Henri Rousseau, The Waterfall (1910), oil on canvas
When the white men came Left their priest here with his tales of Jesus and original sin we of course recognised the Garden of Eden For is not the place we live in the very same
If we want to talk to God we go to the waterfall We know our God is everywhere In plants, and beasts, and soil – the rain that feeds the river But it is here that we do truly hear her call
God waters the grass we bend to make our huts Where even now the priest leads evening prayers But I prefer our God’s song –I do not care For wearing clothes, or to hear his stories -of which he has lots
Just like the snake, the priest would give us knowledge Of our nakedness, our nature as sinners But I know we still live in the garden, where we can pluck dinner From the very trees, or, grateful, take in the life of brother deer
So whilst my kin listen to the priest’s lies I slip away to the never-ceasing waterfall Whose plashy tones are our God’s call Endlessly flowing ‘neath Her created skies…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to respond to the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Melissa was in part, inspired by a poetic exchange between myself and Merril about Rousseau on her site Collaborature which you can read here.
1.- We have had some rain after days of strong sun or strong wind – which equally dry out the garden – even more critical when everything is in containers…
2.- The Stargazers are all open bar one and it is an annual marvel – especially for a flower that we more often see as a cut flower…
3.- I continue to be fascinated by this last Allium – by its slow development and by its morphology – it has now developed more pronounced florets on the underside whilst the to looks much the same as two weeks ago…
Two weeks ago
4.- I have, today, completed 32 out of 62 Poetry Postcards – the rest to be completed by the end of August…
I cannot show you the poem that was on the back of this card yet, but it was about the fact that all the posters on the many student walls, of Che Guevara, show him looking very serious as befits a revolutionary – so this smiling picture would not, I think, make the grade…
5. I am in the middle of another Speculative Poetry Mini-book and it is taking some work for such a tiny thing – watch this space…
6.- I talked to my Writing Critique partner yesterday – he and his wife have arrived in Eureka California for a few months before moving to L.A. for a few years from their home in Minnesota. Their cabin in the woods, runs in the Redwoods, sound divine, with deer at the window and other wildlife. The other evening, whilst watching a police drama on TV, the characters were smoking marijuana and suddenly they could distinctly smell skunk. At first they thought someone was smoking whilst passing nearby, but on opening the front door, they found three skunks gambolling outside lol…
7.- Barbara is no better but no worse…
8.- When I speak to my sister in Nova Scotia, every other week, she likes to hear me read one of my poems, so I typed up this one, and since it won’t appear anywhere else on the blog in the foreseeable future, i thought you might enjoy it… It was written in my Writing Group (on holiday break at present) and the prompt was to include a line from a favourite song…
Cause the Trees Don’t Need To Know
Trees, it turns out are no slouches when it comes to communicating co-opting networks of fungi intertwined with their subterranean roots to talk to their fellows “Salmon season is nearly upon us Gaia bless those little bears for dragging their food deep into the woods.” “Yes, bless them indeed they don’t even know what they do for us trees!” “I’m being attacked by those damned Leafcutter ants—anybody got anything bitter to make my leaves unpalatable to the little blighters – most obliged, dear neighbours.” “There’s a sapling here who’s struggling – let’s feed him up a little so he can make it till one of us old guys pegs it, and he gets his shot at the light…” Slow, thoughtful communications as befits elder statesman of the forest—unknowable, ineffable but now the threats come too thick, too fast drought, unseasonal snow, floods and forest fires there is little we can do now too late to intervene so let us whisper these perils quietly when we walk in the woods ‘Cause the trees don’t need to know…
