EMPTY SPACES. Dedicated to Dot (Dorothy) and Harry Mordey.
Posted: March 10, 2021 Filed under: Poem | Tags: Poetry 3 CommentsPOEMS OFTEN BREW WITHIN ME FOR DAYS, SOMETIMES WEEKS, AND ESPECIALLY WHEN I AM WALKING ON CARNINGLI.
THEN, SOMETIMES, THEY COME TO THE BOIL.
THIS ONE IS MADE TODAY, FOLLOWING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF AN AUNT.
COVID 19 HAS, THUS FAR, TAKEN THE LIVES OF WELL OVER 2.5 MILLION PEOPLE.
STALIN IS OFTEN QUOTED AS HAVING SAID ” 1 DEATH IS A TRAGEDY. A MILLION DEATHS IS A STATISTIC.”
THIS POEM IS FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS SUFFERED LOSS – DIRECTLY OR OTHERWISE – TO THE RAVAGES OF THE PANDEMIC… MOTHERS, FATHERS, BROTHERS, SISTERS, CHILDREN, GRANDPARENTS, UNCLES, AUNTS, FRIENDS.
please remember them
Across the world,
Empty spaces…
A silhouette no longer framed on the Savannah
In Wyoming, a horse remains unsaddled
Red dirt unbroken in a Senegalese plot
A Russian doll that won’t be dissembled
A Spanish hacienda deserted
An Italian meal untasted
In Japan a temple flag is unobserved
An ice hole, unfished
A desert tent, entrance unused
A rice field abandoned
A new crop not to be harvested
A quilt unfinished
Families, diminished.
The favoured seat in the pub abandoned now.
A classic car, unfired.
A paddle board beached.
Knitting unravelled.
A tractor untended.
A camera shuttered.
A guitar untuned.
A song unsung.
A bed unmade.
A bycicle rusting.
A dog forlorn.
A doll abandoned.
A spinning wheel, not turning.
A pen no longer picked up.
A spade, rusting in a cobwebbed greenhouse.
A boat, sails stowed, bobs alone on the estuary.
Clothes are folded away, no longer needed.
Books, never to be read
Dreams unfulfilled
Puzzles that no longer perplex
Letters never sent
An empty seat in a synagogue
An empty pew in the Chapel
A prayer mat in the mosque stays folded
The graveyards fat with memories.
Grass grows untended
A tweed jacket hangs forlorn
Flowers fail
Broken items that would have been mended
A driving lesson not given
A telephone call no longer to be expected
Empty beds
Empty sofas
Empty rooms
Empty wardrobes
Empty chairs
Loved ones lost
To everyone
Everywhere
“I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.” (Brideshead Revisited)
Cam ceilog – on “the quickening of the year”
Posted: February 5, 2021 Filed under: Photo, Poem | Tags: Candlemas, Carningli Dairy, Imbolc, Milk, NHS, Vaccines 4 CommentsDylan delivers our milk,
Rich, creamy, butter yellow white
Blessed by mountain angels and Swiss cows
Each mouthful, pure delight.
It is 5:15 pm when he pulls into the yard
And Dinas Head still shimmers with duskling light
Dog days of January,
Murky, misty Saturday night.
“It’s as if the year is taking chicken steps” he says
The longer days are creeping into being.
Cam ceilog.
And he drove on
Much more for him to do.
This week gifted us Candlemas,
“Imbolc” as the Celts would have it.
Crocus, snowdrops, wild primrose
All peeping through the coming grass
Finca scrambling the old stone walls
And two daffodils crowning the cairn
On a windswept, frosted Carningli,
Bracken brown dejected.
Meanwhile,
Others also work long days,
On into the darkness
Injecting fresh hope
Raising possibilities of renewal.
Diminishing at least a portion
Of year long
Gloom and fear.
Salutations to our NHS
Raise a glass to
The milk of human kindness
Toast
Cam ceilog
And the quickening of the year.
Somewhere, there’s hope…
Posted: December 21, 2020 Filed under: Photo, Poem | Tags: optimism 3 CommentsTo all friends who are generous enough to follow this blog, THANK YOU.
I have created a few (though nothing like as many as in previous times) poems during 2020, but, being honest, the creative impulse has been subdued, and what I have written is, well, just too dark for now at least. But, awake at 4 a.m. today (the shortest day of the year) these thoughts, this offering, came to mind. As with all my poetry, I don’t lay great claims to it, but…it’s from the heart, and it is my gift for you.
