Buy a proper bread roll and it will have flat, crustless sides where it swelled during baking touched and melded with its neighbour though not so hard that it could not be separated – bakers call this the “Kiss Point”
Do partners’ bums whose owners both turned their backs to sleep from argument or mild estrangement – softly reach out to gently flatten and warmly kiss their loves behind baking a fresh start into each beautiful new morning…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetics invites us to post a poem of our choice. As a salve to all the bad news and hatred in the world at present, which even we poets must do our bit to suppress, I offer you this gentle poem of coming togetherness…
1 – Glad we found the perfect spot for these carved Elephants in a corner of our winding stair – we bought it last year in the market in Dieppe whislt on holiday…
2 – This week’s harvest/scrumped apples and plums plus Blackberry and Apple jam and Apple sauce. – I say scrumped but the apples and plums were eithe wild or hanging over a wall into the public domain…
3 – Grateful that the fern I placed in this lovely Macramé plant holder, is finding sufficient light to thrive. The Macramé was a gift from our son’s crafty girlfriend – Yayyy the 70’s…
4 – Grateful for the cards I have received through the Postcard Poetry Festival – the ones on the left are from my list – List 4 and on the right are the bonus cards from the International list. Everyone wants to send to a person outside the USA so they publish an International List – there is no obligation on recipients to respond to these but most include their address so I gues they are hopeful of a return card and I will not disappoint…
5 – Glad that I finished and sent the last of my official PoPoFest cards – this one to a lady in Dublin, so I decided to paint Ben Bulben in Sligo where we lived for 10 years for which I am also grateful…
6 – After a week without rain and with watering by hand at 100litres a pop, I was glad to see a little drizzle today (manifested on my windscreen) – enough to moisten the leave though I had to do a proper watering testerday…
7 – Can you guess the texture I spotted this week (useful for backgrounds in graphic work)? It’s a towel drying on the washing line…
8 – Glad that my partner has managed to get up and see her best friend locally, followed by a haircut in advance of our holoday njext month
9 – Glad that my working week is over but grateful to still have a job 2.5 days a week…
10 – Glad to have found this list to do each week…
I am new to this – my second week but in these difficult times it seems an excellent thing to have to focus on Ten Things of Thankful each week…
Where are the days of our young passion Where are the parts participated In more than some or other fashion In fact, in lovemaking delighted Where are the springs in our eager steps Crossing the threshold of our new doorstep Painting our very special bedroom Yet there it was came the cloud of doom From early, unknown trauma, came down To settle like blight on our good life Occasional sunbeams and some strife Now forty years and more gone around Where are the lovers are they still there Still searching for sunbeams, loving pair?
This is a carving I made for my late sister and brother-in-law for their wedding present – it is based on a drawing by Eric Gill.
Title your poem with the question – where are the/they… Use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical Employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia Suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore; Employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet
I wake in “my” bedroom also my dressing room and study to my right, from a huge shelf hang my unenclosed clothes a subdued rainbow – a male palette with chests of drawers beneath for more clothes and craft materials
Two bookcases bracket the bed their shelves double stacked with precious books and on a pile of storage containers my to-be-read are perilously perched next to my desk – the space beneath full four ukuleles lean against a bookcase yearning to be played one shelf above them loaded with music
The ceiling is high since horses once resided here and through the window our cobbled yard is packed with plants and trees in containers their aspirations to growth also kept contained Mock Orange, Olive and Winter Jasmine now struggling with alternating Yorkshire rain extended and sun and wind induced drought
Rising I go to the spacious though windowless bathroom also given grandeur by the high ceilings where I had to lower the light for effective illumination and after some time checking emails and doomscrolling on the throne I shave and brush my teeth before breakfast as per the latest thinking…
