Water carves memories
In rock, greens aeons
With moss, breeds beech and oak
In quiet earth where scents
Of ancient leaf mould
Breathe secrets, and stillness
Fills with river murmur
Rising from the depths
Of the chasm where the water
Courses and buffets a way
Through jumbled stone,
Flinging spray in rainbow drops
As it tumbles over boulders
And swirls past juts of root
And spools round snags,
And slides round outcrops
And glides over pebble beds
Pours through the narrows
And plunges over gritstone sills
To spill into peaty pools
Beneath the trees,
And then flows on.
The water holds a dream
Of earth and time,
Sparkling with the sun’s wit
In the liquid laughter
Of days.
Blue iris were your favourite flowers:
You said they were a promise kept,
Like rainbows seen through April showers.
A greening hope in after-hours
Awakes where winter earth has slept;
Blue iris were your favourite flowers,
A vivid promise that empowers
And blooms from tears the skies have wept,
Like rainbows seen through April showers.
When loss destroys and darkness lours
Love fills the place where terror leapt;
Blue iris were your favourite flowers
Renewing faith where sorrow scours,
They soothe the soul where doubt once crept,
Like rainbows seen through April showers.
Remembrance lives and thus embowers
The heart from whence the fear is swept;
Blue iris were your favourite flowers;
Like rainbows seen through April showers.
Let us walk among the quiet places
of this earth, among the woods
and hills, and share the peace
that’s only found in open spaces.
Let us watch the changing light
and shifting forms of cloud
where wind and sunshine put
the shadows of the storm to flight.
Let us sit at dusk and see
the stars prick out across the sky
while blue deepens to dark
and shade is green beneath the trees.
Let us not despise familiar things
because they’re free or commonplace
and we become blind to all
the simplest pleasures living brings.
Dust cleaves unto dust,
A mutual attraction
Subject to censure,
Swept aside and shaken out,
But never entirely dispatched,
Merely displaced – for a while.
Yet cleanliness is far removed from godliness
Since dust was divinely inspired
And thus was given life.
Being subtle, it never overtly resists
The hand that seeks to banish it,
But it always returns,
Unseen, quietly resolved,
As though a vestige of some former will remained,
Translated into mute intent;
A dry reminder not to squander time.
Its presence is suggestive
Of transitions, past and yet to come.
Dust is infinitely patient, uncritical
Of all the tortuous roads we choose;
Because it knows that all roads lead
Towards our ultimate reunion.
We turned the horses out at fade of light
And saw the moonrise on the meadow’s crest
As brilliant stars announced the coming night
And fiery gleams sank slowly in the west.
On hill and hollow frost had lain all day
Thick-furring turf and tree and hawthorn hedge
With ice, and bound like iron the rutted clay
And rimed the furrows at the pasture’s edge.
Its beauty held us and we lingered yet
Both careless then of time, the passing hour
That brings the silent blight; the unseen threat
Whose stealthy touch destroys the budding flower.
The carefree day is gone that found us there:
Mere shadow, glimpsed like breath in frosty air.
When I returned from Africa it rained:
For days on end the leaden skies poured forth
Their store of water and the land was stained
And dark, and air was drenched with scent of earth;
And water gushed in streams and flowed in rills,
And weighed with droplets heavy flower heads,
And dripped from trees, and clouded all the hills,
And scattered petals over garden beds.
The country held communion with the rain,
A sweet libation to a grateful soil
That yielded up its own green soul again
And graced with plenty all the farmer’s toil.
So far from drought and parching desert plain,
I offered up my heartfelt thanks for rain.
Its was a busy day today,
Sunny and Cold.
An Old man proposed,
But I had to refuse.
He wasn't rich enough.
An old man passed blood today
Kidney-dead blood,
Sticky, red on the floor,
Took me ages to clean up.
An old man choked today,
They rushed for oxygen,
But it was too late.
Potato at ninty-five
When semolina's safer!
An old man cried today
When a toe came off.
Gangrene they say..
Smelt foul and the blood
sticky on the floor
I mopped up.
An old man died today.
Gained four wheel promotion
In the mortuary race.
They laid him out
in a torn sheet
I saw it.
We all had tea today,
Quite out of coffee and bleach.
No stores, you see,
So we're low all round.
But it was fine today
Sunny and cold
It was autumn today.
I know it.
I stare, weary, at the world with two pale eyes,
Such world as comes to this confined room,
And return to the days of my youth
When the flesh was firm on my bones,
The skin untouched by the grooves of time.
My tongue, a stranger to coherent speech,
Wonders at its former volubility.
My wandering mind searches all its wastes,
All its knowledge for some memory of the past.
There were so many.
I clench my gnarled fist to the light
And dimly perceive the knotted blue of vein
And the pimpled skin of a plucked chicken
Just so am I
My feeble lungs draws shallow breaths of stale air.
