Thoughts on a Dead Leaf

It fell
Green life
Extinguished
Time passed
Slowly
It diminished
To its scaffolding
Intact beauty still
New life
Surviving
In the skeleton
Beneath the skin
Revealing the grace
Which had upheld
Its existence
Its structure
Naked now
Spine-bold
Ram-rod straight
Not dead now
Nor even dying
Instead
Skin shed
A statement
Of creation’s power
Holding its tendrils
Steady
In firm formation
Awaiting its
Next chapter

Not yet shredded
Not yet dust
This tomography
Call it a CAT scan
Delving into
Nature’s
secret world
Revealing
The truth
Of whence
Its green strength
Derived

Thus
As our own surface
Erodes
Do we achieve
The same beauty?
Do we secrete
Analogous
New life
Beneath the old?
We leaves
Fallen from life’s tree
Shrivelled
Our essence revealed
In our skeletal remains
Proud-structured
Until
The next stage
And eventual
Severance
From what we have been
Transmogrified
To further service
In replenishing
New life forms
Our fruition in
The new spring’s bloom
Blossom and leaves

There has to be beauty
In death
As in life
Decay
Does not doom us to death
Rather
There is a beauty in death
The leaf ceased to be
A leaf
But became
Something else
And its beauty remained
It merely
Continued
Into a transmuted life
Its fate
As our own
To be
Continued existence

For death is but a metaphor
For new life

All photographs . . .  by WHB – 2016

MONA LISA REVISITED

MONA  LISA  RECRUDESCENT

When I met her pleading stare
I nearly had a seizure.
A revenant confronted me,
Labelled ‘Mona Lisa’;

I saw her on a street in town,
That enigmatic beauty.
Reduced to begging for a crumb,
That captivating cutie.

A painting from another time
With pallid face and frown;
A legend from another age,
On a street in Whitby Town.

So sad to see her brought to this,
Esteem and beauty stolen,
Bereft of stature, fame, renown.
How are the mighty fallen!

The two photographs were taken by Roland in Yorkshire in October 2016

Lustic Limerick #6

Photo by Tuu1ea5n Kiu1ec7t Jr. on Pexels.com

I give you…

A Limerick on this very day
To keep my Covid Blues away …

A sweet lassie from far Tallahassee,
Whose demeanour was certainly classy;
When she walked up the aisle
Folks said with a smile,
“I do love that beautiful chassis.”

Treenware

 

 Of a tree
transmogrified
the resurrected dead
felled to humanity’s purpose
nature sampled
purposed flotsam
birthed by inspiration
gathered and garnished
tortured timber
carved and hewn
pared and whittled
twisted turned and polished
into burled jewels
ornamental gems
passed over life re-modelled
re-moulded into a new existence
allowed to live again
in resurrected splendour
through the craftsman’s art

Time best-spent
in re-creating beauty
from death’s discarded bones

 

 

 

Birth Of A Poem

Pen & Wash  … WHB 2019

This poem
and its ill-connected words
do not
yet exist

These lines
part-formed and immature
struggle for release
from their birth pangs
strain to express themselves
in meaning
to say what they want to say

Seeking existence
from the seed of an idea
knowing what is needed
but fighting for form and feature
longing to tell its tale and sing
to live
to feel
to be vibrant
cool and yet tense

Always promising more than it can give
allowing its feelings to weep
its thoughts to shudder and provoke
to breathe a bitter breath
to both calm and to excite

Above all
striving to be worthy
in love with what it hears
bringing meaning to an idea
and from its birth
to bring into the world
an infant ode
wanting
hoping
demanding to grow into
a thing of understanding and beauty

Tooty Fruity & The Imbroglio

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

The IMBROGLIO

I’m embroiled in an imbroglio, 
And, Yes, I am confused. 
Which way to turn I do not know, 
Perplexed, baffled, bemused.

She’s says that she will live with me, 
See to all my needs, 
If I will gift my house to her, 
The pool, the grounds, the deeds.

