Embers of my Dreams

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My lockdown life has fuelled a fire
a fire of the imagination
It burns the strongest in my dreams
its brightest light at night
an ever flickering conflagration
half hidden from my sight

For when I wake
I feel its kick
I tremble with the loss
of leaving that other clouded world
left picking through its embers

There where strangers meet as friends
where lovers lose their once-held power
where every tree meant more to me
with every passing hour

But why when shrouded in dreamland’s mists
do such recovered images
disappear with wakefulness
refuse to linger
rush away
leaving only a taste
a memory risked
asecond chance missed
a taste of what could have been
lost in that fleeting insubstantial dream

A Limited Life

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Take my breath away
yet let me live
my blinded eyes
they still can see the sun
I walk but cannot move
for fear to fall
my stulted words
restricted to my pen

Now all my thoughts
are centred on myself
not touch nor closeness
are allowed
to stunt my waking dreams
and life depends
on instant ends
the future makes no sense
and time has ceased

For now has lost its meaning
in the drift in which I live
day melds into night
and then returns
but only to repeat
its torpid trend
refusing to rekindle
that fire which burns
within my ashes urn

 

Indomitable

If you hit me I will bruise,
Cut me down, I’ll cry,
Take my limbs,
They’ll multiply,
Always I will death defy.

Fire and flood I will resist,
And never give up hope;
Eventually I’ll rejuvenate,
Whatever comes I’ll cope.

For Nature built me to succeed,
Never to give in;
Mutilate me, I will bleed,
But never will give in.

 

‘Rejuvenating Tree’ – Surrey, England … Photos: WHB – May 2020   ©

 

New Year – A Two Word Tale – #8

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New year
Cold night
Snow falls
All white

Hot fire
Scots pine
Church choir
Mulled wine

Bright hearth
Warm heart
First foot
New start

 

My ‘Two Word’ Verses

Number eight  in my series of short verses 

 

 

 

TRAPPED

Photo: WHB – 2019

 

Discarded
Trapped
Barred from a life
Tossed aside

Grate-fully
In the fervour of a game
Black-leaded dungeon
Grey grave
Sad sepulchre

Once loved
Cuddled
Cherished
Now soon to be
The ashes
From whence I came

Tell them

Not only humans
Are hurt
By rejection
Not only flesh
Is melted by fire

 

Photo: WHB – 2019

 

 

The Wheel Bed

Tyring Platform or Wheel Bed

The wood-burn tang remains,
purpose chosen
elm, oak and ash,
a pungent memory
burnt into my history;
childhood re-visited.

Metal rim fired,
it’s molten circle
beaten into flaky orange ring,
before,
from the flaming furnace, 
tongs at arms’ length, 
cast iron wrought and shaped, 
the new cart wheel
boldly borne
to the fitting-bed, 
its iron collar
to be burnt into place.

 
Then, 
ice cold water on fiery iron
sizzles, 
splash and spurt, 
heat relayed and remembered, 
felt and smelt, 
rooted in my molten memories.

Cold contracted, 
cooled into the tightest of fits, 
road ready, 
task worthy, 
winter prepared
and good to go. 

Another hole in the farmer’s pocket;
Another meal for the smith’s family;
Another tick of my life’s clock.

The vital wheels of forever – 
wood, iron, fire, water,
turning, as cogs
dependent each on each,
as carter, wheelwright, smith, farmer, 
primitive, elemental, 
part of my story
… and of me.

Those who are familiar with my previous writing may recall my upbringing as the son of the village blacksmith. As such, I often watched my father, with hammer on anvil, create both large and small tyres of heated iron. I would look on in awe as, on a huge shaped ring of thick iron, the wheel-bed or platform, the iron tyre would be burned on to the wooden rim of a cartwheel, allowing the contraction of the iron on cooling to bind the wheel to the wood of the wheelwright’s frame.  Few such iron-wheeled carts remain in use.

Gunpowder Plot – Senryu #1

 

Gunpowder Plot – Senryu #1

Let the fires be lit

Burn the Guy Fawkes effigy

Tell the tale again.

 

Senryū is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 syllables (usually 5 – 7-  5).   Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often more cynical or darkly humorous than haiku.

Note:  Adapted from Wikipedia

 

Fire, Forge and Furnace

‘The Smith’: Illus.from’The Book Of English Trades’, Museum of English Ryral Life, Reading University.

FIRE, FORGE & FURNACE

It began with the furnace
When limping Hephaestus
tamed his volcanic forge,
before Prometheus
poached fire,
and brought to mankind,
his creation,
those skills of
 inspired artistry
 in metal and the arts,
for which he suffered
until, released, liver-less,
 from his eagle-torn fate

So, his legacy,
passed on to the smith,
farrier, blacksmith, metalworker,
a noble calling
worthy trade
artist in iron
his skill
portrayed in metal
wrought within the fire
of Vulcan’s heart

Bent over the anvil
he finds his future
his art is in iron
his heart lies there too
the kiln his spirit
the anvil his easel
tongs his palette knife
his hammer his brush

Rendering and wrenching
forging
forcing his will
on that malleable metal
moulding with skill
stroking the steel
forming shape
to match imagination
to meet a need
create a masterwork
from his mind’s ferment

The furnace,
bellowed into life,
bright burning coals
in heat and fusion
throw shadows all around
as if their flickering flames
are desperate to escape
and return
to the place of their birth –
the fiery inferno
in Vulcan’s heart.

Hephaestus

 

 

 

The fire and the rose

The ‘Unknown Remembered Gate’,  Weybridge, Surrey,UK. … Photo – WHB – 2015

By T.S.Eliot

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, remembered 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.

The above is an extract taken from the very end of the last of  T.S.Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’, called ‘Little Gidding’.    Little Gidding itself is a small Anglican community in Huntingdonshire, England, and was established there in the 17th century. just before the English Civil War, during which the community was broken up and scattered.

‘The Four Quartets’is a series of 4 poems which discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot’s declining health.

The poem uses the combined image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation. According to the poet, humanity’s flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare, but this can be overcome by recognising the lessons of the past.

Little Gidding focuses on the unity of past, present, and future, and claims that understanding this unity is necessary for salvation. In Eliot’s imagery the resolution of mankind’s turmoil will be achieved by the coming together of the fire and the rose.