My love is at sea now, quite lost in the blue A blue funk has claimed her, she’s quite lost to me No message of love works, they do not get through My love is unmoored now, completely at sea
No pills or bright potions Can bring her to land Albatross on the ocean We don’t understand
My love is at sea now, amidst darkest waves The darkness crept up and it turned down her flame Just bring back my loved one, it’s all that I crave The mind is a mystery, that merits no blame
No pills or bright potions Can bring her to land Albatross on the ocean We don’t understand
My love is at sea now, please return her at last I fire up the lighthouse to guide her way home The dark storm that took her, is now in the past There’s still life worth living, if back here she’d come
My love is at sea now Please return her at last And pray let her see how Depression can pass
These I have loved songs from The Sound of Music in glorious surround-sound kitsch, High on a Rocky Ledge, which is a more quirky song about Edelweiss from Moondog, the Viking of Sixth Avenue
The gravelly voice of late period Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit gut-wrenchingly poignant but you are commanded to listen much as broken Robert Wyatt for whom Shipbuilding was written and when you realise the real subject was the Falklands War, you can never unhear its meaning
On a more cheerful note if you’ll pardon the pun almost anything by The Electric Light Orchestra but for its lugubrious intro as smooth as melted chocolate let’s slip Need Her Love onto the turntable
And whilst we’re listening to love another song whose slight delays stretch the heartstrings achingly it has to be UB40 Please Don’t Make Me Cry whilst at the opposite end of the scale (another musical pun) Deep Purple’s Hush hurries the beat and raises your heartbeat with an excitement that threatens to burst all bounds on the cusp between pop and heavy rock
Yet another driven classic unmistakable from the first notes of it’s Electric Bass accompaniment Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons The Night will also set your pulse racing… I could go on, for music comes in endless forms and variations – but these are the cream of the crop – today… All these have been my loves…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics, invites us to write a list poem in the shadow of ‘The Great Lover’ by Rupert Brooke, and to begin and end our poem with lines taken from the second stanza…
I can’t face myself in the mirror anymore, bloodshot eyes from too much coffee, and the twitch, the nervous tic – it’s too much – it scares me almost as much as sleep, as you…. I haven’t slept in days, well, I have tried not to, even though my body is screaming out for rest and relief, I dare not go there. I fall anyway, fitfully dozing, into the waiting nightmare and come to with a start mere moments later – for you are always there waiting for me, remorseless, relentless, implacable hunting me down, chasing me ceaselessly away from the light, away from reality, your mantra always ringing in my ears “I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts”. Is there no help for me?
“We’ve got you now.” I hear a voice say far away. ”Nurse, start him on Olanzapine 2.5 milligram’s…”
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery invites us to write Of Jaguars and the Night, prose—fiction or nonfiction— up to 144 words, not including the title and incorporating a line from “Jaguar Song” by Artur Sze.
1.- The lilies are flowering – this group 0f Stargazers now top six feet high and are scenting this corner outside the front door…
2.- Grats and Hypograts… On Thursday, I set out for work and at the roundabout where I turn onto the dual carriageway, I gunned the engine rather too suddenly and rounding the corner, I heard something snap.
Luckily, I was able to roll far enough from the roundabout to be reasonably safe but I nevertheless got out an stood well away from the car.
After a reasonably quick recovery, my local garage said they couldn’t look at it until halfway through this week due to staff shortages, they did look underneath and confirmed, as I suspected, that the drive shaft had snapped.
