Tag: beauty

Seeing the light

I could have died when witnessing the sight

The great cathedral floodlit in the night

My legs gave way I tumbled to the ground

Filled with joy so great it knew no bounds

I rose from my collapse on those wide stairs.

No one saw this happen,no one was there

Later I saw Blythburgh in the light

I feasted on this vision every night.

Inside the church the angels sailed above.

Inside myself I felt immense sweet love

Lying in my bed when sick and ill

I saw a green cathedral on a hill

And so I soothed myself with visions fair

The goodness of creation lingered there.

If man’s creation causes such effects

Who was it wrote the script and who directs?

Old roses and their thorns

Could  any be more frenemial then a rose

For as we reach to sniff its fragrant scent

It digs its thorns into  our hands and clothes

And tetanus is a menace where we’re rent.

And yet this flower is   judged to be the queen,

As fragrantly it opens in the sun.

And for a while, we enjoy what we’re seeing

Until its time and purposes are done.

May it be so for people whom we know?

The more they grace, more the harm  that’s done.

Attracted by a sweet and charming glow

Our heart  is torn and we then  beauty  shun .

And yet we would not banish flowers like these.

The pain is offset by the ways they please.

PS I invented the word frenemial based on the word frenemy which I posted on yesterday

Accepting that perfection is remote,

What love and friendship must at least entail

Are boundaries both elastic and firm.

Yet even that is but a mere detail

Less subtle is the need to do .no harm

For in the flush of youthful spirits strong

We do not like to know that all love fades

For when it does we lovers may do wrong

To wickedness we may find we’ve paid

And with the stone faced demons we belong.

Thus friendship love and joy involve the will

To take the other as she comes to be

For such allowing there’s a constant bill

Acknowledging such truth we’ll  surely see.

Accepting that perfection is remote,

We’ll play our tunes and suffer every note

Love must be so pliant

Love must be so pliant ,
like a blade of grass,

Bowing to the wind,
till the storm has passed.

Love is enigmatic
Like the sphinx’s smile.

Waiting for an answer,
Nothing is on file.

Love is often near us
Yet we do not see.

Sometimes where we are
Is just the place to be

It’s called love

I run my fingers tentatively

down your cheek,

asking you a question

with my eyes.

looking at each other,

you touch me too.

This is my skin

my boundary.

Yours is thicker,

like rubber.

I run my fingers down your chin.

what is this little bone?

I like it.

I like your skin

I like your bones.

I like you.

you please me.

you are tasty.

I like your taste,

your skin,your eyelids.

I like your eye here,

and your other eye too.

Nice one!

I like this hair on your head.

May I touch your hair?

do you like hair?

hair makes me laugh.

I have a fondness for laughing.

I love to laugh.

I enjoy laughter

I love your laughter.

If not, smiling is good also.

Or a gleam in the eyes,

showing the inside smile,

the smiling heart.

I like your inside,

Outside

and possibly

your backside.

your upside and downside.

your side sides.

I snuggle you all around with soft wool.

I knit you into my scarf.

I’ll have to wear you round my neck now!

How unusual

How flexible.

How charming.

How alarming

How creative

How interesting.

What an idea!

what a notion

but you are too big for me to knit

So I’ll just touch your hand

with my fingers.

and you touch my hand

with your fingers.

What good hands we have

with such fingers.

fingers are for touch.

fingers are keen to touch.

I like touch.

what would we do

without fingers?

I like your skin.

skin is good

We love skin

We love.

We.

I want skin to be ours

and yours

is mine

and mine

is yours

where is the edge of the world?

skin has no end

it’s infinity

au naturel.

what order!

what design!

What wonder.

what awe.

where is the world’s skin?

tenderly we touch the world

as the world embraces us.

It’s called love.

Love

How like a bird’s nest is my unmade bed

  • WisleyFeeding

    Photo courtesy of Mike Flemming,Copyright 2015

    How like a bird’s nest is my unmade bed
    As twigs and feathers from my feet did fall.
    I ought to take my shoes off, but instead
    I leave them on or hurl them at the wall.

