Poetry Shared

This will be my last post. I promised a last poem. I wrote 'Vase' as part of my OU A215 course poetry, with the theme of life. It is my best to date and my favourite...

Vase

Lilies dropping pollen;
Like blood stains
On white sheets.

Gerberas wilting faces
Shrivelling up
Like dead leaves.

Dehydrated they drink
The vase of tap water
Like a drip.

To any reading my blog - I thank you...

With very best wishes,

Ali

Cornflower Blue and Lavender Too

I've got the May blues. In my garden that is...cornflowers, bluebells, forget-me-nots and wild-flower.

Looking round the garden at all the hues of blue, reminded me of a nursery rhyme I once loved.  But can't now remember all the words. I had a book of rhymes, again where it is I have no idea. I remember it's pictures and it's pages that I glossed over through my childhood. This is the first line;

'Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green'

But no it's not blue or green. Lavender is purple blue, lilac and white in the garden centres and I'm sure I've seen a pinkie purple one too.

I don't have any lavender out at the moment - too early, but here's some from last year...

Lovely, lovely  lavender
Flower, scent - all parts
To bathe in your beauty,
Essential purity
To heal wounded hearts.

Blossoming Beauty

Blossoming beauty
surrounds, senses spring to life.
The church bell calls time.

April Flowers

Every day the garden is changing. This morning the tulips were all unfurling to reveal their beauty...

There are many variants of primroses too...

I planted bulbs that didn't flower last year. Now I have something coming up in the pot and have no idea what it's going to be (spiky looking leaf bulb as below). That's the beauty of gardening. Self seeding, nature and dormant bulbs appear from nowhere, without any need for nurturing. Nature has it's own mind.

April sun is here for a bit longer. Good for a few days anyhow!

Snow

Falling white feathers
Delicately free- fall, then 
Somersault to earth.

Turn and Blow Away

What a wet October; although it has been relatively mild. The trees are turning...



The leaves have started falling: the rain dampening their vibrancy. Reflecting memories of kicking up and crunching through paths; like streams swimming with crisp leaves, on the way home from school.

The colours are still beautiful though, brightening up grey days.

Thought I'd share these that I managed to catch before they pile up brown and waterlogged.

Fall

October gusts by

Dropping acorns like bullets

Oak tree sheds new life.

September - Life Writing

I wrote this as part of my final assessment on life writing (a new genre to me). Thought I'd share it here...

My September

I sit on the cold damp timber wall which was once a railway sleeper. Eyes are closed shutting out the sharp sun rays. The sun is peaking behind the overgrown conifer that I hide behind; mulling things over. The garden is tidied to a point; growing wildflower. A garden as nature intended.  The summer sun has not left; still burning my arm.

Weeds raise high above the raggedy grass. Football is no longer played here. A few raindrops hit my head. Birds twitter to each other through the branches of the oak trees behind me. Wood pigeons annoy me with their droning calling. I remember husband threatens to shoot them down; like he did with his air pistol when he was a young lad; bravado boys talk.   

*

Through the dirty cobwebbed glass I see a vibrant yellow butterfly. My hands burn as I still run them under the hot tap. Day dreaming as preferred, not watching or feeling the scorch today.  A flash of fluttering iridescent wings catches my eye. I think dreamily that it is like the sparklers in your eyes before a migraine. An aura of beauty precedes blinding pain. A large dragonfly beautifully elongated swoops across the abandoned next door neighbour's garden. It is free falling in the wildflower meadow where it belongs until the end of its day.

***

Stormy and humid

School holidays means rain and lots of it. Well we've had a few storms over the last week or so but the garden is surviving - just. The petunias have had a bashing but are growing back strong again, after some serious rain lashing.

Here are a few pictures I took before the rains came at the end of July. Sadly the roses seem to have stopped on this shrub now. The blooms last for only a day or so. Glad I snapped them when I did...

Supporting local charities

Like many of us nowadays - things are a struggle. I have shopped at charity shops for years and have worked in one for a couple of years also. I have written about it in a short fiction story and used ideas for poetry too. Best of all is the fact that I find something I actually like. In general; when shopping with my daughter I get it wrong ... as all Mum's (I hope) do with a fourteen year old! I can never find anything I like in the shops but always find something great in charity shops.

