough to camp toute seule in wild France? Camp out means to erect the tent and sleep then to get up and walk.
Hm?
If I were to have stopped for every nightingale I'd heard I would never have got back home...

Two hares loping away before me, their false eyes on ears watch, follow I do not dare..
a broken heart for where I saw majestic deer in love last year, 
now the tiny patch of woodland coppiced almost bare.

Surrounded by fields with yellow scent of mustard oilseed flowers..
strategic passing of puddles where water flowed from low field levels
Spring is the sound of an automatic air gun popping to scare birds from crops.

Partridges and pheasants bustle busily across seemingly barren fields..
two French matted Baudet de Poitou asses exchange greetings across a fence.

Oh so good that it did not rain and cause me to become wet. 
Oh so proud that I can walk such a distance for nigh on 3 hours 
though sometimes not stay awake for such time in my own home!  

A second anniversary

From tears and demolition

From hard graft and sweat

From vinyl, glue and rubble 

From a house and garden burdened with wood, nails, metal, and other stuff

To two rooms clutter free.

To laughter, leisure, relaxation, pleasure

To furnished and finished floors

To sleep and reflection 

For work is not yet finished.

Tears continue from time to time

Without skills for the next round of home improvement

Energy levels and motivation need to be grasped

So much has been achieved but I have wasted time

and now I try and get a different grip on the future 

and not on the floor!

These photographs show how The Small Room  has developed.
Two years ago I signed the Acte De Vente and I became an owner of French property.

Recently, cousins made encouraging comments about how beautiful the finished rooms are with the observation that the property IS A LARGE PROJECT, of which I do not need a reminder.  An English couple a few weeks ago suggested that I / we had achieved a lot in two years.  It's true if I could re-run the video...but on the other hand I am capable of complete and utter laziness coupled with exhaustion and fatigue, of which I am not proud.

House ownership requires responsibility. Now I felt THAT in UK, with the three properties I had part-owned or owned entirely, but nothing prepared me for the vision, courage and responsibility required for not only this property, but also for myself.

My learning is not yet over for Life continues. I've had to grow up, stop being parented, stop being needy. These behaviour patterns developed in life but especially after M.E. and then after a total collapse just under a decade ago .......... there are no excuses. I've had to learn to make decisions and choices and budget large sums of money that scare me.  I have failed at times.  I'm scared of having savings and scared of having none.  I need to develop bravery and courage.
The trauma in the last few years has been quite damaging.  I've hurt people and been hurt myself.  I haven't always been very nice and have shamed and been ashamed. I fully understand why events turned the way they have,  and although I know why it did not need to have been like that. I am in remorse and this holds me back.

I have had to learn to live alone without the support of my adult children and without acquaintances nearby.  I am grateful that my son helped me.  I am grateful that my daughter nags me from a distance.  I am also grateful that a friend returned to help me, to give support, to give technical and practical assistance.  Despite all the waters that have flowed under the bridge and all the emotions that have accompanied the tidal waves, and despite the viewpoints of others who were hurt in the flak, the friend has been without question the only one who could have helped me in such extended support, given the circumstances that I chose and given the circumstances that I have not addressed.

I can't say that I'm happy on this second anniversary, but I am happier than in June 2010.  I can't say that I am sad.  I can say that from time to time I suffer from acute anxiety with fear that appears to paralyze my body and brain and I feel as if I have lost the plot of sanity. I think it comes of living alone.  I can say that I am beginning to look more clearly at possibilities for the future.  I can say that I try to be more positive and optimistic and go with the flow.  I try to make boundaries.

So during all this  learning of self-awareness, I want to live and not always be renovating.  There are so many other things in life.  I know that I am on avoidance of some things and have been for many years.  Time to address issues.  It will be wonderful when rooms don't look like a workshop and when I have some proper storage facilities.

And so on this day,  I celebrate survival and will try to address the goals which need to be achieved within the next year.  I will try to be a better parent and better homeowner, a better friend to everyone including my inner me.