My daughter, Beverley, was off on holiday for two weeks to Ireland with her newly (early) retired husband Don who has just left a very stressful job. She agreed to lend me her car and put me on her insurance (£41.00)
On my way to catch the train to see the dental student in Leeds, I filled the car up with £50 of petrol only to find that the student was ill and hadn’t booked in the appointment and then, on getting home, had a call to say that they had fixed the car already, although it was going to cost twice what they had initially suggested since drive shafts are usually sent off to be refurbished but in this case, as it was actually broken, that couldn’t be done (£380.00)
I was glad to collect my car the next day since I hadn’t really liked driving Beverley’s car – the clutch seemed slack compared to mine, and Beverley will refund the petrol since I didn’t use more than a thimble full… All’s well that ends well and I am resolved to be gentler when accelerating – diesel engines have a lot of torque power…
3.- Whilst at the station, I noticed this nicely framed view of our lovely surrounding countryside and include it for you delectation…
4.- Also at the station, I paused to photograph this bank of self-seeded “weeds” – simply amazed at how many different species there were…
5.- Whilst at the garage, I was intrigued by this unusual vehicle. I am not really a petrol head, in fact quite the opposite, but having briefly owned a VW T4 campervan, I do have a soft spot for the breed. It turns out, this one was built in the ’70s by a company called the Jurgens Caravan Company. VW made a specially strengthened chassis’ with a cab only and Jurgens built a caravan onto it. This particularly rare model with the “Luton” box over the cab, was released in 1977. Pretty good shape for a vehicle made when I had just left university 49 years ago…/
6.- Barbara has not left the house for two weeks despite my best efforts – I am going to have one last go after finishing this, to get her to go out even if it is only to the supermarket to do the week’s shopping – she could then choose her own meals…
7.- The Poetry Postcard Festival is going well – due to being on two lists and therefore having 62 postcards to send, I need to complete 8 each week and have now sent 24! This week, still on the cyanotype kick, I have designed some cards to illustrate poems about famous people (Photoshop, get a picture, fiddle with contrast, posterise, turn black and white, turn negative, make cyanotype) and although I can’t show you the poem as it hasn’t reached the recipient yet, I will eventually be posting them on the PoPoFest Facebook page and I will show you this particular one in a month or so…
8.- This practice of gratitude (not forgetting hypograts) and the support and encouragement that all your lovely comments give me…
9.- Although we have plenty of sun, there is cloud too and a breeze so its not too hot and so far we don’t have a hosepipe ban yet…
10.- found ten grats and am now allowed to go visiting others…
Ask a baker for a dozen rolls and he may give you out of the kindness of his heart thirteen a baker’s dozen so with the Poets Pub you go there not merely to read and listen to poems but for that bit extra…
Artwork in collaboration with Midjourney and unknown artists…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Mish in OpenLinkNight, offers us the chance to post a poem of our choice but it is also the 15th Anniversary of the pub opening its virtual doors to poets from all over the world and so I have decided to repost this poem, my 11th on the site, from back in 2023 since the pub was the subject of this poem…
I thought myself chosen as the moon kept pace with our car speeding home through the night my sister’s squabbling before falling asleep I told no one of how the moon was watching me occasionally, hiding behind clouds but always reappearing the face of the man in the moon communing with me
By teenage years I knew the truth the moon was, well, just a moon a celestial body orbiting the Earth sloshing its waters around to create the tides and allegedly influencing lunatics and mayhem in the general population
If a god had made the world then what a trickster to make the circumference of the Moon, the same as the Sun seen from Earth giving rise to panic-inducing eclipses when peoples as primitive as my younger self felt their personal connection to the god’s of the heavens imperilled
Eventually, I owned a telescope and gazed at the moon afresh as it moved slowly across my field of view, its details craters and “seas” in sharp relief and at the outside of the sphere the crater walls visible as a ragged edge and I saw with newfound clarity that we live on a planet with a companion moon in the vast space between the stars and I was once more in awe…
1.- The slow-growing Allium flower has now reached it’s final size and fully coloured up…
2.- Talking of slow-growing plants that require patience – we have had this Yucca? for at least 15 years and this is the first time it has flowered – clearly worth waiting for…
When is a weed not a weed?
3.- We live on a backstreet and a bloke from the council comes around with a weed killer spray at least once a year, but this is not really enough to keep the weeds at bay and perhaps also, with this year’s weather, the weeds have flourished but some of them are too pretty to be considered weeds and so the answer to the riddle is “When they are garden escapes!”
This one I think is Lavateria
No idea what this one is but I award it “Weed of the Week!”
This one is surely a garden escape – some kind of Campanula?
4.- This weed may have struck terror into the hearts of those of you who garden, even in a photograph, or brought on apoplexy, and you may feel that it is inappropriate to allow it anywhere near a gratitude, but i have a sneaking admiration for Equisetum, or Mare’s Tail since in the Carboniferous period, it grew to the size and form of rainforest trees and composes much of the coal that formed then…
5.- This plant is growing in a garden, indeed has been deliberately planted by a neighbour, but it grows wild – hence a weed and so is the opposite of a garden escape lol…
I think it is a Mullein if not a Great Mullein?