Take care out there, stay safe and well. And here’s to better days ahead, for our world, for us all, in 2021.
Greetings and good fortune. Yours Aye!
Marc
A young writer sits at home
The first novel just a glimpse in the mind’s eye
The pen, flourished.
The paper, anticipating
A Jane Austen for today
Ready and waiting.
Elsewhere, a teenager moodily lifts the guitar,
Strums newly acquired chords,
Maps out phrases, tinkers with words
And a new ‘Blue’ emerges
Blowing the critics away.
As scales are lifted from blinkered eyes
Fresh minted, eager new leaders
(they’ve life experience of climate change)
No longer question
No longer deny
And radical policies
Practical actions
Arise.
In a home some place
A 100 year old man
Father, grandfather and much more besides
Breathes out, smiles, gently sighs
Reviewing a long life
Well lived, hard won
And, despite great age,
Not yet done.
In a laboratory far away
A new graduate scientist explores
The microbe kaleidoscoped,
Micro-scoped miracles of life,
Her imagination slides, breaks free
Then, a pause
Before the new formula,
The world beating solution
Is born.
In one country
A child reels and spins a home-made hoop
Around a sand dusted yard.
In another
One young man, cocooned
Navigating his kayaked world,
With snow, ice, cold cracking floes
Seal whirled and polar beared
For both
Life is fun
Though life is hard.
In my dreamed of world
Zealots lay down the gun, the sword
Share faith, philosophy, thought
With believer and non-believer alike
Arguing
Yes
Hating
No
Accepting that seeing life differently
Ought not be seen
As something unacceptable
Untoward.
In a year gone by
We all shared
So much sadness
Such awful pain
Collective madness
Greed, disdain.
Who cared?
Who really cared?
How does one cope?
In a room
Nearby
A sometime poet
Wrote
Somewhere there’s hope
Somewhere
There’s hope…
A poem for Remembrance Sunday
Posted: November 11, 2020 Filed under: Poem | Tags: Army, civilians, Navy, Poppies, Poppy Day, Poppy Day Remembrance Army Navy RAF WW1 WW2 WW11, Remembrance Sunday, WW1, WW2 1 CommentThis is an older poem, but the sentiment, for me, remains the same. I hope it is worthy…
Remembrance Sunday.
What would you have had us remember?
As you mustered in the trenches,
Around the gun emplacements.
As you hopped into the cockpit
And flung yourself skywards,
Or plumbed the depths
Submerged and submarined?
Should we remember your bravery?
Your mockery? Your cynicism in the face of duty?
Your gut wrenching anxiety,
Your fear, your mortal pain,
As you were killed and wounded,
Again and again and again?
Do the flags, the parades,
The preachers, the cavalcades,
Act as sufficient homage?
Or would peace, justice, equality
Be more deserving of your patronage?
But whichever,
It is true.
We must continue,
To remember you.
In Kythera 2019. For Helen Carey.
Posted: November 27, 2019 Filed under: Poem, Uncategorized | Tags: Greece, Helen Carey, Kythera, Poem, Poetry, romance 5 Comments
We met on the Greek island of Kythera ( pictured above) in June 2000, and returned, for the first time in 14 years, this June. It was magical when we met, and it (all) still is. On the same trip we met Hera, but that’s another story, maybe another poem. But for now, this is for Helen, who has my heart.
How did two decades
All but a year,
Slip by?
Filio laughed and hugged us, even cried,
The bamboo drifted in the soft breezed warmth
You and I, beside.
The taverna table laid up for two
Where once I waited
And the taxi ( thankfully)
never arrived, instead,
There was you.
As the wild thyme keened the air,
The kestrel plummeted
Geese hissed in a dust bowled olive grove
and the first cicadas of the summer began to drum.
Bees, drunk hummed on myrtle sipped nectar
Seawards spiralled
The blue and yellow collided
Over Kapsali mountainside.
Near Mitata, the church tower split, stricken,
We walked a new path
Crunched ancient shells underfoot
Stressed from the strains of bygone volcanoes
Tiny flowers grasped life from thin soil
A goat danced, windwarded.