Lovely walk

Sun shimmering on noisy waters of a rushing river,
light blitzing pupils in the eyes as sun shafts beam fragmented in the liquid,
purple toothwort, not spotted yesterday, parasitic on roots of trees,
step down steps that could easily be slipped upon,
climb up slopes of rocky terrain where rain made mud,
Limbering, liberating limbs.

Diversionary Thinking

I struggled to move. Thinking was all I could do!

Where is inspiration?

Where is energy?

Where is diversion but not avoidance? 

Where is action but not reaction?

Where is forwards and onwards?

Where is creativity?

Where is motivation?

When the mind whispers insistently, subtly, softly stay in bed and not move

When the back screams sharp acute pain to keep still

When mental argument ensues because

the body has to be warm

the body has to put logs on a fire

the body has to put hot water in a rubber bottle

the body has automatic functions relating to food and drink

It cannot just lie prone when it is tired or lazy or in pain.

The mind and the body have a hidden agenda; they meet.

The mind and body argue but my ear cannot hear their silent dispute
The mind takes control and makes the body pause to rest

The mind takes control and makes the body move to act
The body takes the mind into control and keeps it working

For life never stops, until it stops, and does not breathe.

The mind and the body are the inspiration for the automatic next step 

of whatever it is that needs to be done for as long as life survives

They do what needs to be done.

They take hold and control decisions if one waits sufficiently long.

They move limbs forwards and onward.s

They are energy making energy.

They create order out of chaos.

They motivate and react to make action.

They address what is avoided

The diversions arrive.

There has to be mobility of mind and body.

All this happens if one lies still, quietly alone for sufficiently long without interruption.

The mind decides when it is time to sleep or to wake, to read or to ponder, to drink or to eat, to listen to music, to create, to shower or to bathe, to go out, stay indoors, to contact another or keep alone, to laugh or to cry, to sing or  reflect, to pull up the weeds, to plant a bulb, to dig the earth, to contact the soil for which we owe a life.

The mind controls the body in everything we do, think or say.

It is automatic.

It is such beauty.

It happens without any effort on our part.
See. 
Wait.

Down to the floor again and again,
whether I am in the shower or wherever I am
with unwanted thoughts, sometimes no thought at all.

Then without anyone's help I notice I pick myself up, bounce back, get moving.

The screaming back and the screaming mind quieten and eventually remain silent for a while.

They have not won.

The thoughtful negative mind eventually finds strength to become positive.
A smile creeps in.
Always it is so.
HOPE on the horizon begins to shine like the sun.
The mind allows contentment to return

The mind allows body movement to lift up from the horizontal

to stand vertical to face the world
to win against adversity
until winning cannot lose and loss succumbs to another world.

How fascinating to see and to wait.

How wonderful to know that pain is inconstant and moves away.
How grateful to know that NOW is not the time to not move and NOW is not the time to not think.
Life thankfully continues. 

Jewels for a Blackbird

Observations

I've watched the blackbird hungrily eating these beautiful pendants hanging in a garden not far from the river.  
I had a robin to help, scuttling in the borders of the courtyard when the birdseed was under several centimetres of snow, here more sheltered than in the back garden.
There is a miniature cave of bubble wrap over my bright red Camelia which was in flower shortly before the North Wind brought its gift of snow and ice.  
A cosy cave of bubble wrap where the wind has whipped it adrift and the darling little fluffedupballofredwhitegrey was sheltered in there saying "Hey feed me" as I peered out of the kitchen window. 
Blackbird, robin, blue-tit and long-tailed tit have been seen visiting my garden.  

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Today I was singing and dancing 
as I stepped through the snowy hedged woodland 
where the angled branches of the trees criss-crossed each other 
as the pattern was highlighted by the white snow resting on the tops of the lines of the branches. 
I had no camera. 
Today I was singing and dancing 
along the snowpacted lane feeling the joy of living 
to witness such regal majesty of the wintry phenomena of frozen water 
and the prints imprinted of animals, humans, wheeled vehicles, skis and tobaggons; 
all had been there before before me with tracks to places known and unknown. 
Today I was singing and dancing 
to let the bright light into my eyes and heart 
and let it make me tired and content.