    As for a lady’s nightgown I do lack,
    And wear old vests my dear husband once loved.
    For ladies’ garments often have no back.
    And fit too tightly, like a rubber glove.

    For pain and torment some will undergo,
    To gain attention from a handsome man .
    Yet love is like a fearsome heavy blow
    Survive it like an act of God unplanned.

    So take life lightly though you are enchained
    As it is short and everything remains

Belated

  • Photo0688

    Belated thanks, long overdue,
    Are flying from me straight to you.
    So take heart and stand
    but not on my hand.
    Nor on Alfred who if startled goes “Mioaw”

    You see Alfred is a very hot cat
    He hates to sit down on my mat.
    He likes my warm lap
    And wears a small cap
    To show he’s real holy,howzat?

  • Merriam Webster word of the day:Belated

    Did You Know?

    Long ago, there was a verb belate, which meant “to make late.” From the beginning, belate tended to mostly turn up in the form of its past participle belated. Eventually, belate itself fell out of use, leaving behind belated as an adjective that preserved the original notion of delay. As you may have guessed, belate and its descendant belated derive from the adjective late; belate was formed by simply combining the prefix be- (“to cause to be”) with late. Belated was also once used in the sense “overtaken by night,” as in “belated travelers seeking lodging for the night.” This sense was in fact the first meaning of the adjective but it too fell out of use.

No sound,no touch,no smell,no sight,no seeing.

In fields of lushest  buttercups we ‘d lie
We’d watch the clouds as gently they blew by.
Love was born we thought would never die.
But now you’re gone and here I sadly sigh

That love itself remains without your form
Yet tears of loss enfold me like a storm.
I knew you’d never hurt or  do me harm.
I  felt your smile’s embrace, so wide, so warm.

How is the world,now emptied of your being?
No sound,no touch,no smell,no sight,no seeing.
How is the world when you have gone ahead
Yet I must linger in my lonely bed?

Some days I weep with gladness for my friends
Some days I weep in sadness without end.

Precious treasure

The brightness of this sweet spring light,
The songs of birds whose brood take flight.
I love to take these earthly pleasures,
To fill my mind with precious treasure.

The conversations with my friends,
The closeness only death will end,
To share my life with those who care,
How could we have better fare?

Those who suffer pain and grief,
From whom love’s stolen by a thief,
Let us take them to our hearts,
So their healing path can start.

Those who fear friendship and love,
Who set themselves at too low worth,
Do they know how courage grows
Through acceptance of our woes?

Life is tragi-comedy.
Love may be the remedy.
Yet if we give our hearts away
We shall have grief and pain to pay.

But if we lock our hearts up tight,
And keep all feeling out of sight,
We will wither like dead leaves,
Of our whole life we’ll be bereaved.

So choose your path with care and thought;
Never be by lies distraught.
Each human is as gold to me,
So with great love, I end my plea.

It seems we all have a touch of narcissism As well as paranoia and grief.

Sometimes it’s hard to realise
that other people are our equals
in this existence game;
that they each have a mind and world of their own.
But now I think of this,
Isn’t it wonderful that there are all these worlds
And that I’m not the centre of the universe.
And if God cares for a sparrow
I like Him.
Though what He is
Is not expressible in our language.
How dull life would be
If I were the only real person in it
And if I wanted every one to admire me
And think well of me.
And how sweet it is to love an other,
Eye to eye,
Skin to warm skin.
and how the sun was so red at daybreak
and the bare twigs gleamed in its light.
and how precisely you are different from me
Yet I can understand you, at least in part.
We are all absolutely important
And yet paradoxically unimportant.
And how sweet it can be to lose oneself
to become entranced by creation,In or with another
Or by a loved one;
By being with children.
Worlds and worlds unfold.
All we need is respect.
Be an other lover,today
.

The little bird

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A bird taps on this window every day,
Fast as flying leaves flail  in a gale.
But now he perches on the potted bay.
He feels the weather as the blind do braille.

This bird is faithful and I love him dear.
He’s fearless as he pecks upon the glass.
I hope he has a modicum of fear,
For who knows when a sparrow hawk will pass?

