A blog about anything and everything…
Here in Yorkshire
it is not unknown
for a man of my years
to be addressed by
a bus conductor (male)
as “Love” but “Flower”is a
term of endearment
reserved for intimate
family and friends
and “Petal” is reserved
for moments of real affection…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, lillian in Quadrille
I
Olive skin
Dark brown honey trap eyes
Black hair wiry as desert weed
II
No beauty
Prickly as cactus
Dangerous as opioid poison
III
Sky blue eyes
Generous with loving
But with an invisible minefield
But yours was
The soil in which I grew
Patiently uncovering each mine
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write a poem in the Parallelogram de Crystalline form which consists of –
• 12 lines in total (each Capitalised but without punctuation)
• 4 verses
• 3 lines per verse
• syllable count per verse 3,6,9
• unrhymed
And for the theme of the poem: the beauty of a (real or imaginary) lover as compared with and described in images of nature.
I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…
The object I have picked to represent Love is the statue above, which I bought, mounted and gave to my partner Barbara and which is one of our favourite treasures. It encapsulates so many memories, the song “The Voyage“, a favourite even before we went to live in Ireland as it was often sung by our Irish son-in-law, the studio in Sligo and my friend Bettina, and for me it is a reminder of my signwriting and art-making days in Ireland.
Love and Hate are often designated as opposites and Love and Sex are often confused and in the following poem, previously unpublished, I consider the latter confusion…
Sex and Love…
I had a sheltered upbringing
and a late start
in affairs of the heart
my parents love-life
a secret to which their
obvious love offered
no clue.
A generous friend fired
the starting pistol but offered
first sex once but no more
love in confusion mired.
A Brazilian friend also
bemused by sex in England
told me how in Brazil
girls in a friendship circle
sit on any lap except
the one they fancy
sending a coded message
to the cognoscenti
coming closer by staying distant
but in England, you meet
at a party, say
and suddenly you find
you have vaulted over a wall
you didn’t even notice
to find yourself in bed
with a stranger.
There for the birth of
her grandson, her mother
gave me my first massage
and then so much more
showing that Brazilians
excel at vaulting too
I became the toy of
another older woman
not that she was a player
for we both confused
sex for love
and in the end became
respectively frustrated
and disappointed
because you cannot find love
in the cracks of another’s
flawed marriage – there may be dirt
but not the soil in which a
relationship might flourish
If she was not ready
or able to leave her husband
I finally found the one who did
and reached the sunny uplands
where sex and love
in true commitment bloomed
not knowing that winter and the
darkness of the past
was waiting in the wings.
After a short first act
the curtain fell suddenly
with seeming finality
where abundant happiness
had flourished in the light
sex wilted in the dark
but not before true love
had taken root – its holdfast
wrapped tight to the rock of life
And now, in later years
Persephone has been drawn
into the underworld
and winter reigns, mostly
but love leads me again and again
to venture there
to lead her back to the light
if I may, instructed not to look back
But in truth that is her affliction
the past, a cast of characters
who crowd her head
hiding her real self
asserting their various strategies
to protect her from a past
that is no more
and yet is kept alive by the
very protections and distractions
that hide her truth
Those who do not deal with the past
are doomed to live there
but doing that deal
is easier said than done.
So now I know that love
is stronger than sex
and though sex serves to
feed the seeds of love
once the tap root is driven
deep into the earth
the strong trunked love
sustains through long Winters
good Summers and bad
flood and drought
and for the tree of love
the flowering and fruiting of sex
is a bonus
not the whole story…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
Rushing in from an activity
of enforced abstinence
and tearing the wrapper off
cramming all eagerly
Remembering to take a little
with you next time
and nibbling slowly
at intervals to keep you going
Making preserves and garnishing
your pantry so that those Summer
flavours are there to sustain you
come Autumn and Winter
Building a shelf of seasonings
to keep the taste buds
tingling with excitement
against the threat of ennui
Savouring the memory of
past dishes – great feasts
whose memories you can still smell
forty years on – even when you’re not hungry
Handwritten recipes—a diary of
a life lived through food
each recipe conjuring time and place
– discovery of ingredients you came to love.
