birthday

[Benjamin]

we cease one count to start another

three years have passed yet her clematis

climbs and blooms on my garden wall

honey bees beset

the lavender-- and magpies still prattle

at the constant cat beneath the larches

a sharp downpour brings to mind

that bees can't fly in the rain

how sad to just work and die

with nothing in between

 

I turn old photos like tarot cards

and wonder at smiling friends who came

to share the house she loved so well

but now reads vacant

the sun brings ants to mill around dead bees

and from my garden seat I contemplate

that none of our in-betweens

should end with a hood and scythe

but a kiss upon the brow

and a quiet goodbye

[badger11]

So much resonance in those cards, bees, and that felt ending.

 

Thank you for sharing B.

 

all the best

 

Phil

[Benjamin]

Thanks Phil

Commemoration to a dear friend who suffered MND.

[dcmarti1]

England is lucky to have you, and your friend was, too. I really liked this.

 

I turn old photos like tarot cards.....

 

Amazing.

[David W. Parsley]

Geoff. So moving. I can only echo what Phil and dc have said about the merits of the piece (photograph as tarot card, the past attempting to imply the future!). Your poem reawakens so many personal (my) experiences that follow upon loss, and I cannot help grieving with you for yours.

 

We are all poets here, each striving to find that mode of expression which is so vital to all of us, the need to transform experience, even (especially?) tragic experience into something that is both cathartic and worth keeping as part of the Journey. And even though I am one of the breed, I still find astonishment in the sufferer's ability to summon his/her gifts to aid, to bring universals like evocation and symbol, richness of language in all its subtle and apparent simplicity, to create and perpetuate what we all know but find so hard to own. I salute you and share a measure of your grief.

 

Thank You (I think),

- Dave