Wrapped up well - a sort of poem

Wrapped up well

Walking down the lane

Freezing air shock to respiratory system

Struggling to keep an even pattern

Breathing natural replacement of oxygen

Striving to breath correctly in through nose, out through mouth.

Steaming spectacles

Worn to prevent wind whipping into eyes

Doesn’t stop streaming tear glands

Like an old biddy.

Move arms as well as legs to keep warm.

Take hand out of glove to press a button for a photo.

Immediately fingers and thumbs are nipped.

Quickly enter glove again.

Move legs in a specific stride.

Regain a rhythm, an unconscious achievement.

After a while breathing becomes natural.
Doesn’t require concentration.
 

The body feels no cold

even though wind cuts like a knife on ice on the forehead,

the only skin exposed under a hat

scarves wrapped around neck, nose and mouth.

 

Study the tractor in the field

Using to advantage the frozen ground

Dig the bucket under the mighty rock

To and fro he works at it from all sides

slowly exposing it from the earth into the trailer.

Farmers see advantage in all weathers.

It makes me happy.

Wend my way into wind with lengthening shadows before me.

Turn at the junction.  
Head back

with sun before me now shining warmly on my face 

as robin flutters overhead in the branches of a tree.

Jewelled beads of ice shimmer in hedgerow skeletons.

Look at a little old lady in a purple coat and white hat.

Oh, am I like that
in my black snowman’s outfit?

Wrapped up warm, 
many layers,

breathing in the freshness from Siberia,

Happy to not be there.

Happy to be here.

Winter Parts - a prosepoem

Winter Parts

PART ONE

Wrap up well my mother said

as I ventured into sub-zero temperature

for a walk.

There's no work on my house.

PART TWO

Last year the diary said

there was ice on the roads

after skidding up the hill.

There was no work on my house.

Sat in the cold and the sunshine warm
of the lightest room of the darkest house

hey a bit like today
did the finance in a room with light daylight
and electric light

whilst the woodburner glows bright.

Last year we were glad to return

because next day news

reported

hospitals

patiently healing traffic accident patients.

PART THREE

Keep the log fires burning said my friend

churning out heat

requires careful observation
listen to the moment to add a next log

before embers crash

into ash

and flames die.

PART FOUR

Last year today

I finished a book entitled

The Suckers Kiss

then got depressed.

This year today

I finished a book entitled

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
Roger Deakin

Printed posthumously.
I didn't get depressed. 

Sobbed

is not the word

as I once stood dumbstruck

in a Southwold bookshop

as Wildwood told me news
that he had died quite sadly
before his time.
I never knew.
A wonderful kind and gentle man
funny and serious
interested in the natural existence
of worldly things.

PART FIVE

Today I am happy

Delighted to know the snow

Is helping trees plants and humans

Shed germs and diseases.

Pleased to see jewelled ice beads

Clinging to twigs

Sparkling magically in sunlight.

Laughing at absurdities

Which are necessary learning tools.

Smiling at realisation

Feeling the key of why I can love so many people and so many things,
even those who do me wrong.

I love the snow: it does not love me but it matters not.

I love my hot water bottle: it does not love me but it matters not.

I love my cat and she loves me but it matters not.

I love my friends and family in ways they do not know

It is not for them.
They love me but

They do not have to love me for I love myself,

better than I did before.

My love is my love:

It is not for others. Need not be reciprocated.

This is what is making me feel so happy!
Now I understand. 
There's no work on my house but there's work in my head.

 

A thankyou tribute to my lovely daughter

It was thirty four years ago today

I was struggling to make my way,

With sliced oranges in a preserving pan

Making marmalade for me and my man

So may I introduce to you

My daughter naturally true

Miss Happiness was her name

And for that I'm glad I am to blame

For calling her Felicity

'cos with speed and velocity

She arrived into this wonderful world

A beautiful pink baby pearl.
ohhhhhh
Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
It's wonderful to be here
It gives me such a thrill
She's such a lovely audience
and makes me feel so good
I don't really want to stop the show

but I thought you might like to know

I am happy just today to say

a very very Happy birthday.

