Shared
Somethings
like grief
and loss
are best shared
rather than
held alone
healing takes time
maybe lifelong
even more reason
not to be on your own.
Birkenstocks
Thirty years
worn out now
resoled
so many times
but the uppers
have given out
welcomed
me each morning
now time for a rest.
Words
“Here there are carved words
On smooth milled stone,
Each letter, each word
A fragment of a life’s story
A memento to last an Eternity.
So many words worn away
By the hard edged rain
Of so many winters past.
Expressions of love, of duty done,
The reward of rest in heaven.
And the remembrance always
Of those who follow.
Followers themselves now dead
So that the grave lies forgotten.
And the words meaning lost.”
(excerpt On hearing of the death of Beryl Reuben.)
Our Lady of Penrhys
A concrete statue
Mary and child
on the place where
a wooden statue
once stood
a place of pilgrimage
in the medieval period
and before that
a celtic well
and there still grows
a Hawthorn tree
a “clutey” tree
and before that…
Stories on old stones
So young
So young
Lest we forget
those lives
And those
Bereft
Tears fall
Three children lie here
the eldest 17 months
stories written
on old gravestones
have the power
to stop you
hold your breath
with thoughts
of the sadness
of those poor parents.
With thanks Sheila!
Two poems by Gill McEvoy — And Other Poems
Derek Jarman’s Film “Blue” His silence now is blue. As if an artist drew a laden brush of paint from alder buds to reeds his mind and mouth and tongue are flushed by blue: the low-slung sky, the feathered seeds, the brook like navy slate beneath a moon, the tassels of phalaris plumes fused with […]
The Valley
I was born in a valley that was hollowing itself out
Under our feet men were digging
With mandrills and charge
Stripped naked in the heat
Of the dark seams of the earth
I was born in a valley that was dying on its feet
People didn’t seem to notice
One by one the pits closed
Men were moved to other mines
But the valley was thinning.
I was born in a village at a time when deaths shadow
Still haunted the ribboned streets
I grew accustomed to the disappearance
Of men, of the disasters, the mass funerals
For those who died in the depths
Those sombre marching line of men.
I was born in a village where words such as roof-fall,
Explosions, afterdamp a build-up of gas
In the heat of that darkness
Became markers of another time another age
I was born in a place that was dying
Its soul waving I’m leaving, you staying?
Celfypridd 