I think she’s asking far too much, 
And yet she’s such a sweetie. 
I’d like to give her what she wants, 
Listen to her entreaty. 

Perhaps I’m just an aged fool, 
Smitten by her beauty, 
But should I take a chance and swap
My world for Tooty Fruity?

Pastiche Poems #3

A pastiche, created in PRISMA, of a painting of my own of Venice

PASTICHE POETRY

Following on from my opening outline of Pastiche Poetry (see my blog of two days ago titled ‘Pastiche Poetry’ ), and my blogs of yesterday  ( ‘Pastiche Poetry #2 ) and the day before (  Pastiche Poetry #1 ),  here are yet more of my own efforts (you may call them concoctions or confections if you’d rather) which I have based on the well-known opening lines of six different poets  . . .

 To his Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell …

Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 
But I must say, I’m getting bored
With my advances being ignored.

---

Tyger! Tyger!, William Blake …

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
Just be careful how you go
You’ll set the woodland all aglow.

---

Lines for a Christmas Card, Hilaire Belloc ...

May all my enemies go to hell,
Ah well, ah well, ah well, ah well.
I told them not to call my bluff
They wouldn’t listen, So that’s just tough.

---

She Walks in Beauty, Lord Byron …

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
Would that she was as sharp and bright,
Instead she got the booby prize.

---

Mary Had a Little Lamb, Nursery Rhyme, Sarah Josepha Hale,  …

Mary found a little lamb,
She really didn’t know
What on earth to do with it,
Perhaps she’d let it go.

---

The Owl and the Pussy Cat, Edward Lear …

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
It wasn’t new, and right on cue,
It ceased to want to float.

Art On The Rack

tall and slender
thin and lean
what do such racked
such skeletal
figures mean

imagination extended
perception broadened
brought to brush and canvas
stone and chisel
bronze and rasp
unique reality
given expression
in the artist’s eye
and distorted vision

el greco
modigliani
giacometti
parmagianino

artistic differences
paralleled
in paint and bronze

fashion’s fad
now continued
on the catwalk

do my eyes
deceive me
with beauty
in the eye of the bewildered
creating
or perhaps following
fashion

emaciated
underfed
and stretched out models
tapered
taut
and elongated
in the artist’s vision

paraded to their public
asked to accept
an interpretation
allowing retrieval
of a larger truth

thus to become
stricken and striated
darlings
of a new generation

fêted now
as great and good
but fated still
to be misunderstood

---

The images at the top are, from left to right  . . .
El Greco:  ‘St.John The Baptist’ – c.1600; Oil on Canvas
Giacometti:  ‘Walking Man’ – 1960; Bronze
Modigliani: ‘Lunia Czechowska in Black’ – 1919; Oil on canvas
Parmagianino: ‘Madonna With Long Neck’
The bottom picture is of ‘Catwalk models’ – from Pinterest.

 

Stillness

 

‘Solitude’: Rydal Water, Cumbria, The Lake District, UK … Pen & Ink – WHB 1991  ©

 

 

This stillness and the beauty all around me

Bring with them peace and grace for which I yearn;

For here among the lakes and mountains resting

I sense my hopes and dreams will now return.

 

For now I’ve reached a time when life has bitten,

Reminding me of pleasures once enjoyed;

Since lost in cares and daily obligations

How Nature can supplant and fill the void.

 

Its healing powers I know and cannot question;

They bring delights I cannot bear to miss.

They sing to me of other loves and places,

And speak to me of other times than this.

 

 

The Double Rainbow

Photograph:  ‘Double Rainbow near Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England’  – WHB – July 2009   ©

 

 When the double rainbow comes
In all its lustrous splendour,
Then will I sing of my true love,
How sweet and kind and tender.

Her beauty sings the sky’s delight,
Gently she shows her grace;
I love the light within her soul
Which permeates her face.

For me fond Nature’s miracles
Cannot describe suffice
The beauty which I find in her,
My love from Paradise.