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in Poetics, invites us to write about what love means to us in light of the upcoming Valentine’s Day…
In my writing group, Deborah had the same idea and presented us with Love Like Salt by Lisel Mueller so this poem is written in the shadow of that one…
“alone is the star I follow. In love & in solitude”
– from February & my love is in another state – by José Olivarez
to live with the one you love
Is to immerse one’s self
in the illusion of not being alone
but alone we truly are
Coming into, leaving &
passing through the life of this world
so when illness, short of death
physical or mental, intrudes
we are shocked by our solitude
reminded we are alone even
in the presence of the other
and all the constructed togetherness
house, history and family
are all props in the play
& all of us but strolling players
not to disrespect the construct
which is our way of fighting entropy
creating meaning amongst disorder
we weave our fabric and let our flags
flutter in the winds of vicissitude
for friends and family to rally round
but in. the end, we are all
fallen soldiers in a battle
that nobody can win
Take the timely reminders
of essential solitude
to wrap your flag more tightly
around you & your loves
and Reaffirm the meanings
you choose to fight for…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam – paeansunplugged in OpenLinkNight offers us the chance to post a poem of our choice. This is one from my writing group after discussing and writing in the shadow of “February & my love is in another state” – by José Olivarez
My heart wanted what
it wanted despite
you’re seeming to leave
and be lost to me
but you were still there
and now, don’t you see
I too have remained-
– all fidelity.
Those first months did
my life course change.
in ways I’d not believe
– your true self amid
so many revealed
and when others hid
that loving from me
your truth I’d still see…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write an Octameter for August and Sara Teasdale – it being the 8th month and the birthday of Sara Teasdale (8/8/1884). “Teasdale’s work has been characterized by its simplicity and clarity, her use of classical forms, and her passionate and romantic subject matter.” [https://poets.org/poet/sara-teasdale] and as Laura points out “Love, life, beauty and death are the hallmarks of much of Teasdale’s poetry which is unsurprising given that she lived through wartime as a young woman. Even so she avoids the maudlin in an upbeat way…”
This poem is a homage to Sara Teasdale.
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
Love is in the air
and is intoxicating
as the fumes
of brandy in a glass balloon
it wafts beyond the
happy pairs of lovers
rekindling memories
of a younger age
re-living and reeling
with heady recall
Three grandsons now perhaps
have found their matches
and you know when
talk turns to children
and which football tribe
they should be raised in
that these are keepers
I have never been to a match
and been drunk on shared
passion in a huge crowd
but watching a film
whilst waiting to meet
the latest and last to
join the set, we shared
the intimacy of lovers in
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
A camera takes us
to the heart of an orchestra in concert
with a closeness to each player’s
breath and movement
as they embrace their instruments
to pull on our heartstrings
and film likewise grants us
close-ups of couples
we would never see in real life
our neighbours love lives
hidden in semi-detached suburban rooms
separate, unknowable, ineffable
no matter how openly
the rest of our proximate lives
are lived
was it different in the
warm fug of tribal longhouses
lovemaking couples as close
as the next cocooning hammock?
Children don’t care to imagine
their parents making love
imagining they are beyond all that
however deep the love they daily show
and parents don’t dare to imagine
their children either
the perils of the heart
the baton passed
but when love is in the air
for those lucky enough to have
roots deep in the rich soil
of happy parents
there is the hope of
templating happy families to come
Such open-hearted boys
have not escaped without
venturing up blind alleys
at least two have had
songs of heartbreak
loss and bewilderment
plucked painfully
on their heartstrings
before finding their way
safely to harbour in
calmer but still deep water
after storm-tossed seas
I held those boys as babies
drew or close-up photographed
their sleeping faces
turned their living-room
into a fort, cave, nest
or whatever their imagination
could conjure from the
jumble of throws and giant cushions
taught them the love of the pun
witnessed tantrums and triumphs
watched football from the sidelines,
school and scout uniforms
gowns and mortarboards
how could I not be
drawn along in the
wake of their love lives
dropping away like the pilot boat
waving up to the after-deck
as I slow down
and they gather pace
on their own voyages of love
The calmness and Giaconda smile
of one, the bubbling enthusiasm of another
perfume from Morrocco the first impression
throwing one off the scent
of the depths of a doctor
the brightness and humanity
of all of them
grandsons and girlfriends alike
mingling as a family
dancing in ever closer union
my head spins and
my heartstrings resonate
simply on the fumes
as love is in the air.
