On Life’s Anchor

WHB – ‘Highcliff … Pencil

‘Every man is searching for the place he belongs.’ James Joyce

Where do I belong
Is it my birthplace
Or some other place where I have laid my head?

I no longer search
For I am secure in knowing with increasing certainty
My heart still lives in the hills of my childhood home
It awakes each morning with the scent of bracken and heather
And the soft green turf of the rolling moor
Even at such long removed time and space
These tastes, these smells, these images
In the quiet moments of my active day
Have an unnerving reality
Sustain my being and nourish the silence of my soul
Rarely do the comforting memories engendered
Leave me dispirited and downcast
Seldom do the doubts of my waking troubles
Not gain encouragement from the solidity
The comforting certainties of my history
And I have never lost their throbbing power
To anchor the passage of fleeting time
In the calm and stillness of my reflection

Outmoded Slang

SLANG: a type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.

It’s a shame when words expire,
Especially the vernacular,
Like pizazz and balderdash;
Such words are quite spectacular.

Gadzooks has long been dead
And other words are dying.
Lost are darn and drat it,
In desuetude they are lying.

scallywag, twerp and wally,
Scoundrel, bounder, cad,
Have passed away and gone,
Their day they all have had.

No more nincompoops or rotters,
They rolled sweetly off the tongue.
So sad to see their passing,
No more we’ll hear them sung.

As for pillocks and rapscallions,
They’ve all died and gone to heaven,
Where they can still be rascals,
While awaiting Armageddon.

The Past Is Another Story

The Past Is Another Story

What if I could one day meet again
Those whom I’d once called friends;
What if I could converse with them
What is it I’d want to say?
And how, in return, would they answer me
How would we pass our day?
And would I recognise he and she
And would they still know me?
How would we part, go our separate ways
And would we ever cease to be?

How fraught with questions that scenario
For what has passed is now the past
And cannot be recovered
However much the thought does please
It’s Carpe Diem, the day to seize,
And yesterday has been and gone
Gone to live,
Or should that be to die?
In my own
My very personal
History.

ANOTHER YEAR

‘Icarus’ … Pen & Wash – WHB – 2020   ©

Another year older
and
against time’s odds
deeper in love –
with life
with living
with a fervid
lust for existence

I want to feel
feel fast
feel free
to fly above my waning world
to feel what Adam felt
when first
he faltered
and fell
feel that Icarus moment
that experienced joy
that knowledge gain
that original lesson
singed
tinged
with both
joy and regret

I fear
I am led
to disregard
inhibitions shackles
and give hedonism
its brazen head

Desire
becomes the imperative
Desire
given to us
to ensure our continued existence
Desire
without which
no history would exist
and all would be
the futility
of Dreamland

To Sleep … To Dream

To Sleep … To Dream

 

Sleep drifts across my consciousness
as I enter that make-believe world
where reality sees through a muslin mask
draped damask silk obscures truth
and a samite screen falls across my past

The difference between then and now fades
as a haze envelopes my senses
featureless clouds descend
and my dream-world begins

Reality now hijacked by myth and legend
a new world
untried
untested
a concoction distilled from my history
as unlike my waking world
as noonday is from midnight
as I am from my shadow

SLEEP

Life’s parade ground

Death’s practice ground

 

Reverie #10: A Day to Sink my Teeth in

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Give me a day to sink my teeth in,
A bright and sunny day.
Let me savour sensuous hours,
Keep the end at bay.

Let me live each vibrant moment,
Reach out to stars above.
Threads of serious satisfaction
Seeking more time to love.

Tell it as it really is,
A song that does make sense.
Strapping lasses dancing –
Heated… Drunk… Intense.

A joy
A pleasure rising
Milking each waking hour.
Keeping at bay those moments
When doom and history lour.

And so my days are passing,
Steeped in the certain thought
That time has dealt me aces,
And has been richly bought.

My Book

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I am a mere page in history’s book.
OK, half a page
A sentence even
More than a word, surely,
And not just a letter.
But, what sort of book?
What genre best reflects me?
Sums me up?

Page filler or thriller,
A cold-blooded chiller?
A  semantic romantic
A frantic pedantic?

Obvious or discreet
Tattered, perhaps neat?
Remaindered, deleted,
Victorious or defeated?

Pages torn
Plot stillborn?
A weighty tome,
Still out on loan?
Not understandable,
Or un-put-downable?

Whichever best describes my path
A simpleton, a polymath?
I wonder how I’ll be considered.
A wordsmith wizard
Bewildered, jiggered?
Too slick for some,
Too twee for others.

But please, I beg,
Let it be said –
He wrote with ease
The day to seize,
Not just to please
The passing breeze.

The GREEN MAN

‘Green Man’ . . . Pen&Wash – WHB ©

The GREEN MAN

He is my history
Lusting after the hills of my youth
He strides the moorland paths
Amidst the bracken and the gorse
Drinking the sun’s warm ale
Savouring the wind’s heather-toned tang
Turning time to his advantage
Tuning in to its connecting wavelength

He is great Nature’s spirit
Rising and falling with its moods
Sad yet serene in Spring
Holding the hope of the future

Bright and bubbly in the summer rains
Rich and expansive in the sun’s bright gaze

Brought to magnificent autumn richness
Coloured by russet tints
Fruitful in his beneficence

He is the winter too
Drifting with the whiteness of its moods
His flocks penned for winter warmth neath the mountain crag
Shielding the gentle crocus
And the blanched snowdrop

He is the spirit of the trees
Lord of copse and wood
Guardian of Grove and greenwood
Verdant Monarch of the forest

Of the landscape’s lakes
Running with the cool waters of streams and rivers
The stillness of Its ponds and pools

Both past and future
Gone yet still to come again
his cyclic journey unfolds
From birth to death
From death to resurrection
To new life and resurgent hope
Maintaining existence
Midst promises and threats
To bring renewal in the name of life

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

The lessons of history are all around
Etched on death’s memorial
But who looks at memorials?

The war to end all wars ended
But the peace had not been won

Exchanging eyes
Has not proved a workable proposition
And yet the attempt goes on
And mankind is condemned to try again
To seek an end to conflict
By perpetuating conflict itself

Those lessons from the past
Unlearnt
At best misunderstood
Ignored
And so it continues
The errors of the past
Visited on countless future generations

Fear reigns
And stultifies hope
Because mankind remains
Because mankind will not change
Still comatose
Sleepwalking into conflict again
Again
And yet again

Original sin
Casts its sinister shadow
Over hope
And so
The cycle continues
War and peace
Unfeasible bedfellows
History hardly notices the difference

But we do
And suffer for it

The two illustrations above were scanned from my copy of Holbein’s ‘Le Triomphe De La Mort’ published in 1780 … Etchings of Holbein’s originals by Chr.De Michel