My home is not quiet but I am not loud.
The lord has meant us to journey together.
I am faster than he and sometimes stronger,
But he keeps on going for longer.
Sometimes I rest but he runs on.
For as long as I am alive I live in him.
If we part from one another
It is I who will die.
Can anyone tell me what is being described??? (No cheating online!)
If you are interested, the first riddle is at:
https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/2019/11/22/friday-poem-an-anglo-saxon-riddle/
Another wonderful poem from Glenys about family life. Do go and check out her poetry, she tells such great stories so well….
On Christmas Day after
the excitement of presents
Dad lies on the living room floor
on his side, head on hand as
baby brother leans backwards
and forwards rocking to and fro
on his chubby bottom against
Dad’s stomach, absorbed in his
new playskool toy with a
rolling barrel, levers to push.
He thumps on one lever, laughs
at its loud ringing noise, stares
in fascination as the barrel rolls
and rings, thumps the lever again,
murmurs excitedly to himself.
Dad watches as baby brother
plays, grinning broadly at this
intent little fellow, so engrossed
in his fabulous new toy.
Previously posted March 2017
She feeds on her memories
lives as best she can
not needing to work
but building the garden
as he might have wanted.
Enjoying the Sun that he cannot
waiting without despair
until the end.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Sweet sisters Pleiades
Peer out from their nursery nebula
New baby stars
Half the age of the chalk hills
I live upon
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Oh the long and dreary Winter!
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o’er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
In the ghastly, gleaming forest
Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
Perished there from cold and hunger.
Oh the famine and the fever!
Oh the wasting of the famine!
Oh the blasting of the fever!
Oh the wailing of the children!
Oh the anguish of the women!
All the earth was sick and famished;
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,
And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!
Into Hiawatha’s wigwam
Came two other guests, as silent
As the ghosts were, and as gloomy,
Waited not to be invited
Did not parley at the doorway
Sat there without word of welcome
In the seat of Laughing Water;
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow
At the face of Laughing Water.
And the foremost said: “Behold me!
I am Famine, Bukadawin!”
And the other said: “Behold me!
I am Fever, Ahkosewin!”
And the lovely Minnehaha
Shuddered as they looked upon her,
Shuddered at the words they uttered,
Lay down on her bed in silence,
Hid her face, but made no answer;
Lay there trembling, freezing, burning
At the looks they cast upon her,
At the fearful words they uttered.
Forth into the empty forest
Rushed the maddened Hiawatha;
In his heart was deadly sorrow,
In his face a stony firmness;
On his brow the sweat of anguish
Started, but it froze and fell not.
Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting,
With his mighty bow of ash-tree,
With his quiver full of arrows,
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Into the vast and vacant forest
On his snow-shoes strode he forward.
“Gitche Manito, the Mighty!”
Cried he with his face uplifted
In that bitter hour of anguish,
“Give your children food, O father!
Give us food, or we must perish!
Give me food for Minnehaha,
For my dying Minnehaha!”
Through the far-resounding forest,
Through the forest vast and vacant
Rang that cry of desolation,
But there came no other answer
Than the echo of his crying,
Than the echo of the woodlands,
“Minnehaha! Minnehaha!”
All day long roved Hiawatha
In that melancholy forest,
Through the shadow of whose thickets,
In the pleasant days of Summer,
Of that ne’er forgotten Summer,
He had brought his young wife homeward
From the land of the Dacotahs;
When the birds sang in the thickets,
And the streamlets laughed and glistened,
And the air was full of fragrance,
And the lovely Laughing Water
Said with voice that did not tremble,
“I will follow you, my husband!”
In the wigwam with Nokomis,
With those gloomy guests that watched her,
With the Famine and the Fever,
She was lying, the Beloved,
She, the dying Minnehaha.
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) —An extract from the epic poem, Hiawatha.
When I was between about 7 years and 11 years old, my school teachers gave up on me, and I was relegated to the back of the class, to sit quietly and not disturb anyone. I discovered the four long shelves of books that nobody ever used. Among them was Longfellows Hiawatha. I read it from cover to cover at least twice. This period was when I got hooked on Homer, which I read in a verse translation. There were also several books on Sparta. At age seven, I asked if we could one day visit there……
Last spring the laurel hedge by my window was empty
No chirruping, calling, no rustling of glossy leaves
No fledglings edging off the nest onto twigs and then the adjacent fence
No wobbling and frantic flapping as parents patiently cajole
No triumphant flights to the Rose bushes
Only to tumble to the grass
As the chosen twig was too thin
I didn’t see a blackbird in my garden all summer
An oven of a season, hot, glaring, unseasonal in England
I mourn the fathers melodies, sung full voiced to advent dawn
The mother following me, chatting as she pirated fallen chicken feed
All those babies, remember the funeral my small sons conducted
For a tiny one found dead mid-lawn
Our erstwhile neighbours
Missing, presumed…..?
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
A second poem written in reponse to Earthweal’s challenge ‘Ghosts’ at
https://earthweal.com/2020/01/13/weekly-challenge-ghosts/
Please go and see what else is there!
This poem is also a direct reponse to Sumana Roy’s poem “Bring them Back”
https://gangulisumana60.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/bring-them-back/
Puffing a little after the burning breakfast toast
I attempt my usual stride but the
slippy chossy track is steep
so I fix my mind on the wind in high branches
and Red Kites scattering skyward
anything other than the deep sharp knife point
of asthma embedded in my
chest this morning
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I’m delighted to tell you that my poem “Coal”, which tells of my Grandad Whysall, is now up at The Drabble:
Like tracks in the snow
Little lives go
In our melting
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Not the poem I thought I was going to write, but the one that came. Another is brewing, but this one is for all the small lives lost in forest fires everyhere…..
Written in reponse to Earthweals challenge ‘Ghosts’ at
https://earthweal.com/2020/01/13/weekly-challenge-ghosts/
Please go and see what else is there!
Another wonderful poem from Betty:
.
I remember
when twenty-five years
was my whole lifetime.
.
Now a quarter century
is just another tumbleweed
bouncing down the street –
.
a little bit battered,
a lot more dust
but what wonderful kindling
I’ll be!
.
.
© 2019, 2020 Betty Hayes Albright
.
