Lengthened Shadows

Tags

Emerson, lengthened shadows, Sweeney Agonistes, T S Eliot

Reference to Emerson and T S Eliot

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

The lengthened shadow of a man is History, said Emerson,

Who had not seen the silhouette

of Sweeney straddled in the sun…

The Loneliest Man in the World- a sestina

Tags

agribusinesses, Amazon, habitat loss, illegal loggers, Man of the Hole, North Rondonia, pistoleros, sarampion, sestina, yams

The harbingers of the highway, strange men –

pistoleros? – murdered his tribe.  Alone,

he raises maize and yams.  He is the last

to roam 4,000 hectares; to survive

sarampion, flu, smallpox and the loss

of relationships, family and friends.

The agribusinesses have been no friends

to Amazonian rainforests.  Men

decimate the land; their gain is loss.

This man has lived for twenty years alone.

With four, or five, some other tribes survive,

but human diversity will not last.

When the illegal loggers have, at last,

razed every tree to the forest floor, friends

of the indigenous will not survive.

Stripping rare plants that might have healed men

will leave us with dilemmas, all alone,

to face health crises; scientific loss.

In today’s world we experience loss –

loss of our souls; our languages.  The last

man to roam North Rondonia alone

at least felt what it was once to have friends.

He knew the co-operation of men

was vital for tribe members to survive.

Without his wisdom, how can we survive?

No man is an island.  All sense the loss.

Our planet is affected – even men

who murdered his kin.  The effects will last,

impacting their families and their friends.

Doubtless their guilt should not be borne alone.

Corporations do not erode alone.

Immunity itself will not survive.

Time’s arrow can pierce foes and even friends.

The Man of the Hole, who suffered great loss,

knows his breath will be surrendered at last,

but he holds that in common with all men.

Friends of our earth, how shall we survive loss

of habitats and species?  Fellow men,

look at this last man.  He’s not alone.

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A post of the poem I already published in February 2021.

‘The Man in the Hole’ was found outside his straw hut, dead in a hammock

and covered with Macaw feathers. He was aged about 60 and no foul play

is suspected at this time.

Warning

Tags

deep water, drowning, moat, Not Waving But Drowning, Stevie Smith, warning

I am trying my best!

‘Not Waving, but Drowning’ poem comes to mind. Stevie Smith.

Six Clerihews of the Moment

Tags

Angela Rayner, Boris Johnson, clerihew, House of Commons, Keir Starmer, Lynne Truss, Pm's Question Time, Rishi Sunak, Satire

Lynne Truss,

What an embarrassing fuss!

She confused the Baltic and Black Sea.

Does she have Geography GCSE?

Boris Johnson, PM,

from whom the Tory Party and the country’s troubles stem,

knows all about ‘tragic miscalculation[s]’

and is woefully inept at international relations.

Angela Rayner,

lover of the biker boot and trainer,

called the Conservatives ‘scum.’

Maybe, some think, she wasn’t quite so dumb?

Keir Starmer,

we’d be misled if we called him a charmer-

inadvertently, or not, the Scots crofter was hot.

His principled stand eclipsed the whole lot.*

(in some people’s opinion)

Jacob Rees-Mogg,

Princeling of Pettifog?

Is that a silver spoon in the pocket of your pantaloon,

or are you pleased to see us, that you may bestow a boon?

Rishi Sunak.

is giving us £200 back.

‘Now, don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ he may say.

No, we’ll leave that till the Election Day.

Rejection

Tags

empathy, Goya, jealousy, Los Caprichos, quennet, rejection, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Wikimedia Commons.

Goya: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters from Los Caprichos

black mood patient endurance anguished thoughts

dashed hope

groundless expectation tunnel light silver lining?

suppressed frustration

wry smile forced laughter gnawing jealousy

daily grind

scarce empathy

gritted teeth

voluntary solitude

brittle persona

crushed spirit

low ebb

arrested development

black tunnel anguished grind daily endurance

groundless jealousy?