And one breath is all breaths together.
The husk yhat lived will die, decayh.
Sixty summers ago I knew the girl
who leans on my cot side,
The one with spring in her step
her face, her eyes,
Where winter and spring are closely met
Scarce, to me, known apart.
Speak of the years between then and now,
of the turning, the fearful change
that overtook me unaware:
of the a day to die.
When the fires grow cold
And the downwind of a dark lagoon I lie,
Cut free and waiting to sink.
I speak not of death, but of the Spring.
I know that we shall meet again
In some other place and time,
Beyond the present power of thought,
In some unknown other clime,
For death is soul’s translation
Into oneness with the light,
Beyond the reach of hand to touch
And yet forever in our sight,
For those we’ve loved dwell with us
In the memories of the heart,
As distant as the furthest stars–
And closer than a thought
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hidden Agenda
Whose was the eye that kept in view
The work you did, the all you gave,
And, mindful of your talents here,
Recruited these beyond the grave?
The task you left was not complete:
So much remained, is yet to do.
What urgent business called you hence?
What other presence summoned you?
What e’er the purpose in your going
We cannot see or understand:
Why would you give the guiding torch
Into another person’s hand?
You would not lightly leave us here,
Unless to serve some higher cause:
Who summoned you to leave this place
Is one whose power must give us pause.
'e were a proper sticky-fingered git
Wi' no remorse. 'e bragged 'e could nick owt,
An' did. For years 'e gorraway wi' it.
It were a purloined trolley gorrin though,
On t'narrer towpath down beside t'canal:
It veered, an' dragged 'im into t'cut below
'e couldn't swim, an' so when 'e were found.
It were too late, cos t'thievin' toad were drowned.
Afterwards
I’d like to think some words of mine
Survived into some distant future time;
That someone, reading, found a thought
That resonated in his mind,
And by that means I touched a chord
In him as others long since dead
Have done in me. And he might smile
To hear the echo of his inmost thought
Returned, and know that he was not alone.
Within this bandaged blackness I have dreamed
A miracle; imagined damaged nerves
Renewed, empowered to admit the light:
And I have grasped at rainbows in the dark,
And reached for meaning in such terms as blue
And red, the deep complexities of green.
Of all that mystery it is the word
That most intrigues and subtly teases thought.
For green informs the woodland air in spring,
And clover meadows sweet with drying hay;
The susurrus of wind through barley fields,
Or crash of breakers on a sun-warmed shore;
The taste of new-shelled peas, and peppermint,
Asparagus, angelica and rain.
And green is thick-ribbed linden leaves, and moss
On walls, and soft-furred hazel nuts, and spikes
On holly, spiteful nettles, thistle spines.
I have a sense of green’s diversity,
Its many shades of meaning, though the last
Eludes me still. But soon, the doctors say,
The truth will out. And if the miracle
Remains a dream there’s nothing lost, for I
Shall have exactly what I had before.
I am prepared–but, oh, the hope, the hope.
What was it like in those last ten days
In the limbo of between?
Did you fight with death in the darkness
Regretting what might have been?
What did you sense in those last ten days?
A release from body’s pain?
Did you dread the fading of the light,
Or trust there was all to gain?
What did you dream in those last ten days
In the darkness there alone?
Did you long to leave this earthly life
For the joy of going home?
What were you shown in those last ten days?
The state of grace to be?
Did you long to soothe the fear in us
Who grieved to set you free?
Cat's Epitaph
Here lies poor Smudge our feline friend
Whose passing now we mourn:
Misjudgement caused this tabby’s end
And left us all forlorn.
He never learned the Highway Code
So thought that he had got
Sufficient time to cross the road,
But, sadly, he had not.
Writer’s Block / Not A-Mused
In pursuing a writing career
One requires that the Muse should be near,
But the bitch comes and goes
And one just never knows
If or when she might deign to appear.
Spell Cheque / Double Chequeing
Wen yew edit you’re work its sew clear
That yore spell chequer kneads two bee ne’er:
Then ewe no Yule knot make
Any Scilly mist ache
In the storeys ye rite threw the yare.
Special Agent
A literary agent from Gwent
Ignored half the work he was sent,
But a few sugar grains
And some dark coffee stains
Made it look like he’d been most intent.
Critical Decision
A publishing house in Tibet
Issued crits guaranteed to upset:
“Notwithstanding the hype,
This submission is tripe:
Don’t give up the day job just yet!”
Reaching for the Stars
A literary agent from Troon
Had a slush-pile that reached to the moon.
When he found two new stars
It was half-way to Mars,
So the timing was most opportune.
Copyright © 2024 Joanna Fulford (Jane Croft) - All Rights Reserved