I look in on my partner asleep at last, in the other large bedroom where I began the night falling asleep as she listens to her talking book and enjoys moments of snuggling up to my back safe now the day is over cut off from the world by an evil disenchantment forced to lie in bed like Brian Wilson she may be asleep now but she knows I am here and will feel safer for it…
I climb the winding stair to the living area once the hayloft where two doors into open air allowed the rapid transfer of horses’ hay at harvest-time Now made safe with Juliet Balconies from which we can survey the backstreet below or the strange sight of our garden yard seen from above at night all a-twinkle with sun-powered magic
The landing at the top of the stairs is a library where recipe books compete for space with novels and therapy books and all open-plan blends seamlessly into dining table kitchen and sitting room all traversed by a great King-post beam in the centre of a roof rising to twelve feet above me I breakfast to the awful news from Al Jazeera garnered from around the world and enough to make me as depressed as my partner if I were not able to take action in polemic poems…
And so I descend to my study and open the computer and work at what the day provides en route I note the cobwebs and dust on the stairs and when they get too bad I will sweep them away but not today our house is upside down in more ways than one…
My first time here on Ten Things of Thankful – introduced by Misky to this space…
One. My partner is in a deep depression which has closed off many of the things we used to do but on Saturday we managed to set out for Whitby which used to be a regular excursion. We stopped halfway at Helmsby and after having lunch, decided Whitby was too far, too busy, so we spent a liitle time in the excellent bookshop before meandering home on the smallest roads I could find…
One. My partner’s friendship bracelets taken as we had coffee in Helmsley…
Two. The book on Friendship from Helmsley Bookshop…
An alternative to buying a card – a ten poem chapbook from Candlestick Press
Three. Given that I spent 20 odd years as a hand-painted Signwriter, I am always delighted to see good examples of the craft which I am sorry to say are few and far between in the UK these days…
Four. One of the landscapes on our meandering route… I sometimes take pictures with a view to later making paintings.
Five. We also stopped in Risplith at G & T’s Ice Creams (they genuinely do make a Gin and Tonic ice cream) and whilst eating our cones in the car, I photographed this weathered paint which may one day come in useful for a background in some graphic work…
Six. For the last two months I have been taking part in the Postcard Poetry Festival challenge which is a project run by Cascadia Poetics in Seattle, Washington. The idea is to write an Epistolary style poem to 31 poets whose address list you are also on – to write about the picture on the card and to relate it to the person who you are writing to, who is of course, a complete stranger. This develops quick improvisation. This year I decided to make postcard-sized paintings and at a rate of 4-6 per weekend I have finished all but four this weekend two of which are below.
Two paintings from photographs taken in Crete during lockdown in 2020.
Seven. I still work 2.5 days a week for which I am thankful both because I need the money and because it keeps me abreast of things I would otherwise slip away from…
I love to photograph repeated items… There is nothing to give the scale of these San Sebastian Cheesecake (otherwise known as Burnt Basque Cheesecakes) but they are full-size cakes awaiting cutting before packing in our factory.
Eight. Barbara and I have booked a holiday for two weeks next month down in Cornwall – what the weather will be is anybody’s guess…
Nine. It was cloudy this morning so the watering of containers in our yard (we don’t have a garden) can wait till I get home this afternoon after my half day work – we have a hosepipe ban so it will take about 60 litres by watering can..
Ten. Healthwise, I am going to get a Lung Health MOT and have also been invited to take part in a Diabetes study out of Oxford University all knowledge is great at 70…
Welcome to TToT (Ten Things of Thankful) blog hop! Join bloggers from all over the world as we come together to share those things that we are thankful for. Ten is in the name, but no one is counting; feel free to link up no matter how many (or few) you can list. Make sure to go read and comment on the posts, too. The TToT has always been big on making this a friendly community, and getting to know each other through posts and comments is a huge part of that. We’re thankful for you!
