Walking with yon dog with leaves the size of dinner plates…and then the wind blows!
A walk in the park
Sorrowful walk.
…
West slanted gold tinted light
white and black smudged clouds
scud in from the North along far off hilltops
bringing the grey gathered curtain of rain
…
that sweeps through the trees
on the path in the valley where I walk
thinking of you again
and this thing that invades
…
your brain and your life
without warning from time to time
I listened for several hours
as you spoke of your fears
…
the terror with which you view
the risk that it might return
you now believe it’s as inevitable
as the rain on this Autumn day.
…
Distant dim voices
the sound of laughter
the smell of burnt fat drifts
across the river from the Trattoria
…
I watch leaves fall
hastening the end of another year.
…
©robcullen19102021
How I ended up in art school
How I ended up in art school
…
Facebook is a mystery sometimes
always
reading the class reunion page
in a sort of disbelief
the gushing praise
of a certain teacher
…
the one who’d order me out
at the beginning
of every class
for an unknown reason
knowing though the consequences
if I was found
by the head teacher
was a certain beating
…
it was my best subject
English
she was the new teacher
so to avoid the certainty
of my fate ironically it seems
I hid in the Art room
with the Art teacher’s
quiet agreement.
…
Resistance takes many forms
its consequence uncertain.
…
©robcullen18102021
Verse as Commentary
Avenel
…
…
Avenel
…
On the flyleaf I wrote Avenel, New Jersey
twenty first December seventy three –
Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt
Richard Brautigan.
…
a Christmas present to myself
ninety five cents
alone along with Frye boots
bought in Connecticut
it had been raining all day
in the night snow fell.
…
Books on the shelves
each dated and signed
negotiate my travels
pinpointing those days
it was a bad year
I’m still affected
by your betrayal
this year talking about it
with a friend
another element revealed
…
The Frye boots lie
in the attics darkness
I have no idea
the reason they stay.
…
©robcullen19102021
Verse as Commentary
Life removed from reality
click “next step”
…
click your profile picture –
it’s the profile picture in the top right of your inbox
…
the Garden Warbler is rather non-descriptive
but then it sings
…
click add account –
it’s in the bottom left of the drop down menu
…
Chiffchaff the bill is thin and needle like
the legs are black
…
click “more options”
…
Siskin can be recognised in all plumages
by the broad yellowish bar on the dark wing
…
click “create account”
…
the Serin is flushed
with bright yellow on the head
enter your new account information
…
click “next step”
scroll down click “I agree”
…
Kestrel in flight long tail and shallow beats
Of long pointed wings distinctive
….
click continue to….
…
click continue to….
…
click continue to….
…
…
©robcullen22092021
This is a love poem for you
….
this is a love poem for you
…
Love is a story told
in the tight fold of families
told in the cwtch
when you hold
…
a child through growing
love is a beacons
starlight shining through darkness
a closeness no oppressor
…
can out do or overcome
love is its own brightness
when you hold
when you cwtch* a child
…
this is a love poem for you
…
©robcullen24082021
Cwtch* is a Welsh word with no English language equivalent. It is the place in the crook of the arm where a child is held from infancy onward…young babies and infants are held by their mothers using a woolen shawl wrapped in the “Welsh way” which allows both arms to be free. The child is held next to the mothers heart and listens to the mothers voice and much else beside. The cwtch is a place of reassurance and comfort — and love.
…
Love is at the heart of radicalism. Love is at the heart of Resistance.
©robcullen230921
Lockdown Fragments
…
…
On 9th March 2020, I suffered heart failure. With a heart rate of 257, I was rushed by ambulance to the Accident and Emergency of the local hospital which luckily for me had not been closed by the machinations of the Health Board bureaucracy.
…
My life was saved. Within four days I had two heart operations and a pacemaker defibrillator installed in a kind of skin flap on my chest linked by wires to my heart. Following the operations on the fifth day following admission I was discharged to home and six months of shielding to look forward to. Followed by a lockdown, a short period of what people called “normality”, followed by another lockdown and before we knew it we were into 2021. The time we found ourselves in could definitely not be described as “normality”.
…
…
In the isolation framed by shielding and lockdown I wrote.
I completed poetry which has been well received and prolifically published in the US. I re-edited my first novel and made good headway on my second.
…
I gardened as best I could…I cooked meals. And walked the hills around my home accompanied with my faithful sheepdog Meg. But most days I spent alone with my wife returning from her teaching in the evening.
…
I also wrote in Journals and notebooks. The following fragments are excerpts taken from my Journals.
It also contains observations, thoughts and early workings and excerpts of poems. These are just a few beginnings.
…
We live on the steep side of a hill
when winds blow in from the North
the days and nights are always cold
this winter and spring
the winds have turned
a cold wind from the North East
not blowing from the Southwest
as they normally do
I saw one Swift caught
by a sudden winds gust
it was my first
of the year.
…
A gale still blows on a spring day
the crop covers bedraggled
blown over the kitchen garden
scattered wherever their taken
…
looking to the house
the smoke from the new lit fire
swirls in the fast wind of these days
white smoke from Ash kindle
new gathered not yet dry
still burns with a bright flame
as Ash will do
a spring day trees fully leaved
open to damage
and these silent “lock down” days continue
…
No jet trails cross skies
in this year of contagion
TV news cast politicians headshots
empty phrases assumed lies
like north westerly winds
there’s no let up or restraints.
…
One book
a replacement
for the lost original
I know not where
last seen it sorting through
shelves of books of lives
not seen in an age
another mystery unsolved..
…
©robcullen05102021
Beginnings
Beginnings
…
The river seethes in its angry boiling rush
brown filled with soil robbed from the land
with each long downpour of heavy rain
and sets its course for reunion with the sea
…
©robcullen05102021
A black and white foto nothing less nothing more
Little Granny
…
Trying to find you hasn’t been easy at all
there are none of your words recorded
married at fourteen your journey from Milford
carrying your first child in the places
you lived where he dug the coal
…
There are none of your words recorded
telling your story of the journey you made
you were my mothers “little granny”
I have stories but now you’re gone
a black and white foto of you standing in the doorway
….
Census records paper milestones telling a story
his occupation your age the language spoken
both of you Welsh a marriage certificate
you signed with an x the service in English
the children you brought into this world
…
There’s no headstone to tell the barest detail
your absence your lack of even a trace of a burial
of your eventual green grass paupers resting place
just a silence as if you’d never existed, never been born
a cracked black and white foto nothing less nothing more
…
©robcullen23082021
Verse as Commentary
WRITTEN BY
Rob Cullen
Rob Cullen artist, writer, poet living halfway up a mountain in Wales walks daily with a sheep dog at his side. http://www.celfypridd.co.uk
Trees Are Watching Us
Learning perspective
can be a hard thing
it doesn’t exist in reality
just a formula taught to see
one of many ways of seeing
another dry construct
ironing out invalidating
other understandings
Dense woodland surrounding
young trees planted
on shale waste
some days walking through
it feels to me
as if I’m submerged
in a sea of constant green movement
Trees resist being seen
with perspective
an endless formula
of straightened lines
I remember being taught
to see the world in that way
ironing out invalidating
so many other ways of seeing
others understandings
I like to stand and listen
eyes closed for long periods
the unending sounds
of woodland around me
a world of so many lines
the wind lifts heavy rainfalls
spindle thin ash tops clash
lean in on one another
…
Trees are watching us
©robcullen13052021
