Poems

Following on from yesterday, I found some time to give more creative consideration to the two poems I mentioned. In a sense, they are the same poem but written in two different ways. They are fresh off the wheel. Perhaps they need more mulling over and more polishing. Often it is helpful to return to poems after a period of time and potentially revise them. 

I am off to London in the morning - mainly to see our lovely son and his girlfriend so there'll be no time for revising poems or even blogging. We should  be back on Monday afternoon.

Wild Places

(I)

Let us seek out wild places
Blasts of sleet abrading our faces
Far from the urban sirens’ bleating
Unshielded by gas central heating
Let us go where falcons fly
And grey clouds amble cross the sky
No news received from faraway wars
No bleeping  phones nor slamming of doors
Just the quiet pulse of our earth
Beating.
 
Yes, let us go there where
The curlew’s call is clear and true
As skulls are washed  of what we knew
To moors that unfold like the timeless  sea
Over their ancient  geology
Sodden boots in a burbling clough
The way is long, the going’s  tough
Ofttimes the world is not enough
For the songs of The Earth are
Fleeting
 
In wild places we shall abide
In landscapes where small creatures hide
Pine marten and the pygmy shrew
Mountain hare and kestrel  too
Dying sunlight gilds the peaks
And the quiet voice of history speaks
About what seems to come between
Acts rehearsed and what’s unseen
As the shadows of  Earth start
Retreating.

_______________________________________________________________________

(II)

In wild places
We shall be
Close to the sky
Striding to rough edges
Where the bones stick out
And pause to listen to
The curlew’s cry
Soaring plaintively
Like a lament
From long ago.
 
In wild places
We shall wander
Into the V of the clough
Or under trees
Soaring mightily
To moortops
Where red grouse cackle
Midst ancient rocks
Tossed
Like dice.
 
In wild places
We shall listen
To seasons
Lift Earth’s song            
Tenderly
Soaring unchained
Under ambling nimbus
Blown cross the coast

Then out to sea...

Gestation

Today, October 7th,  has been National Poetry Day in England. Why our country requires such a day I  have never been entirely sure. Arguably, every day of the year should be a poetry day.

Nonetheless, to mark this special day I thought I would craft a poem. I had an idea. I was playing around with the term "wild places" and thinking about the long walks I have undertaken in the last decade. Walks to remote reservoirs, across bleak moorland, down into wooded valleys or along clifftops. I have been to so many wild places.

Visiting wild places  - especially on your own - can be quite spiritual. You're not just walking for exercise or to capture great pictures with your camera, you are also often walking to soothe your soul and drink in some of the sustenance that Nature can provide. 

And so for a couple of hours I played around with two different approaches to this poetic notion. I made some lines and rhymes and allusions that satisfied me and seemed to be giving substance to the core idea I was pursuing. Unfortunately, it did not come together as completely as I had hoped it would and so as midnight approaches I have decided to leave both poems on the back burner.

Perhaps there'll be time for further crafting tomorrow or early next week. There'll be no time over the weekend as we are heading down to London on Saturday morning.

Broadhay

Frances, Stew and Baby Phoebe are flying to Canada tomorrow. On my advice they've booked a hotel room down in Luton for tonight. This means that tomorrow's car journey to Heathrow Airport will be much shorter and thereby far less stressful than it would have been.

To facilitate their journey even further, this afternoon I took mama and the heavenly babe to a "Costa" coffee shop at Sutton in Ashfield, close to the M1, twenty miles south of Sheffield. There we met up with Stew whose workplace is close by. Assisting in this way meant that Stew did not have to factor in his usual journey back to Sheffield. They could just carry on south.

This morning, I was able to fit in a two hour country walk in familiar territory close to the village of Hathersage in The Hope Valley. It was a beautiful early autumn day - so clear and colourful and fresh. I took several pictures of a farm called Broadhay and three of those images accompany this blogpost.

Just as I was setting off on the walk with my camera still slung over my shoulder in its case, a fellow in a pick up truck reversed back to talk to me. He lives at the adjacent farm. Still sitting in his vehicle he asked me what I planned to take photos of.

"The countryside," I said.

"You're not taking pictures of my farm are you?"

"No. I wasn't planning to. Why is it not allowed?"

"It's my house and I don't want people taking photos of it!"

"Right. Okay," I said.

In England the law says that when in a public area or on a road or public footpath photos may be taken of anything at all - houses, farms, historic sites or even military installations. There are no restrictions - unless there are people in the picture.

I knew that already. I just needed to placate that grumpy fellow. Now I am going to have to send him the relevant legal information about photographers' rights. I don't want him to err again by confronting other country ramblers in that same wrongful manner. I think he will probably rage when he opens the letter but honestly,  I don't care.

Ragamuffin

That's me that is. I must have been four years old, heading for five. I was a scruffy little monkey wasn't I? There I am with my hands thrust in my pockets, knees scuffed, socks down, shirt bulging out from an old hand-knitted jumper that I probably inherited from one of my older brothers. I am sure that my father would have taken that picture. He probably called me in from our garden or from the fields in front of our house. I don't look too happy about it.

