A to Z 2024 Theme Reveal

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Consider this – you go to your local supermarket to buy, among other things, some orange juice. You find the right section where there are several brands to choose from, fresh in the chiller and long-life too – perhaps a hundred-litre packets all told. That’s just your local shop, imagine how many shops there are in your town or city each with a hundred litres of orange juice on sale at any particular time – and remember, this stock is turning over all the time – being bought and then replaced with stock from the store room. Multiply by the number of cities in your country and then by the number of orange juice-drinking countries in the world and you have imagined an ocean of orange juice! Where does it all come from – especially considering it takes eight oranges to make a litre of juice? Are there enough orange trees in the world to account for all this juice?

Of course, if you believe in Solipsism – then you will think that the world only exists because you imagine it into being and of course, you want to have plenty of orange juice wherever you go, so you imagine it into being present in all those thousands of shops worldwide. I am more of a realist and so I know that there must be enough orange trees to provide the juice – I just have no idea where!

Most people have no idea where all that orange juice comes from either and what about dried mint in all those expensive little jars – you may have holidayed in some sunny spot and seen oranges growing, but when did you ever see a mint farm? These things are Commodities – Soft Commodities in fact – which means they are commodities which are grown as opposed to Hard Commodities like metals which are mined. So this year, I am going to explore the world of Commodities!

Of course, to some people, Commodities as a term, means a form of investment and apparently, if you belong to the stocks and share-owning class, you should, apparently, diversify your share portfolio with commodities for greater stability – though this is well above my pay grade so don’t be expecting any tips! But the essential difference between gambling on stocks and shares and gambling on commodities is that they are subject to different forces of fluctuation – a company might invent a new product and its share value rocket or it might have a product superseded by a rival and plummet. Commodities also go up and down – soft commodities are susceptible to the weather, even shellac – the product of the Lac Fly has good and bad years whilst hard commodities are more predictable.

In case you think that commodities sound rather dry, I am going to include a poem – also with an A to Z progression about each commodity as the last nine months, I have taken to writing poetry in a big way – so a double whammy! A few commodities are missing in the Abercadarian and I will double up on one of the letters and poetry forms.

A Commodity Trader and a Poet contemplating commodities in their own ways…

Whether you come for the poems or the commodities, trust me, there will be amazing facts about gold, amber, pork bellies and yes shellac…

This is my 5th A -Z Challenge and you can find the previous years via the Menu at the top of the page – starting in the fateful year of Covid 2020…
2020 – personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis
2021 – I was trying to complete a sci-fi novel and it advanced me greatly and I finished it shortly afterwards
2022 – I wrote about foods which can be used as an ingredient
2023 – I wrote about phrases we know the meaning of but often, not the origin of – and a s a bonus Cant languages

Six Questions (from Pablo Neruda)

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Over at dVerse Poets Pub  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft is our host and has asked us to write Ghazal using at least one of the lines by Pablo Neruda from his book of poetry – “The Book of Questions” in which he poses 320 questions and answers in couplet form, and she has asked us to use at least one of the six question lines she has selected. I found all six questions stimulating and linked them in this poem.

Why was I not born mysterious? – Sorrowful
Then nations would smite down my enemy furious – angry

Why did I grow up without companions – lonely
compadres and friends in this world so curious? – and unloved

And do unshed tears wait in little lakes – weeping
lurking to ambush we unwary and drown us? – vulnerable

And Why does Spring once again offer its green clothes – landless
springing up in the rubble of our homes mocking us? – homeless

How long do others speak if we have already spoken – quashed
one hundred years, pleading, crying and dying in the dust? – and denied

Even hope itself may eventually die – we should be hopeless
Isn’t it better never than too late for us? – flattened too.

How long do others speak if we have already spoken? – We still
As long as it takes for you to hear us – cry out

And Why does Spring once again offer its green clothes? – bear children
Because life must triumph, improbable, delirious – all we can

And do unshed tears wait in little lakes? – don’t hold back
Yes but cry them, use them, water the dust – start again

Why did I grow up without companions? – seek new friends
Because the world heard only another victim’s fuss – in a world of oppressed

Why was I not born mysterious? – we find other victims in common
See the wonderful in the ordinary which is us – our voices raised together

There are no especially deserving winners – give us all our due
no one deserves our land over us – “Equality now!”

Equal status and our own statehood – “Never Again!”
with nobody ruling over us – “Give us Our Due!”

Borrowing these six Neruda questions – “Now!”
the poet, Andrew, seeks to give voice to us…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Once on a plane…

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Dublin to Manchester
Once on a plane
I found a pair of sunglasses
a polarising pair
with circular lenses
of Matrix cool
left by the last occupant
missed between flights by the
cabin clean up crew
I have those glasses still
more than twenty years later
I’m a keeper.