Speaking truth to power can be frightening that’s the whole idea of all those big men in black uniforms all leather and shoulder pads masks and dark glasses and of course scary looking guns… (Where do they find such types you wonder ready to do the dirty work) Imagine if you dare this sorry lot in the changing room at the end of their shift – they will certainly look a lot smaller out of uniform and you will then recognise the usual suspects of High School bullies
And you may feel yourself to be too small a number knowing as you do that the one in power pays no heed to Polls and if he chanced to think of you at all he would imagine a very small number “So very, very small!” But numbers add up and if you can share the secret password – K1ndness# to find like-minded souls with whom you can conjugate – like times tables and become the very thing that fascists fear “We the People!”
Hani Mahmoud is starving his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza on Al Jazeera throughout the conflict but now, shrinking like a prune his face tells its own story
Today he covers the shortage of blood blood is life and however much iron Gazans fortified their souls with there is not enough iron in their blood for it to be usable and besides they are too weak to be able to give blood without fainting
Israel calls a special meeting of the UN Security Council to complain about the starvation – the starvation of hostages and calls it an act of propaganda! No doubt there was a time when hostages were looked after as the bargaining chips they are but now there is not enough food even for the captors whatever sympathy he may feel for the family member who voices the complaint and pleads for the return of his relative, the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes that Israel is starving a whole people
In other news today it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies
So much for the “War to end all wars” and we are come to live in the moral wasteland…
Hani Mahmoud screenshot from a broadcast of Al Jazeera
I had not watched Al Jazeera news for a month or so, partly because the news about Gaza was moving more into the area of political and world people’s awareness and response, but also I confess to emotional overload. Yesterday, also the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, I watched Newshour on the station and was shocked and upset to the point of tears, to see how Hani Mahmood’s face reflects his own malnutrition as well as the ongoing stress of reporting from Gaza for Al Jazeera. The screenshot above is from a while back, but I urge you to view Al Jazeerah news, not only for its coverage of the genocide in Gaza, but for a different perspective (non-American/Eurocentric) – even their weather forecasts cover all areas of the world…
There are songs too sad for me to sing to sing that is, without tearing up and who can wait for the singer to recover and compose themselves sufficiently to continue…
At first there was just one song I couldn’t manage Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” – I could listen but when I tried to sing it -my throat closed and my eyes watered – I could not perform
As years go by more songs are added to the canon of those I cannot get through without weeping and often I cannot listen either – are they songs of mourning, laments, requiems
nothing so formal, but tales of the human condition the mere brevity of which is tragedy enough, or the near impossibility of finishing a shared life at exactly the same moment…
Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colours” might be considered kitsch if it were not true or true enough and I weep to hear the sweetness of her sometime collaborator Linda Ronstadt who has lost her voice to Parkinson’s and sings only within the loving circle of family. The exquisitely sad songs of Charlie Dore – a woman pretending her lover lives on the other side of the world in “Australia” so as not to acknowledge his abandonment – he must be sleeping while she endures the day… The rubato moments when Patsy Cline’s rich voice almost catches, falters, as it lays down the tragic tales of loss, longing and betrayal sung to cheerful melodies that belie the sentiment. Joni Mitchell wishing for a “River” to skate away on surely the saddest Christmas song Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” a lump rises in my throat even as I write and to think of all those who left us too soon their lives driven, and driven down, by the need to perform, entertain, be loved… Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Prince John Lennon, Jim Morrison Ian Dury who sang of “Sweet Gene Vincent” “Young, and old, and gone…” so many more…
These are the singers and musical moments that undo me…
I used to say that I listened to sad music when I was happy and that happy songs could elevate my lower moods but boundaries blur and I see poignancy everywhere and there are songs too sad for me to sing…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to write about music and this is also the theme for next month’s meeting of my “in the real world” local library poetry group…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us – for Laura’s prompts usually offer a challenge in form, if not in subject – to write about “moments in time that stand out from time; they are the momentous days we recall and revisit, year in and year out as holidays, as anniversaries. Formal or informal, they are replayed in memory…” and as to Form – to use Emily Romano’s Memento poetry style:
Poetry Rules: rhyme scheme abc, abc 2 stanzas 6 lines per stanza 2 tercets (2*3 lines) per stanza syllable count per tercet: 8,6,2; 8,6,2