I see him like a human soul forlorn
Struggling to discern his own true way.
For soon he may be taken by a storm
But blithely he will eat, and after play.

The smallest bird has trust in the Unknown
By his example, our right way is shown

If only life could be captured

How beautiful it was when the sun shone

And I walked with you,my dear husband, through the gardens.

How happy I was to sit with you by the lake

and to hear the water from the fountain splash.

It’s our our favourite music now we cannot visit the sea

To hear the tide rush in,then fall sucking on the shingley beach.

But I see it in my minds eye.

Aldeburgh,the fishing boats go out at sunrise.

I awoke early and saw the sun across the sea

and the boats setting out in the soft light.

Dunwich,the heath filled with birds

the cliff and the beach where sometimes one can find marble

from one of the many churches washed away by the encroaching sea.

And Southwold,the marsh so quiet I heard crickets.

We went across the Blyth in the rowing boat

And saw the place from which our picture of Walberswick was painted…

If only life could be captured,slowed, for a few minutes

for us to receive the beauty and hear the sound of the sea

The everlasting music of the heart ,

Rhythm and pulse,the wet sand sliding under my barefeet

amongst those tiny sea shells.

I shall remember

I loved her for her mind alone

Flower are love tokens and symbolise  female fertility and beauty

I loved her for her dark blue eyes,
And her Le Creuset pot.
I loved her though she was naive,
As she was very hot.

I loved her curly golden hair.
I loved her home made jam.
But most of all,I loved her brain
And how she dealt with spam.
I loved to lick her bright pink lips
I loved to bite her ear.
But most of all,her innocence,
Which made me pull her near.

I liked to lick her cheeks as well
I liked to touch her hair.
But it proved slightly difficult
For she was rarely here.

I looked at all her photographs,
I looked at all her posts.
She has twenty boyfriends now,
Whom does she love the most?
I loved her breakfast coffee pot,
I loved her tea as well.
She fed me on her buttered toast,

The rest I shall not tell

I was happy,I was sad.

Whatever should I do?
She has run off with a tramp
She met in London Zoo!

She sent me a love letter once,
And now she sends a card
I wish that she’d leave me alone
Jealousy’s so hard.

My heart has got the cramps in it,,
I’m sitting in the bath.
The water is as black as coal,
And I’m still filled with wrath,

Peace

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When wanderings take my restless mind

To places peace can never find,

When imaginations linked to fear

Push tranquillity away.

To my green garden I must go

And let my mind and thoughts go slow.

I look up at maples in the breeze,

See sunlight dappled through their leaves.

I see the apples hanging down

And blackbirds peck them on the ground.

I see the hawthorn berries ripe

Upon the hedge in gold sunlight.

And then my soulf is brought to earth

Peacefulness is given birth

I feel at one with nature green,

And all that is just now unseen

So back to everyday routines

Without “what for?” and “might have beens”

All is well and shall be so

Wherever we may chance to go.

Making a poem

My old blue fountain pen allows
The ink across the page to flow
Like wet paint from an artist’s brush;
And words come in a rush.

Enchanting through the hand which writes,
Bewitched with art, beauty alights.
The script is like a music score
Through which you pass as through a door.
Imagination’s home.

As,mysteriously, to you,to me,
The spirits of our hearts are tamed,
By rhythms of pen,of brush,of mind.
They enter vision quite unplanned,
Like moths to flutter softly round
Fire joined heart and hand.

The pen slows down,the hand goes still,
And just as dreams at daybreak will,
They shrink,they disappear,they’re gone,
I almost caught that one.

Mercy

Even near a busy road,
Flowers bloom as well as they do in lonely gardens.
They show us the meaning of generosity
And determination, despite their vulnerability.
Live like a flower
Die like a rose.
Rise up in springtime
As the sap flows.

Words and images

My sister is learning by copying a Lowry.Can one learn to write a poem by copying? Yes,copy the rhythm of a song or a ballad.That can be a help to start you off
My sister is learning to psint  by copying a Lowry.
Can one learn to write a poem by copying? Yes,copy the rhythm of a song or a ballad.That can be a help to start you off

At the end of my first few months of writing,and on New Year’s Eve 2010 ,this was the poem I remembered best and want edto share  then

If you prefer images to words I have put one of my sister’s first paintings here to show what a beginner can do

The theme of this poem is one that is very important to me.Actions change when vision changes.Actions are changed most by Imagination,not by force or will power,Actions change by seeing from a new perspective.