Teneriffe to Gatwick
Once on a plane
I had the last moments
with my first great love
then she asked me to
hang back at the checkout
because her husband
was meeting her
and thought she was
holidaying alone.

Stanstead to Dublin
Once on a plane
I contemplated
flying to meet a woman
I had known only for
one chaste night
of intimations
who then sent me a ticket
for a weekend in County Leitrim

Manchester to Heraklion
Once on a plane
fleeing the pandemic
one step ahead of lockdown
I looked down on the Alps
a wilderness of mountains
as far as the eye could see
from thirty-five thousand feet
and saw not a trace of
human life, no villages
no roads, no smoke
as if already
we never existed

A Flight to Anywhere
More than once on a plane
I wonder about the lives
of Air Hostesses
or Hosts
or Stewards
as they are now called
whether they joined to
see the world
and whether they did
whether it’s true about
the crew parties
the god-like officers
marriage material
or just better advantaged
the ordinariness of
Ryanair crew
the haughty select of Air Aegean
each one as from the pages
of a 50’s fashion magazine
do the ordinary despise the haughty
meeting en passant
in some airport corridor
or do they share a common bond
of brother and sisterhood
is it just another flight
from one take off
to another landing
once on a plane…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Posted for Open Link Night at dVerse the Poets Pub

Learning the Ropes of Love

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How can I say I thank you
for the mixed bag of emotions
which I will call Love
for want of a better word –
which I learned at your knee
whilst having no inkling
of even being schooled…

Love is nurturing
– on a physical level
of feeding at least
and on the mental level
of stimulation
with books and ideas
and even a trip
around the world

Love is safety and
love is the absence of danger
which is not necessarily
the same thing

Love is consistency
which can go a long way
towards making up
for other deficiencies

Love is giving a sense of
who you are and
what your place is
in the wider world
– it is not sufficient
to teach you to talk to
anyone from a tramp to the Queen
if you don’t know what you want to say.


Imposter syndrome is
as transferrable as
a gene for diabetes
and like that disease
it will be a long time
before you even figure out
you have it – and what “It” is
there is no gene sequencer
for emotional baggage…

We learn to love like
layers of an onion
and so much depends
on the fertility of the soil
which is that original family
and however crooked
the plant grows –
be glad if you at least
had a family.

Love starts with a teat
your mother’s if you are lucky
or perhaps a bottle
freely given on demand

Love expands too
if you are lucky enough
to have siblings –
you add another layer
to your personal culture
when you go to school
when you expand your horizons
to town, country and
however much of the world
you are lucky enough to encounter

If you are not lucky
and your bulb grows amongst stones,
is not fed good food and
stimulation for the mind –
if you encounter trauma
by loss, violence or abuse
your multilayered onion
will reflect its origins…

Eventually you may break away
from the family home,
home town
and learn of other loves
but your affinity has
already set by
earlier lessons learned
This one is never secure
That one is self-centred
This one is restless
and That one puts up with
rather than taking care of themselves

Love is as varied as
the human beings who practise it
and the combinations in couples
as varied as the genes
they may mesh together
in the lottery of life

But lucky or unlucky
everybody needs to know
what they learned of love
and work out what works
for them and those they love…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Posted for Open Link Night at dVerse the Poets Pub

My Alice Blue Gown

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Sometimes knowledge comes in the strangest, most roundabout way…

This morning I started my day with my usual routine – that means flicking through my social media and emails before settling down to read “Letter from an American” from the incomparable political historian Heather Cox Richardson who writes daily on current political affairs in America seen through the lens of the history of that country. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and Ms Richardson chose to take the day off and spend it with her husband Buddy who is a fisherman and instead of – as she sometimes does on such a holiday – posting a photograph, she re-posted what she tells us is her favourite ever post – a very sad Valentine’s Day tale about Theodore Roosevelt. You can find Richardson’s posts either on Facebook or on Substack where she has 1.4 million subscribers and if you join them, then you can, like me, get her posts delivered to your inbox every morning. At present, she is experimenting with podcasting so that you can hear her reading this particular piece here.

The tale she tells is of how on Valentine’s Day 1884, Theodore Roosevelt lost both his mother, to typhoid and his wife to what was probably a strep infection within hours of each other. His beloved wife Alice, had delivered a daughter, their first child, just two days before. Theodore was so bereft that he never spoke or allowed anyone to speak of Alice again, and though his daughter bore her mother’s name was known as Baby Lee rather than Alice. Theodore was already a reformer by nature, but the death of his mother and wife to diseases of the poor – rife in the overcrowded conditions of the time and at odds with the riches of The Gilded Age which was then in full swing – confirmed Theodore’s determination to bring about change – but not before escaping to Dakota Territory to try ranching as a way of burying his grief over Alice. Following a disastrously cold winter in 1886-7, Theodore returned to politics with new determination, and the rest, as they say, is history.

