A Lifetime Away

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Roland's Ragbag

Guisborough Priory – North Yorkshire, England

Three hundred miles
and a lifetime away
from the place where I was born
the memories are vivid
burned into my soul
heightened by distance
by time past

Ghosts of my past
inhabit my dreams
chances gone begging
opportunities missed
loving and leaving
a heritage of hope
bringing certitude
where doubt once held sway.

I loved and love
those dark purple hills
outcrops and the Nab
towering over the town
Cass Rock
where Sisyphus finally capitulated

Beyond these,
just rolling
heather clad moor
soft dales
grey-green heathland,
burnt golden yellow gorse
and swaying bracken

And on the scarp slope
the detritus of iron mines
defunct air shafts
ancient workings
the ruins of hard labour
and alongside these
pyramids of shale and slag
creating their own foothills
bracken spores now binding
their surfaces
reconstructing life
nature reclaiming its own

And the view which nurtured me
from my school room
of graveyard and priory
its arched east window
tracery shattered
configuring my sky

The ancient stone dovecote
now sheltering jackdaws
ravens, blackbirds.
the Norman arched gateway
still standing adrift
isolated from the remnants
of its dismantled
castellated walls
whose dispersed masonry
now furnishes
so many of the town’s dwellings

The mill pond stocked still
by the descendants of those
pre-dissolution carp
the Augustinians first introduced
fed and nurtured

The monk’s walk
cloistered
by beech and birch
sheltering silent contemplation
which
even now
as I tread in their footsteps
I replicate
in awe and reverence

And in the Apple Garth
where now the wheat
is harvested
still a silent windswept
arbour
now lovers
not penitents
linger
embrace
exchange kisses
and vows.

Thus am I now
beholden to the past
nurturer of my present
promise of my future

Roseberry Topping, Cleveland Hills, N.Yorkshire

Cricket, Love & Easter

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Roland's Ragbag

Three RICTAMETERS

A Rictameter is a fixed-syllabic poetry form, similar to the Haiku and the Cinquain ( Click here See my own cinquain in an earlier blog. ). The rictameter starts with a two-syllable word as the first line. Then the line length in syllables is consecutively increased by two, i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Then down again, from 8, 6, 4, 2. The final of the 9 lines is required to be the same two syllable word as in the opening line.

The format was created in the early 1990s by two cousins, Jason Wilkins and Richard Lunsford, for a poetry contest that was held as a weekly practice of their self-invented order, ‘The Brotherhood of the Amarantos Mystery’, which was apparently inspired by the Robin Williams film ‘Dead Poet’s Society’.

I have attempted three versions of this format below . . .

CRICKET

Cricket
Keep a straight bat
All that they throw at you
Face up to it with fortitude
Don’t be average be an all-rounder
And when it’s time to pull up stumps
Try to carry your bat
Don’t declare, that’s
Cricket.

LOVE

Love hurts
It burns the soul
From lust to jealousy
It does not let up from that pain
So put alongside with its times of bliss
The memories of anguished dread
When all seemed to be dead
All reason says
Love hurts.

cross EASTER

Absolve
The human race
Release them from their sins
Forgive them their indiscretions
Instead torment me on that cruel cross
That I might thus remind them all
That God our father loves
And all our sins
Absolves.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Westminster Chorus – Oh Love, That Will Not Let Me Go

Posted on March 11, 2022 by Roland's Ragbag

Today . . . a plug for my favourite choir – the Westminster Chorus – with their moving rendering of ‘Oh Love that will not let me go’ . . .

The Westminster Chorus, singing a David Phelps arrangement of the George Matheson Hymn, “Oh Love, That Will Not Let Me Go” in the Petrikirche, a Protestant church (start of construction 1322) in Dortmund, Germany. The church is famous for the huge carved altar (known as “Golden Miracle of Dortmund”), from 1521. It consists of 633 gilt carved oak figures depicting 30 scenes about Easter.