In a trivial way,sitting on a different armchair in your sitting room can be interesting if you usually sit on the same one.But don’t sit on Pussy’s favorite chair or she may scratch you!She will see you in a new  perspective as an  invader sometimes go outside in the dark, and look into the sitting room through the lit up window.I always find it more interesting and beautiful.I’d like to peer into other people’s windiws but they might get the wrong idea which is the right idea

These poems are my gift to you

They flow from my perceptions

I write them to discover truth,

And my preconceptions.

I write because I see and think

More deeply than I knew

And seeing is the first step

To imagining the new.

Changing perceptions changes deeds

Without the need for force.

Find out your hidden dreams ,and look.

You ‘ll speak with your own voice

It shall be so

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Gently dancing in the sun
Wildflowers grow;
they bloom,
are gone.

With no thoughts,they have no cares;
Yet their lives are gentle prayers.
May I walk in such a way
That I am alive to this day.

So I see with widening view,
And joy and sorrows embrace too.
Then my time will come, like yours...
And of us nothing  endures.
As to the earth our bodies go,
All are one;it shall be so

Houses built of gold and sin

Ante mortem let us trust

For in the grave we turn to dust
Yet in life the poor are cursed
Our treatment post mortem is just.

The worms and beetles care no more
For the rich than for the poor.
They are happy to devour
Bankers,despots,every hour.

Ante mortem, greed does win
Houses built of gold and sin
But God,who lives in each within,
Cares no more for gold thann tin

If post mortem we are judged
Why does the rich person grudge?
Why do we refuse to budge
Right until the final nudge?

Throw away your heavy goods
Live like daisies by the woods..
Fear not hurricane nor floods
As daises grow even in mud.

More dependent on all power
We trust in madmen’s city towers.
Yet One told us to live like flowers…
And enjoy this  life  but for an hour.

Perception is not privilege.
We each have the wits to judge.
See and note where you have smudged
What your creation would allege.

Post and ante, even now
The currents of our hearts allow…
The inner sea which has its flow
To take us where we need to go

Wind dismays the flowering rose

Apples hang low near the ground.
robins chirrup all around.
sun on glowing maple leaves
gives a red glow that deceives.

Autumn air is flowing near,
though it's still bright summer here.
wind dismays the flowering rose
as with arrogance it blows.

Leave me one flower for my eyes.
Leave me roses,as I sigh.
Leave me not my dearest one.
Soon enough we shall be gone.

What remains is love alone.
If your heart is not of stone,
Fear not sorrow,fear not woe.
Into this earth all must go.

Love dies like a tree

It takes a long time for a tree to die.
Though its trunk be almost severed with the axe.
There was plenty of sap above
Then the leaves began to wither
and fall though it was spring time…

It takes a long time,to forget.
Not to remember
How to live.

First the tree stops growing.
It pauses,as if waiting for a message.
Then,as I said, the leaves turn brown.
It all takes time.Time to stop waiting

The leaves drop,then the smaller branches shrivel.
Humans also find that when ill, the hair may stop growing
And the finger nails.
We sacrifice the less important pieces of ourselves.
Even the most.

The small branches shrivel and dry out….
Yet the tree still looks alive.
Then gradually we notice it’s drying out;
it’s branches are parched and soon the trunk dries too.
It may split in places and insects make their home there.

It takes a long time before the trunk dies.
From the top down it dies.
The sap is too limited in quantity
To climb the trunk….
So the sap stays near the ground.
Eventually the whole tree seems dead
Yet in the roots there is still subterranean life.

The tree has died and is now brown and leaning a little sideways
No longer magnificent in display.
Time is all it needed
After the sharp cut…
And sometimes the roots are strong enough
To begin to send up new shoots
Another tree may grow..
I have seen that.

People ,of course ,die more quickly.
We have no roots.
And what of love,how does love die?
Like a tree,like a tree,like a tree.