And so it was that I started at about 5h in the morning, stage 2 of my special motherly recipe for making marmalade which involved cutting finely by hand the seville oranges, sweet oranges and lemons on that second day of making the best marmalade in the world!  At about 7h or later in the evening it was jarred.  And so, I was free to give birth for I was elephantine and if I sat down could not get up again.  I too was jarred with stirring and jangled because I was having this baby.  I refused to go to the hospital earlier because of frightful experiences with what happened when I gave birth the first time with my dearest son,  and so I waited until I was sure that those waves of pain were the real thing.  When I arrived at the hospital at about 20h30 I told the nurses “I am having a baby”.  I remember the look on Matron’s face as she smilingly and kindly spoke “Of course you are”.   Why else would I be arriving at a maternity hospital like a beached whale?   However, I insisted urgently that I WAS HAVING the baby!  It was a small cottage hospital. Nonchalantly, they allowed me to go to the toilet unaided, whereupon the waters broke, I collapsed on the floor yet had the good sense to pull the alarm cord and so they came running in their uniforms. Within a few minutes at 8h53pm the darling Felicity was born!  Miss Happiness.  I felt that I was lucky to now have one son and one daughter. It was my wish come true.

She hasn’t always caused happiness to either herself or others, being a very challenging person, but the worry was well worth it because I now feel a great affinity with her, and the more we see each other, as we get older, the more we seem to get on well together.  But of course I cannot speak for her.  I praise her for her ability as a mother in coping with a parenting situation that is very different to my experience as a mother, as was my own experience different to the trials of my own mother.  I respect daughters.  I respect  mothers.  I respect what supportive father's do too.  Being a conscientious parent is not the easiest of jobs and it IS a job,  it is a career and as mothers we work hard for the heartache of pain AND joy that sons and daughters bring to us.
My daughter has a wealth of ideas and self confidence. She has many creative talents and abilities.   We come from a family where the women appear to be late developers.  I am hoping that in 2012, or whenever, she will find a way to use her skills, interests and talents in a way that brings more confidence, success and happiness.  May doors open for her.    Happy Birthday, my lovely one.

28 January 1978 Top of the Pops chart
Number 1 was "Stayin Alive" by the BeeGees
Number 20  was "What's your Name?" by Lynrd Skynrd

Sunday

I just had to complete my choice for the  "Days of the Week" songs! 

 Queen - Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon - 1975

Who indeed has any answers? 
Neither you, nor me
nor the wind, nor the sea
nor the ocean, nor the sun
nor the birds, in the trees
  yet to walk outside in the wild
seems to quell the quest
for the search of a nest
where I belong,
with one to share,
to sing my song.

Christmas Greetings 2011

I can't see Christmas robins, nor doves a-cooing-so
Cat never neared a cradle in a stable 2000 years ago.
I see that ox and donkey arrived without ado
but ostrich was excluded and terrible tiger too.
Camels got an invite, as did three wise Eastern kings
giving gifts of gold and myrrh, frankincense and things.
Bankers and financiers mumbled murmurs in disguise
and thought the sleepy shepherds were sensible and wise
to gift soft lambs and washable wool, never to be fleeced.
Herod later came to tell that he wished the baby seized.
Frankincense was costly, as indeed it is today,
signals opulence in churches, mosques, special for the Lord's day.

Will Ethiopians continue to export this wonderful aromatic resin,
When Boswellia trees fail to reproduce for the Christmas season?
Will they continue to tree-tap and let long-beetle attack,
let cattle graze at bark, for this amazing aphrodisiac,
let it no longer help depression, nor give medicinal purpose,
nor serve the perfume industry?  O yay, it'll cost more to purchase.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 2011