Exmoor Spring

May 23, 2018Poetry, poem, beauty, exmoor, Englandpoetry, poem, spring, exmoor, England, sheep, springtime, rhymeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Sheep gnaw at clumps of grass
Buttercups shine as yellow cut-glass
Bluebells haze and blue a bare hill bereft of a wood
And I laze where struggling shepherds once stood.

Being English

May 21, 2018England, history, Life, love, poem, PoetryEngland, Life, love, Megan, poem, poetry, weddingThe Cheesesellers Wife

Show no emotion, hold everything back
Say ’I think we need a bit of support’ when you are under fatal attack
Go about your business as the world falls apart
Hiding the fear deep in your heart
Delight in the odd, the strange and the weird
Live beside the newcomer, even if they are feared
Chicken Tikka Marsala is our national dish,
An island nation that rarely eats fish,
Throw flowers under a princesses hearse
Life may be difficult but it could always be worse
Marry the outsider, swallow them whole
Quiet, loving and different is the English soul

First blogged in 2015 and it seems a bit appropriate this week. I admit that both people in the photo not actually English….but its a great photo!

1939

May 19, 2018Life, love, parenting, poem, Poetryfamily, fear, Grandmother, history, Life, poem, poetry, war, world war 2The Cheesesellers Wife

She did not weep,
nothing so soft or poetic,
my grandmother sobbed long and hard
remembering war-crippled brothers, war dead father.
She had nursed soldiers, married one,
spent recent years in dread.
A few words on the Wireless,
a husband mustering with his gun,
and the nightmare returns.

As a child, thirty years later,
I saw hunger in her old eyes
a longing for security from fear
that she never lost.

For Ethel Maude Wellsted Brown (known as Maude), orphaned by the Boer War, Pharmacist during the 1918 Flu pandemic, wife and mother to Airmen and Airwomen. My beloved maternal Grandmother who married a poor boy from Malta and, despite the attitudes of the time, danced with black GI’s in Wiltshire as they waited to fight in D-Day and the liberation of Europe.

The photo is of her and her children in the mid-1930’s. The little girl in white grew up to be my mother. The three larger children were all in the RAF or WAAF in World War 2. They and their father came through the war unscathed.

According to my mother (who was eleven at the time), Maude sobbed for hours after the declaration of war was broadcast in September 1939..

Recluse

May 17, 2018Life, love, poem, Poetrybooks, Life, love, Marriage, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

People drain, push through
boundaries, demand attention.
Childhood reclused with book after book
reading to the exclusion of most else,
an interior life but for the
vibrancy of a sunset, the thrill
of abstraction in flowing water
and then, at seventeen,
the bright blue art of your eyes.
The world and you, my love, stimulate
refresh, make me whole
give me myself once more.

Listening

May 12, 2018art, Life, poem, Poetry, Wild lifebirdsong, Friends, night, nightingale, Painting, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Walking back from your house,
Orion calling to me over mine,
the glow at the next street light
burst into fluid noise, birdsong at midnight
rippling through our suburb
with no one but me to hear.
I should have gone back and got you,
taken you to hear.
But I’m still uncertain of your reaction,
pragmatic as you are,
and you need to get your students marking done.

The bird was calling out unheard
or heard only by me.
Just as you call and are unheard.
The idiot man who left you,
the sisters who think you should be
over it by now,
and only me, each Wednesday night
to listen to you as we paint.

Stone in the water

May 9, 2018beauty, nature, poem, Poetry, springtimebeauty, exmoor, Life, poem, poetry, spring, springtimeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Deep plunge pool in the heart of the moor
Centred in spring time unfurling of bracken
Shadowed by a twisted thorn tree
Water pours in over a mossy lip
Large pebbles line the sloping
Glowing colours in crystal water

Something falls
Breaks the surface
Circles upon circles radiate
Contours ripple to a point of disappearance
Sparkle in the dawn light
Stone in the water

Re-blogged from 2016.

Coal

May 5, 2018England, Life, love, philosophy, poem, PoetryCoal, coal miner, family, fossils, love, poem, poetry, whysall, wilfred WhysallThe Cheesesellers Wife

He told me of how coal can be split
to reveal the hoof prints of long buried deer
if you get the angle and the grain right

Of how, in the deepest mines
Darwin was proved each day
by the strike of a miners hammer

And how opening the coal opened him
drove him to library and Miners Institute
to learn, wonder and argue

His gentle voice, with its natural grace
led me into his world
to the child opening trap doors in constant dark

To the young man, passionate for justice
filled up with the joy of learning
all forged in dark coal.

For Wilfred Whysall, my paternal Grandfather (1909 – 1979), on his birthday.

Study in Yellow

May 2, 2018beauty, garden, Life, nature, poem, Poetry, springtimeLife, nature, poem, poetry, primroses, spring, springtime, yellowThe Cheesesellers Wife

Pale primrose lies by the chicken pen
Bold Daffodils stand up in the border
Screaming Marsh Marigold calls from the pond
Subtle oranges somehow manage to cool down the tubbed Narcissi
Spring yells yellow in my garden

Re-blogged from 2016, when spring was actually warm, unlike the chill this year….

Every body’s wounded

April 28, 2018Life, love, poem, PoetryDeath, Grief, Isosceles Hammond, memory, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Caring for your grave,
trimming edges, pulling weeds
tending flowers.

Cleaning the headstone,
tracing the words with my fingers
‘As yet unfinished’.

The dates are ridiculous,
it hasn’t been that long.
Wounds heal, yet scars remain.

In memory of Isosceles Hammond, stillborn 28th April 1996

Wind Chimes

April 25, 2018garden, poem, Poetrygarden, music, poem, poetry, wind chimesThe Cheesesellers Wife

Startling music, melodious and yet chaotic
sharp enough to be an alert.
Telling me to watch out
for something as yet undefined
sweet danger in this small garden.