There is something in the air and we breathe it everyday a war of attrition an ugly game of lies as the politics of austerity bites and pinches our lives. Today, this country is no gentle place th…
Source: Austerity Bites by Dave Rendle
Autumn Edge
Autumn edge
I count the species in the orchard hedge
Maple, Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Hazel thrive
Blackberry and Honeysuckle intertwine
Overgrown Elder pruned and cut hard
Two Oaks, two tall Maples break the line
A Red Admiral sits on a Buddleia leaf
Needing to find a place to hibernate
An idyllic scene a man laying a hedge
The clear blue skies under an autumn sun
But never far from my mind that other world
Of war in Syria, the unrelenting brutality
And the suffering of people in these times
And of the silence of people of my kind
And of the silence, the silent unravelling
Of the myth of the Wests superiority
Of the myth of the Wests democracy
Of the myth of the Wests morality
We assume the cloak of Pontius Pilate
And wash our hands of responsibility.
RAC
Afternoons work
Afternoons work
I like the business of working
With a hand tool that weighs
And feels right to the touch
The heft of a hammer or an axe
A wood handle and sharp edge
That balance in the hands grip
With the job of the day ahead
I hear the buzz of a chain saw
But I prefer the slow rhythm
Of what I can do over hours
That stretch through days’ time
I listen to the buzzard mew
Overhead and the jack ravens
Call of warning as I tread out
Into the orchards quietness
It’s a place I can feel the strain
And the connectedness again
Of mind and body and soul.
Preparing
Preparing.
In this quiet time before winter draws in the light
We prepare the ground for the months of rest
Bill-hooks, sickles and cutters are sharpened
And so it’s a day to shorten and lay hedges
Birch and poplar are shedding their leaves
Oaks begin to turn though the change is slight
I hate to look at the Ash my favourite of trees
Diseased leaves hang in blackened bunches
But now is the time for the heavy work to be done
And in bad weather winter days writing begins.
50th Anniversary.
50th Anniversary
I was sixteen when that mountain of muck
Roared with the sound of the worst hurricanes
Rushing from the mountain top above Aberfan
To consume the life of a school, of generations.
I was being kept in silence in a dark room
And knew nothing at all of that place
Or that small children were drowning
In the slurry storms black torrent
The blackest news was kept from me.
My lungs were drowning me and I was fighting
For my own life. I make no comparisons.
The old priest sat at the side of my bed
Gave the last sacrament, words I barely heard
I was more concerned with the pain
Of taking the next breath and if the next
Would be my last or the pain would come again.
But I survived bed ridden through winter months
I was told my lungs were free of scarring
And in spring I was allowed to walk the mountain
When life is on the edge of a knife’s sharpness
The sun looks different, light has changed
The air of nights darkness has another meaning
The anniversary of the tragedy is near.
Old Man Sun God by Jessica Mookherjee
At noon they burn, in their light blue tracksuits and slogans, The law is the law and the law is light; They chant near where the kid was shot dead, left on the road for hours – while his mother sc…
Watching them fly in.
Watching them fly in
I never agreed with it
Too much emotion
The rejection said
I wrote something
After nine eleven
Watching them fly in
Not knowing
What they’d been leaving
Arriving in distress.
She had a brother
Working in the first tower
A place that I’d known
A place I’d been
She didn’t know
If he was living
The phone call came
And she smiled again
He was alive.
Long ago
As I walked home
I heard
I felt
The explosion
My classmates
Fathers, brothers
Uncles, men
Had been lost
We use that word
Too loosely.
Killed.
Too emotional.
What have we become?
Stone pillars
Wooden Indians
Vacant
People live
Vicariously
Just by television
I’ve lived in a time
That isn’t literally
Real or unreal
I write
About emotions
The connections
People, times and places
That are real.
How to Read Poems Properly
Most of my friends are poets. I’ll rephrase this because it sounds terribly pretentious. If you did a kind of job census on the people who I spend most of my time with I’m pretty sure I’d end up wi…
Source: How to Read Poems Properly
Season change
Mowed the orchard and took sheepdog for daily seven mile walk. Met dog friends! Mused why not International Poetry Day. Spoke with my friend Bill from Killarney that Yeats seems to be slipping away. Find I’ve been asked to read a voice over for a film. But I’m yearning for frosts and snow as the hint of a change of season begins the day. Tomorrow I’ll proof the stables ahead of bad weather. And my thoughts turn to Lampedusa and the roughening sea.
Celfypridd 