6.- Grateful for Municipal plantings…
Who doesn’t like Lavender…
7.- This butterfly was, I’m sure, grateful for this (weed) Thistle, of some kind…
Not bad for a phone camera…
8.- I awoke to the rising sun reflecting in a tiny beam from the neighbouring houses and striking the net curtains in my bedroom, which have a rather nice pattern of birds, leaves and bird-cages and the sunlight has melded the curtains with the garden plants seen beyond…
9.- My grandson and his girlfriend have just moved into their own flat in London, he is a Doctor and she is P.A. to Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) so they have been able to afford somewhere in London which is quite a feat in this day and age. They have long desired a large painting of mine of a box of fish in a shop doorway in Naxos and so I have given it to them as a house-warming present. it leaves a large hole in the painting array in my bedroom but I’m sure I will fill it… I used to paint so infrequently (still do really) that I hung onto paintings as if to remind me that I still could, but I am learning to let go now…
10.- The Poetry Postcard Festival has begun and somehow, I hav been put on TWO lists and I can hardly withdraw from one so I now have 62 cards and poems to send before the end of August. Good job I have picked a simpler theme of printed cards this year…
Another Cyanotype print – this one near Kettlewell nearby in the Yorkshire Dales. The effect is rather as if the photograph is taken in moonlight…
A random music like which popped up on my Spotify playlist and which I am grateful to a friend for introducing me to…
Have a great week y’all – hope it is neither too hot, too wet or too windy where you are…
1.- Back on the subject of weeds – below is a battle royal between Bindweed – its flowers evenly spread as it climbs the factory fence and is like a poor man’s Morning Glory, and Japanese Knotweed the dastardly invasive weed – I would say that at present, the Bindweed is winning, but Knotweed can grow through concrete…
2.- Back in our own garden – I told you last week, how slowly this Allium grows and here you can see it starting to colour up…
3.- Meanwhile, the bulb season long over, various bits of colour dot the garden…
4.- On Friday I had to go to Leeds for my Dental Students – as always , the second week with new students is deep cleaning which i grin and bear, but I enjoy the walk across Leeds for the sights on the way…
Just opposite the station is a plaza encircled by these comely maidens alternating Morn and Even – this is Morn…
These statues were erected at the very end of Queen Victoria’s reign and I wonder if she would have disapproved of such nakedness – the back of the plaza has a much more serious line of VIP’s associated with Leeds who stare across the plaza at the backsides of Morn and Even…
FYI, Morn and Even are about 2/3 size…
5.- Further on, in front of Leeds Library, giant chess is in progress…
…and for lovers of a different kind of sculptural birds – here are some cute owls…
6.- The likes of Elon Musk have been spreading fake news about the lawless nature of Great Britain – not realising that even our right-wing yobs require a more nuanced form of gaslighting than some members of the MAGA base and such fake news, mostly falls flat here – or so I thought until I saw this sign outside the Polish shop where I buy sauages most weeks…
7.- My late Mother’s birthday was on July 4th and my younger sister Helen’s birthday is on the 8th which made them easy to remember – as well as to remind me to wish my American friends a Happy 4th July and I hope you all had a great day! I got a certain something off in the post to Helen – no spoilers as she sometimes reads these posts – and I am hoping the Gods of postage will deliver it in time. Talking of post, the Poetry Postcard Festival lists went out yesterday, only for me to discover I am on two lists! I can hardly back out of one of them now, and I don’t mind doing twice the number but it is quite expensive when sending a mere postcard, abroad costs £3.60! Thank goodness I am not doing as complicated cards as last year (original paintings for each one) but am doing cyanotype and lino prints – watch this space…
8.- My copy of Miski’s poetry book has arrived today – well it was yesterday but UPS delivered it to 31 and not 31a… Looking forward to reading it!
9.- Grateful for this community of grat folk…
10.- Glad not to be having to water the garden but there is presently no sunshine to make my Cyanotype prints lol…
In honour of the Leeds statues, here are some othe Bare Naked Ladies with a favourite track…
