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.

 

Komorebi

Tags

Impressionism, komorebi, nystagmus, parasols, pixels, Pointillist

Wikimedia- Madame Monet and her son

Another leftover poem from my series a couple of years ago.

Komorebi is

a word for dappled light seen

under, or through trees.

The Impressionists caught it

in flickering strokes,

or in Pointillist pixels.

Women’s parasols

shielded them from nystagmus.

Wide-brimmed hats stilled the dancing

tones’ fluctuations.

Yet the bare-headed shimmer

and they scintillate

with the mirage of brief youth

and half-realisation.

Pointless Things

Tags

concrete operational, fascinators, list poem, pet hates, Pillow Book, Sei Shonagon, trout pout

I think I wrote this poem based on an entry in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon,

which was a list of ugly things. I tried to bring it up to date with pet hates of the

20th and 21st century.

Juxtaposing hair

which is unkempt with fine clothes;

a fascinator

on a helmet-like mullet;

hand-made paper spoiled

by spidery handwriting;

low-cut brides kneeling

in front of praying vicars;

presenting logic to the

concrete operational,

who try to pretend

that they understand;

a trout-pout selfie taken

by a narcissist – tramp-stamped,

and no Spring chicken either.

 

 

 

Integrity

Tags

fourteen lines, graciousness, honour, integrity, Japanese poetry, visiting friends

About two years ago I was experimenting with using Japanese poetic

frameworks and was trying to paraphrase and utilise poetry from the Tale

of Genji etc, but attempting to re-phrase the little cameos in my own words. 

This poem seems to have been left out, so I offer it to you now.

Sometimes you visit,

unexpectedly, a friend

and you stumble on

evidence of graciousness.

No show is put on:

it is their habitual

way of doing things.

It reflects nobility.

Even if you were to spy

on them, you would find

they’d behave in the same way.

they’re true to themselves,

whether they are being watched,

or not.  It’s integrity.

Luthier

Tags

Aeolian harp, Alpenglow, dendrology, gibbous moon, Il Bosco Che Suona, luthier, Magnificent Sorella, master craftsman, Mother nature, musical instrument maker, Pale di San Martino, terroir, topography, Val di Fiemme, violin

Val di Fiemme Photo from Wikipedia

btristan Predazzo (TN) 5 Sept, 2009.

L’abete di risnanza gives you wood

from the Val di Fiemme, the Magnifica Sorella.

In that forest of harmony is Spruce,

cradled by Pale di San Martino;

warmed in turn by Alpenglow and then chilled.

Prolonged, reduced solar activity

narrows its rings; matches them to your wrinkles.

Your belly has developed fine grain lines;

your voice has a sylvan modulation.

You haunt Il Bosco Che Suona,

a seasoned genius, skilled in selection.

Work is a divertimento for you.

The gibbous moon is your precise signal

to select the slow-maturing timber

to be quarter-sawn; air-dried in your shop.

The vibrating air, combined with your breath,

creates singing sap, needles, resin,

responsive, like an Aeolian harp

and the terroir gives you vine ash for your reds,

which stain your hands, transforming you to live tree,

bridging the gap between man, instrument,

climate, topography, dendrology.

When your master craftsman fingers relax

and your touch becomes lighter and lighter

and Fortune fells you just where you have stood,

for aeons, those in your shadow will grow,

more vigorously for having known you

and your arcane method of fusing strength

with Mother Nature’s flexibility.

They will internalise resonances

from tonewoods subject to your discipline.

Autorotation will spread all your skills.

Though, in the beginning was Man and Tree

and an inhospitable mountain range,

now Nature has been given her own voice.

Ultimate Neighbour Feud

Tags

Avaris, hippos, Hyksos, neighbour dispute, revanchism, Seqenenre, Thebes

Photo by Diego Delso

Extreme revanchism row with neighbours:

no statutory nuisance laws back then;

no one issued an abatement notice.

He was ‘the Brave’ – at war with the Hyksos.

It’s amazing what lack of sleep can do.

They just snapped over his noisy hippos.

A desire to cull turned to lust to kill.

We’ve all been maddened by a noisy pool.

The disturbance carried on the night air,

travelling from Thebes, up to Avaris.

Then his younger son captured their city,

almost twenty years into his own reign.

A little bit of poolside decorum

may have prevented an execution.

Users of swimming pools should roar quietly,

to avoid the fate of Seqenenre.

Bach and the Bumble Bee

Tags

Bach, Baroque, clerestory, Sarabande, Scordatura

Male Bumble Bee Photo by Sffubs (Wikimedia Commons)

Scordatura is

an alternative tuning.

In the Sarabande,

Bach’s audience is showered

with Baroque pollen

and hears cello strings vibrate

in harmony with

the frequency of a bee.

The musician’s taut thighs grip;

ground the instrument.

Way up in the clerestory,

there’s a resonance

which might have provoked a hum

from the composer himself.