Sweet peas – for HC.
Posted: June 25, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized 5 Comments
An inch of rain fell overnight.
And the windows, roof tiles
Chattered, clattered
In the fore gathered breeze.
On this first summer morning
You are sleeping.
The day stealthily dawning.
I creep downstairs.
On the table there are sweet peas
Their scent stains the room
Dispelling the gloom.
Two decades before
The olive trees
Silver whistled in the Kythera air.
Dancing and sighing
Incurious mime.
Murmuring, whispering, sweeping the table tops
At Filios Taverna.
Katerina and Nikos were there,
Aiding and abetting our blossom time.
The wind had shadow wrapped the Belvedere
In the fortnight before.
We ate fish and peas, cheese pie,
Bought Turkish Delight
In Leavadi.
Drove away from Kapsali
Late one night.
Cut the headlights
Looking out over the Bay
Stargazed
The Plough
North Star
The Milky Way
And somewhere, off stage
An owl screeched
Scimitar sweeping the purple shrouded sky
As we sat and watched galaxies go by.
Now I make your morning tea.
We let the day slowly unfold.
As the days pass, so too the years,
No longer so young,
but, not yet so old.
For time has been kind
With us in mind.
Two long decades since we met.
So much to remember.
We’ve made a collage
Woven a tapestry
Painted a picture
Told ourselves a story
Rich, vibrant, alive
A collective memory.
Nothing, no nothing
That I’d choose to forget.
And now?
All I can say for sure.
All that I know.
Is that Kythera gifted me
My heart’s desire
Some twenty years ago.
A Woodland garden – by my guest poet, Richard Wheeler.
Posted: June 22, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe link below will take you to a film (some 15 minutes or so in length) made by Gwyn Cole. The filming is delightful, and captures the mood of the garden, and of the Nevern estuary at Newport very atmospherically. And Richard’s words are evocative, lyrical and written with the lightest of touches.
This really is a treat’ If you like poems, gardens, and/or Pembrokeshire – feast your eyes.
My thanks to Richard and to Gwyn for sharing their creation.
https://www.stillriverfilms.com/woodlandgarden/
Veterans
Posted: June 6, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 CommentIn 1999 I made a trip to Alaska, spending time there with my mum, June, and our great friend Peter Bibb, sadly gone now, but who was a veteran of the D Day landings.
This poem was written for the 70th anniversary.
Today, in 2020, those remaining veterans are unable to gather as they normally would. This is for them, the living and the dead, and for those they loved and who loved them back.
Veterans
70 years before…….
Young men stumbling into the shell bound surf
Silver flying fish
Stunned
The boys, wading on and in
Falling, camouflaged no more
Booming, battling forth
Whistling bullets, the siren song of war
Deafening the ocean’s unerring roar.
Years ago
in Juneau
I watched ‘Saving Private Ryan’
With Pete Bibb
Self appointed ‘old timer’
Who left the movie house
“Cannot watch this, have to go”
he muttered
As the faux machine guns
Cinematically stuttered.
This D Day morning
The robes of priests, clustered
The coat tails of politicians
And hats of royalty
Fluttered
As the bemedalled veterans
Mustered
Attendant, attentive,
Old men now
Memories shared, perhaps, despairs
Some stood and stared
As the peace yearning prayers
Were uttered.
In the fields at home
The buttercups, the thistle heads
Were bowing in the stiffening wind
That blows across the Channel
Westward, ho!
The clouds scud seawards
A breath of memory passes
Back across to France
Where death gleaned a mighty harvest
No respect for rank, for officer classes
The flags and flowers
Half masted
The crowds lost
Perchance
In collective trance
Subdued respect, even awe
For
Our veterans
And own them all, we all surely must
Those alive
Others sand blasted, dust
Their debt, in full, is met
Our account
Ever owed
To remember
And not forget.
Marc Mordey 6/6/14