My brothers and I enjoyed a lot of freedom from an early age. We'd be roaming round our village or down the canal or cycling to local farms or playing football up at the recreation ground. The world was, if not our oyster then our Yorkshire pudding. Like other parents in our village, ours seemed quite unconcerned about our safety. That was the way of things back then. Back doors were never locked and children were trusted to come home at teatime.

It was all very different for my two children. By the 1980's paedophilia had been invented and lurid stories in newspapers made it clear that life for children was now fraught with danger. They got knocked over by speeding cars or contracted deadly diseases or were targeted by kidnappers. Parents had to be protective and doors had to be locked. Society had slithered into a very different, far less carefree way of life. We could never go back.

But I remember making caves in haystacks, "borrowing" old rowing boats, building a den in Colonel Wood's wood, scrumping apples from Mrs Varley's trees, racing caterpillars, picking potatoes and peas for money, climbing horse chestnut trees to  reach the biggest conkers and sharing tall stories with our peers. Yes - that once was me: that little  ragamuffin in the photograph who became the man I am.

Babysitting

Yesterday, Shirley and I were on babysitting duty. Our precious charge was the beloved granddaughter, Princess Phoebe. Her mother and father were attending the wedding of two friends they have known for more than twenty years.

Because of COVID, this wedding had been postponed three times. It was first meant to happen at Easter 2020 in Seville, Spain - a place much beloved by the bride and groom. They kept trying to reschedule the wedding as flights and hotels were booked and then cancelled. What was supposed to be a joyous event when first conceived turned into something of a painful saga.

In the end, the couple were married here in Sheffield. The ceremony took place in the old Abbeydale Picture House before coaches took the guests to Kelham Island  and a wedding feast with dancing in a repurposed industrial building called The Mowbray. At last Kira and Andy were married and the angst of the past two years could be relegated to memory. I guess that many weddings have been disrupted in this way by the damned coronavirus.

Anyway, back to the babysitting... Our duties commenced at midday and ended at one o'clock this morning. Yes, that's right - thirteen hours. This was not made any easier by the fact that Phoebe still needs mother's milk. Okay she's getting into solid foods now but nothing is better than mum's milk. By the way, she refuses to have expressed milk or formula milk - only human milk from two particular flesh-coloured receptacles will do. Consequently, before bedtime, we did a milk run to The Mowbray where mama was waiting with the heavenly liquid.

Afterwards, I went on to "The Hammer and Pincers" to participate in the Sunday quiz. before returning at ten thirty for the final babysitting stint. - allowing Shirley to go home at that point.

Princess Phoebe woke up just before midnight and was at first inconsolable but Grandpa calmed her after ten minutes and together we watched passing traffic on the road outside  as I sang:-

Half a pound of tuppenny rice

Half a pound of treacle

That's the way the money goes

Pop goes the weasel

When mama and papa returned as drunk as nuns in  an Ibizan nightclub, Princess Phoebe was under Grandpa's magical spell - calm and smiley but well ready for another milky top up. By the way, Little Phoebe is going to Canada on Thursday afternoon and in the picture at the top she is wearing her new bobble hat - bought specially for the two week trip. We are going to miss that little girl.

Kominsky

Last night I finished watching "The Kominsky Method" courtesy of Netflix. It consists of twenty two half hour episodes. I  saw all of them in seven days. The series was recommended to me by my friend Mike.

It chiefly revolves around a Los Angeles stage school where has-been actor Sandy Kominsky puts his coaching "method" into practice. He is played by Michael Douglas who is not an actor I had previously registered much interest in. He kind of passed me by.

"The Kominsky Method" is very nicely produced and it is imbued with quirky often subtle humour. The writing is solid and intelligent and there is a  laid back quality to the entire tapestry. 

There's a refreshing and total  absence of guns, killings and screeching car chases. Instead the drama focuses upon relationships, ambitions, failures and the differences between people. Michael Douglas is a revelation - playing his part with dry self-deprecation and humanity.

The well-known film criticism website "Rotten Tomatoes" said this of the show: "Full of humor and heart, The Kominsky Method paints a surprisingly poignant  portrait of life and aging, elevated by two top-notch performances by acting legends Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas.."

Of course people's tastes differ  but I very much enjoyed "The Kominsky Method". It filled eleven hours of my life very happily. Perhaps you have already seen it but if you haven't and you have access to "Netflix", I suggest that you give it a try some time.

October

October 2011 - Above Flash Edge

October is my birth month so every year it feels like coming home. The harvest is in and apples are still falling. You can sometimes hear them thump upon the earth. Unpicked brambles are mouldering on their briars. Red tractors drag harrows over the undulations of farmland. Days are shared equally between darkness and light. Migratory birds have departed or are in the process of coming back. Clouds scud to or from the north east. Summer is but a phantasm now - a sweet lament while winter growls like a famished creature, waiting for signals of weakness, ready to strike.

The tenth month is meant for reflection, tinged with sadness and yet it might be unspeakably beautiful too with shafts of burnished light gilding foliage that dies gloriously in shades of amber, russet and scarlet. Sometimes there's the aroma of burning - like faraway funeral pyres -  invisible wood smoke transported upon a buffeting wind. And forty years ago my wife married me in this month at Owston Ferry and yes, it does seem like yesterday.

Welcome to October.

October 2014 - Cleethorpes