Precise and moving geometry

 

Looking past the trees

What a marvellous day yesterday was for us here in London.
The sunlight was powerful,the sky blue and on the trees and shrubs I imagined I could almost see leaves turning red and gold.By the lake a huge flock of pigeons rose from the trees and circled in precise and moving geometry whilst simultaneously many sea gulls which had been floating on the windblown water arose and formed concentric whirling music in the sky.
We stood still on the grass in the deep silence, absorbing the colours,shapes and murmurings.Just a normal day in the country park but I am sure of one thing:

Birds can see God

Will I ever be a poet? No,never!

Image 

Did you ever have a lover
with long red hair?
For long red hair
seems quite unfair.

Did you ever have a lover
and then another lover?
For there's added gain
if you feel no pain.

Did you ever have a lover
who loved your eyes
and never ever lied,
and let you cry?
Whatever was the trouble.

You'll never have a lover.
if you have no time for others
for love needs care,
say,what is here.

Here and there are many lovely people
who live with their lives with scruples;
if you're scruple free,
then let it be.

Oh,let it be is fine,
Except for the divine.
I want to be involved
For I can't please all the folk,
Who touch me with their talk.
My heart has melted down...
and now I've grown a world
completely on my own.

Were you ever quite alone
Like a toad under a stone?
Did you ever hear a groan
as you wrote your poem?

For you'll never write a poem
that makes me laugh..
Because my feet are in the shower
but my body's in the bath.
My head is on the shelf...
and I've lost all of my teeth...
Yet you will love me
Evermore.
What allure!
so clear..

Evermore and evermore
You'll be standing on the shore
Watching the horizon,
wondering what she lies on.

Oh,you'll never be a poet,
Unless you learn your notes..
They take you to the limit.....
Love.whatever is it?Evermore,evermore...
The words seem like a roar...
I love your heart's deep core.
Ever more and ever more.
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On a light,hairy note

Looking at the two photos of Margaret Drabble

ImagengMargaretDrabbleBW75

I confess the difference surprise me.But I know that feeling at midlife that you are too busy to have long hair… yet it softens the features… so my hairdresser says…mine is short now..but I dream it is long again and feel happy

Is the short hair and plain look part of wishing to be taken seriously?She certainly has been married to two very interesting men

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The line of your lips

Big Love
Big Love (Photo credit: UMTAD)

The line of your lips is finely made,
as suffering accepted has transmuted pain
into a sculptor who
has given you much beauty;
yet the pain has shaped too
the eyes setting,
as if a slight question waits
in the back of your mind
asking,is this right?
and I perceive this and how you may suddenly tremble
with a memory too piercing;
yet how you love
the world so broken,
so humane
so vulnerable
so strong.
what are you saying to me?
I gather you ask me this of me:
Tell me it’s good to be alive.

And I do.

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That the world contains THIS, this person,this scenery,this light.

English: The Langdale Pikes
English: The Langdale Pikes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m sure since then
I have seen more beautiful places
but what was once called
The Shock of the New
washed over me before I could think.
Then I might say
That the world contains this,
That the world contains THIS,
this person,this scenery,this light;
That the world contains this..
this beauty,this love at first meeting;
THIS person
The total lack of expectation makes the experience possible.

Approaching by rail,on a line now closed
the train needed two engines as it rose from the coast
to Newby Bridge.There we walked onto a steamer and the sail began
At first the long lake is banked by dark trees
It’s peaceful but not remarkable;
turning a bend, all of a sudden the Langdale Pikes are manifest
And ever after they have lived in my heart like a blessing
I’ve even climbed on as a foolhardy schoolgirl;
getting down is the hard part.
Further and further into the heart of the Lakes
Every view is truly loved
but it was this view,the first,from just a small hill
That took away my breath.
Wanting nothing,we sometimes receive everything.
A person , a place,once loved,
is loved forever as they shape our very being
into a truer form;show us possibilities,
Transform us,even though,through them.
we make acquaintance with the sadness of loss and grief.
Love and loss our twin polarities that form our souls.
“And the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters”

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