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
Written unprompted and posted for Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Live, OpenLinkNight over at dVerse Poets Pub
What if Chess, instead of being a metaphorical game of war and strategy, were instead, the pursuit of love? Instead of trying to get with the King in order to kill him, moving to the same square by the opposite Queen – or King was the attainment of bliss. Queens may rush about the board whilst hubby is stuck at the office, out bringing home the bacon and should it prove that they swing the other way, then they may be cloaked in the invisibility that Queen Victoria’s disbelief in sapphic love affords them and the game may be quickly concluded if both parties are willing. Kings, on the other hand, are slow movers when it comes to finding lasting love, for all their possible willingness to philander and play the field, whether hetero- or homosexual, a lasting love is hard to find…
What of the other pieces on the Chessboard – who might they represent and how might they come into play? The pawns are clearly children – they are small and can only take correspondingly small steps – unless they reach the other side of the board, by which time they are suddenly all grown up and can be whoever they want to be! They may be the children of the King and Queen or perhaps nephews and nieces yet despite their diminutive stature they may have important roles in the game – how many friendships have begun over the heads of children at the school gate? Children’s parties, babysitting, children as go-betweens – many are the opportunities afforded by children to adults in the pursuit of love…
who is to say that a King or Queen cannot use their partner’s bestie to further their cause
Then there are the other adults divided, according to whose shoulder they stand at, King or Queen, into his or her friends and relations. Bishops are the moralists – always ready to jump in and pour cold water on one whose fires have been lit by lust for another but even they, with their decisive, diagonal strikes, can be manipulated into furthering their besties, nephew or nieces, son’ or daughter’s cause. Rooks are those stalwart friends whose loyalty can always be relied on, even if their movement is limited to left and right and who is to say that a King or Queen cannot use their partner’s bestie to further their cause – after all, they are on the same side, aren’t they? The Knight though, is the real best friend, for even though their moves are complicated, they offer great utility and are the ones to watch out for once sent forth to do the King or Queen’s bidding.
Whether you frame the game in terms of High School trysts ( a whole cast of friends, besties and teachers), singletons struggling to find The One, extramarital hanky-panky or the ongoing search for love and companionship in widowhood, Chess could be re-imagined as the Game of Love not War – you may never look at a Chess piece the same way ever again…
Some Grand Master games worth studying:-
Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew
Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
Boris Pasternak – Dr Zhivago
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
Nicola Griffith – Ammonite
Being a newbie to the Challenge, I had not realized that a reflection post was de rigeur but better late than never! I only discovered the Challenge on April 1st and so I had also missed the theme launch which meant I had no option but to be a “pantser” and being full of thoughts on the lockdown, that became my theme – personal and societal responses (including my resumption of blogging).
Having such a broad canvas meant I could also adopt a wide variety of styles, op-ed, poetry, fiction, and photography. I do think that once a few people found me, this varied nature might have helped to keep readers coming back. To begin with there were hardly any pageviews until I made a couple of reviews of other blogs – after all, I had no extant readers after a gap from 2013 but numbers started to climb after Fréderiqué gave me some good advice on promotion and offered solid support throughout the Challenge!
So by the end of the month, the pageviews had reached around 1000 and a couple of posts reached the dizzying number of 45 pageviews each! However, this is not the best way to measure success as a blogger and instead, what has pleased me much more, is that a I feel I have made a couple of solid friends who will continue to visit and vice versa.
What did I enjoy writing most (since I have already spoken about the blogs I have enjoyed reading) – well I did a lot of research for M – Money and N – neo Liberalism and I enjoyed boiling down complex issues to bite-sized pieces which I hope were digestible – there are some very complex issues facing the world at present. At the other end of the scale, I wrote the L – Love poem very quickly, using song titles to start and theme each verse and I think I succeeded in making something touching, funny and thought-provoking – not necessarily in that order…
Will I do it again next year? If the fates and Covid 19 allow both in health and time, I would love to join this special club again. As to whether I would pre-prepare posts, I don’t know – it takes some of the pressure off and allows reflection and editing time but there is great stimulation in “pantsing” and the opportunity to react to current events too. Hopefully, we shall not be living in quite such dramatic times by then – but I wouldn’t count on it…