The SPIRE

Posted on January 21, 2022 by Roland's Ragbag

*Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire, England . . . Pen & Wash : WHB – 2015*

THE SPIRE

This work of man
Exultant spire
Sings to the world’s
Celestial choir.

Man’s needle point
It pricks the clouds
Defies the lightning
Lures the crowds.

Commands the heavens
Upholds the sky
Tells the world
Don’t fear to die.

This vibrant sky
These bright moonbeams
Define our souls
Colour our dreams.

This work of man
Exultant spire
Sings to the world’s
Celestial choir.

Salisbury Cathedral, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, and one of the leading examples of Early English architecture. The main body of the cathedral was completed in 1258. Two men filmed themselves climbing 404ft (123m) to the capstone of the Cathedral’s spire to replace a faulty weather meter. I add below a link to this video giving the spectacular view captured by these conservators working at the top of this, Britain’s tallest spire . . .

CLIMB to the top of the SPIRE

The footage shows the breathtaking views only usually experienced by the Cathedral’s peregrine falcons.

LINDISFARNE – Holy Island

Posted on October 8, 2021 by Roland's Ragbag

Lindisfarne – Off the North-West coast of England in Northumbria

Below is a selection of sketches and photographs based on my previous visits to this beautiful historic and sacred island off the North Sea coast of England

Stanley Spencer – A Happy Resurrection

Posted on June 16, 2021 by Roland's Ragbag

Photograph of Spencer at work in Cookham Village … by WHB . . . 1957

Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (1891 – 1959)was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. Wikipedia

The sleepers awake
from an imagined death
A teasing adventure in insubstantial earth

Pram pusher extraordinaire
in the Village that lit up his life
inspired his vision
Trundled easel hearse
put to work in progress
To see, to feel, to breathe
destiny on the village green
The past become the present
resurrected in tranquillity
Life-lite under the churchyard yew
this moulded flesh – full featured
bringing joy from the stern grave
Life’s resurrection imagined
in hope and the churchyard
in his eyes and his pigment
Drawn and deified
Death and Resurrection as Spring
As buttercups in the greenest of fields.

The sleepers awake
from an imagined death
A pleasing adventure in insubstantial earth

Stanley Spencer: ‘The Resurrection, Cobham … 1924-27. Tate Gallery

The Grass Above His Grave

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Roland's Ragbag

The end of World War I took effect on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. The inscription on this war grave in the churchyard of St.Mary’s, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, commemorates the short life of Private F.J . Harvey of the Middlesex Regiment, who sadly died just 12 days before this.
He was 18 years of age.

The Grass Above His Grave

And the grasses sway above his grave,
Reminding me of what he gave,
Of hopes as his new life began,
No more a boy, nor yet a man.

* * *

The promises of a war, just ended,
Lay before him, starkly spread.
Tempting him to rejoice
In the swollen face of victory.

A life to live, a promise to keep,
Beckoned his youth to greater glory,
But time and life were not for him,
Nor was death a friend.

They conspired to rob him of
The future he had bought,
And, in victory, the fate of so many
Became his own fate too.

* * *

And the grasses sway above his grave
Reminding me of what he gave
Of hopes as his new life began
No more a boy, nor yet a man.

Murder In The Cathedral – Two-Word Tale #14

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Roland's Ragbag

‘The Cathedral’ (detail): WHB – Pen & Wash

Murder In The Cathedral

Agog
With awe
And gripped
With fright
How can
I last
For one
More night

My awe
My fear
Hold me
In thrall
A lasting
Longing
Curtain call

I sleep
I dream
I know
My place
‘Tis full
Of pain
With-out
God’s grace

For all
My sins
I can’t
A-tone
I’m lost
I’m gone
I am
Mere bone

Des-pair
And dread
Are my
Mill-stone
Worn as
Penance
On my
Head-stone

——–

To you
Who now
Will hear
My story
I pray
You will
My fate
Be-moan

——–

History generally lays the blame for the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, on his former close friend, King Henry II, who, in 1174, did penance at Becket’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral.

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