Summer’s Lease Hath All Too Short A Day

Tags

Autumn, decay, end of summer, every fair from fair sometime declines, momento mori, nasturtium, poignant beauty, Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, still life

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Hot? Well, it’s not!

Tags

Alexander Pope, Dryden, Matthew Arnold, universal greyness, weather

Wish it was. Fed up with the universal greyness that covers all.

Was that Alexander Pope? Dryden?

I’m thinking ‘Dunciad.’ Maybe it was Matthew Arnold- I forget, alas.

I know Europe is burning, but here it is day after day of grey

nothingness.

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Homesick on The Ridgeway

Tags

dustceawing, eawl-leet, hill-fort, holloways, Hran-rad, inosculation, invasion, Norsemen, petrichor, The Ridgeway

Who were these invaders?

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

 

Haunting the holloways, harrowed by hooves;

feeling our footfall fragment the flint.

Scanning the canopy’s inosculation,

we glybe through glossamer and squint in the glisk.

Dustsceawung is unavoidable:

dreams flit into smeause, like mice through a crack;

dilemmas dissolve through smoot holes.

Preoccupation is piffling to us.

We head for a hill-fort; spy on a settlement,

among the shadowtracks and shivelights

at the selvedge fray of a sown field.

After a shower, a pungent petrichor

permeates nostrils and a landskein

looms over the horizon, like smoke from their huts.

Soon it will be wolf-light; eawl-leet softens

and Heimweh’s heft hirples our hearts,

so we summon the sun wane

on the suthering tide, where we tied our ships.

May a spanging breeze freeze the salt in our beards!

Helmsmen, we long for the Hran-rad and home.

Hannah More (1745-1833)

Tags

anti-slavery, bas bleu, Belmont, Blagdon, Clapham set, Cowslip Green, Fishponds, Hannah More, Mendip Hills, nervous breakdown, philanthropist, religious tracts, Tyntesfield, Walpole

Hannah More by Pickersgill

A quennet for a woman who made a fortune with her pen:

 

fourth daughter   Gloucestershire born   Mendip Hills

poetic landscape

religious tracts   pastoral plays   Sunday education

nervous collapse

‘strange affair’    Bleeding Rock   jilted female

small annuity

bas bleu

Blagdon cottage

Clapham Sect

petticoat bishop

Cowslip Green

anti-slavery

bold philanthropist

strange plays   female education    pastoral landscape

religious rock.

 

 

Pando

Tags

adaptation, aspen, bryophytes, clones, cordate leaves, ldge pole pine, lepidoptera, Pando, Pluto, Populus tremuloides, ramets, rhizome, survival of the fittest

Image: Wikimedia Commons. USA Forest and Agriculture Department

 

 

Christ died on an aspen cross, woodmen thought.

Maybe that’s why, on slight provocation,

I quake and all my cordate leaves shiver,

so that I am known as ‘The Trembling Giant,’

aka Populus tremuloides.

Before men walked out of Africa and

when glaciers were scouring the planet,

I, Pando, was like a subterranean god –

not Pluto, but Pando, meaning ‘I spread.’

After flames have incinerated me,

my dormant rhizome will regenerate,

like resurgence of an old religion.

In times of trial, I just go underground;

in ideal circumstances, I can host

bryophytes; nurture lepidoptera.

I have the root of the matter in me,

but I share my vulnerability

with my multiple ramets – all my clones.

I haven’t flowered for ten thousand years,

in spite of a rigorous self-pruning.

See where black scars mutilate my white bark.

Invasive lodge pole pine may steal my light

and pocket gophers gnaw my root system,

but I sprout from this volcanic soil.

What I lack in diversity,

I’ll exchange for durability, for

we suckers just plan to stay together,

even when a highway runs right through us.

Master of the art of adaptation,

I will survive when all else is ashen.