What Ms Richardson did not mention, however, was what became of Alice aka Baby Lee. So curiosity piqued, I turned to Wikipedia who had a satisfyingly comprehensive article on Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Roosevelt eventually married for a second time and gave Alice five half-brothers and sisters and whilst her initial reaction to her stepmother was not the easiest as is so often the case with Step-relations, Alice eventually came to hold her in great respect.

Alice Roosevelt in 1903

Alice grew up to be a socialite, renowned wit and a bit of a clothes horse, which as the daughter of the now President, she could afford to indulge. So much so that the song “My Alice Blue Gown” was written about her. Now I confess to being a sucker for what we Brits call Victorian and Edwardian Parlour Songs but which for Americans would be Parlour songs from The Gilded Age and “My Alice Blue Gown” is a favourite as rendered by The McGarrigle Sisters.

So there you go, a connection that I never expected to find…

And if you are American or indeed anyone worried about the prospect of a second term of Trump, you can find some very qualified hope in Letter from American. I imagine that in choosing this title for her blog, Heather Cox Richardson might have been paying homage to Alastair Cooke’s Letter from America and if she was, then I for one name her a worthy successor…

Grant Me a Boat

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For goodness sake
grant me the bucket-list wish
of a boat
any boat will do
a picayune pram
to potter on a large pond
better still a proper rowboat
on a large lake
to drift down the wind lanes
a dry fly bobbing alluringly
on the ripple, gently retrieving
with the dream of a trout rising

A daysailer – better still
ducking the boom
on a dinghy is dodgy
at my age so day trips
on a Summer suitable sea
would fit the bill delightfully
sailing out and back
with the sea breeze
sometimes sleeping
in the cabin after stargazing
at anchor in some sheltering bay

And in the Winter
I would cherish
my little vessel
drawn up on the shore
cleaning and caulking
and laying on varnish
let me leave alliteration behind
and voyage forth
on real wavy waters –
so for goodness sake
one day
grant me a boat

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Written for dVerse Poets Pub which is tonight has Merril Smith ably at the helm as she invites us to Sail into a poem for Poetics…

Parting Prevarication

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Half my sister’s ashes
sit on my bookshelf
the thought flashes regularly
that I must fulfil her wishes
and bury her with our parents
let her out of the camel-shaped teapot
my favourite of her collection
and which bore her back from Ireland
disguising the grey substance
which is, unbelievably, half of her remains.

I think it is the distance to Dorset
which has held me back
from letting the once genial
out of the teapot.
The teapot will remain
ornamentally
on my bookshelf
to use my sister’s sometime sepulchre
to make tea might be
a step too far for a brother
though it would have made his sister
laugh like a drain…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Posted on dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night hosted by Grace.

Evolution – Found Poetry 9 – Violence…

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There was no father gorilla
to take his part
scratch out the gardener’s insides
toss the dairymaid into a tree
wrench off Sir John’s head
crack the keeper’s skull
with his teeth as if a coconut

Tom did not remember ever having a father

He might hide in a bush
swarm up a tree
had he not known it
a very different place
boughs laid hold of his legs
poked his face and stomach
birches birched him soundly
as if a nobleman at Eton
lawyers tripped him up
as if they had shark’s teeth
which lawyers likely have

A cunning little fellow
but ten years old
lived longer than most stags
had more wits to start with

The old grouse came back
to his wife and family
the end of the world is not quite come
it is coming the day after tomorrow

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

This is a found poem with words derived from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley. The title – Evolution, is because Kingsley was a naturalist around the exciting time when the work of Wallage and Darwin were revolutionising the worlds of science, geology and biology and there will be found poems that reference this aspect of the tale. But so far, the finding of poems has been more like the method for refining poems since Kingsley writes very lyrical passages anyway…
The image is derived in Midjourney.
This series was inspired by my friend Misky over at It’s Still Life who has been producing a series of Found Poems…

Frequently the woods…

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Frequently the wood sare pink
wrote Emily Dickinson, fairly described
as transcendental romantic, I think
was she referencing blossom-time
when gaudy pinks and whites
to win the bees attention fight
that time when we remember
trees are but giant flowering plants
dependent on the tiny pollinator
to close life’s circle with their aerial dance
flowers followed in short order by the clichéd
thousand shades of green
my own favourite time to see
the thin veil delicately drawn
across the Winter-wakened trees
and as the leaves thicken
and take on Summer shades
each tree can be read from a distance
picked out from its companions in the glade

But wait – in Winter too
a palette of subtle colours
also distinguish each species
one from another
colours hard to pin down
from mauves and greys
to blues and nearly brown
and never black except
in solitary silhouette
and frequently the woods are pink

Written for dVerse Poets Pub where  the host is Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Live, OpenLinkNight, Uncategorized