Today I bought a baking book on cupcakes - the first in the Primrose Baking series and a DVD from yesteryear for my daughter - I believe we never grow too old for such things ( I will not publish the series but it involves ponies and being six) - I know I need to let her go and grow up but I am lucky and she still has that child in her (bit like her Mum). I also bought a white linen top, which I think will make me look very arty or is it thespian I am not sure... It is for the garden when too hot to sit in the sun - as it is getting to be here this week. It is good for us fairer skins to cover up - but I get so hot! Need to dig out the floppy hat next.

Anyhow getting back to why I'm posting. I went and bought the items and on the price label there was a beautiful wording; which I felt I should share here. The cause is 'Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice' and you can see more of their work at  http://www.pth.org.uk/.

It is local and supported with very generous donations and they now have a furniture shop too I believe, in the locality. The motto they use on their tag; which describes their work for our local sufferers of long standing and non-curable diseases says -

'... because every day is precious.'

Beautiful.

Freewrite (spellos allowed) - Blue

I have been sitting in the garden this morning. With a cup of coffee - instant barista style in my mug. The mug is blue with little stars. There are no stars out now just blue skies with fluffy white candyfloss clouds like grannies white hair.
I can smell fresh air blown in from the storm yesterday. Wet grass under my feet fresh linen. The sun-cream I have applied to my face and arms - even at early sun  I will burn - never brown. It smells of the seaside and tickles like hives. I want to wash it off...
I close my eyes. Sounds of the bumble fill my head. Two flit over the flowering shrub behind me. I open my eyes and they fall to the ground fighting for the nectar from the same flower head. I tell them to leave it alone. One flies off. Looking at grass the clover is visited. Another bumble hovers sucking in what it needs. So many bees. An ant tickles my foot. I brush it away. Don't like ants...
I get up and move my chair. My daughter's chair - I don't like mine... It is army camo colours in green - very camoflagued here behind the rose tree and bushes where I can see my whole garden. The wind is stronger today and the oak trees behind me are swaying rustling their leaves sounding like waves at the beach. My eyes are closed to chill and mind picks up each sound. The big dog barks. The birds - swifts shriek and the crow caws grumpily. The sparrow of which are plentiful pick at the fence and tweet in the tree and confer hedge. I imagine their heads turning left and right - surveying. The sparrow hawk has left. They are safe for now. Someone is using a chainsaw. Breaks up the silence. I open my eyes an all I see; is blue.

Beach-comber

Last Friday we visited Worthing on the South Coast. We love it there and go there quite a few times a year. It is not busy like Brighton and we got a parking space on the coast road amazingly easily (well, we did get there at 9.30am - a mean feat with a fourteen year old I can tell you !) It was free parking too being a Bank Holiday - it was lucky all round!

The sea was quite calm and it had the same effect on us too. There is something magical about the seaside to me. Maybe it is because of my love for holidays there as a child or just a place to escape to in my mind. I picked up many character observations on my travels that day. Maybe to use for writing; maybe not. I am yet undecided. Perhaps I should try 'beach-combing' my mind as I cannot focus this week; cannot decide to leave something out of a piece or add it in... I dislike editing sometimes. It's knowing when to 'let it go'...

I took this picture. The husband sees it as just a load of dead seaweed. I think it is beautiful for some strong reason as I spy shells, white chalky pebbles and sponges all mixed up. I love the colours of the stones and the glistening shells opened up to the sky.

I have been reading Iris Murdoch books after being enthralled by her husband's biography as noted in my previous post in March (My Current Reading). She too loved stones and the sea. I love her use of language. When I first started A Fairly Honourable Defeat, I was confused but the story unravels to a surprising ending. It is a story of various aspects of love and how it can mess up so many lives. That's how I read it anyhow.


I am about to start her book the sea, the sea (Murdoch,1999,[1978]). I've been finding these Vintage Series books in excellent quality too at my local Oxfam Bookshop; another of my regular favourite places. There must be another person who likes her work too. I have returned the said other for the shop to make some more cash from it. See my Life Poetry page for my poem on my 'book' philosophy.  I must finish my library book too and MUST get on with my assessments...next week; next week... ;D

References:
A Fairly Honourable Defeat, (Murdoch, I., (1975 [1999]), London,Vintage (Random House).
the sea, the sea, (Murdoch, I., (1978 [1999]), London, Vintage (Random House).


Here are some photos of the day at the beach last week.

Seagull posing - close up.

A little collection I made - I left it there for someone else to find...

That seagull again - what a poser!