How graceful you were
As we spanned the unknown
Having walked the Englishman’s Bridge
Revisited a love story
Writ large.
On the island where love erupted,
Bloomed, prospered, sun soaked
No longer alone.
Mediterranean delight,
Grecian pleasure.
We wrapped it tight,
Flew north,
Made it home.
Now, needs must
That I guard the treasure.
A poem for Remembrance Sunday
Posted: November 9, 2019 Filed under: Poem | Tags: Army, civilians, Navy, Poppies, Poppy Day, Poppy Day Remembrance Army Navy RAF WW1 WW2 WW11, Remembrance Sunday, WW1, WW2 4 CommentsThis is an older poem, but the sentiment, for me, remains the same. I hope it is worthy…
Remembrance Sunday.
What would you have had us remember?
As you mustered in the trenches,
Around the gun emplacements.
As you hopped into the cockpit
And flung yourself skywards,
Or plumbed the depths
Submerged and submarined?
Should we remember your bravery?
Your mockery? Your cynicism in the face of duty?
Your gut wrenching anxiety,
Your fear, your mortal pain,
As you were killed and wounded,
Again and again and again?
Do the flags, the parades,
The preachers, the cavalcades,
Act as sufficient homage?
Or would peace, justice, equality
Be more deserving of your patronage?
But whichever,
It is true.
We must continue,
To remember you.
Veterans – a D Day tribute.
Posted: June 6, 2019 Filed under: Poem | Tags: D Day, France, Helen Carey Historical fiction WW2 WW11 Sagas, Poetry, Remembrance, Veterans, WW2, WWII 3 Comments75 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.
Making it to 60
Posted: May 12, 2019 Filed under: Ageing issues, Poem | Tags: birthdays, Friends, George Carlin, Ian Dury 5 CommentsGreetings to all friends who are generous enough to follow this blog of mine. I appreciate it very much.
I (hopefully) make it to 60 today, 12th May 2019 (and a quick hats off to the late and great Ian Dury, with who I share a birth date and who gave me/us ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful’).
I have always loved George Carlin’s piece below, and it seemed like a good day to share it!
Meanwhile : Marc Mordey’s song….
60 years on,
In the merry merry month of May,
Managed a little work
Enjoyed a great deal more of play
Been drenched in love and affection
Avoided most harms and misdirection
Laughed, cried, not much denied
A small measure of pain
Bucketfuls of joy
Tried to be a man
But better at being a boy!
(photo : Helen Carey – the Queen of my dancing days – and I, in Aruba, February 2019)
George Carlin’s views on Ageing
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m four and a half!’ You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key.
You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m gonna be 16!’ You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16!
And then the greatest day of your life … . You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re Just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would! So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime.
And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ‘I Was JUST 92.’
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. ‘I’m 100 and a half!’
May we all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
A red kite, but no osprey (dedicated to Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita…and the Dyfi Osprey Project)
Posted: August 2, 2018 Filed under: Photo, Poem | Tags: Catrin Finch, Dinas Osprey Project, flowers, Harp, Kora, music, Pembrokeshire, Photography, Poetry, Seckou Keita, Senegal, Wales 3 Comments
(PHOTOS by Marc Mordey – the Penrallt Eagle, created by the blacksmiths
at Dinas, Pembrokeshire)
(The music, like the bird itself
Soars
Above the Dyfi Estuary,
and over the mangroves
fumbling their way to the
Isle de Palétuviere
as the pirogues drift down glassy water
and a pelican dominates the jetty)
In Pembrokeshire,
a red kite
eddying the cloudless sky
imperious above our crop dusted fields
might spy
siskin, finch, wood pigeon
a thrush, jack hammering a snail
between two stone dogs
keeping their green mossed vigil
A young jackdaw
striking a cormorant pose
bewitched by the chimney
beating time on the ridge tiles
(It’s hot, this year)
There are swallows skimming
and Amazons at sail in the bay
muted blue below
(and the harp still swoons
and the kora
flying fingered fishing line
rocks a gentle rhythm
whilst I am at sea
in a pyjama striped hammock)
Blue tits, dipping for water
in the stone bird bath
that celebrates a golden grand-parented wedding
of 50 years ago
There are lilies blooming
amidst the dying embers of foxglove
and jasmine perfume teasing
romping in a green gaged balloon of bush
St John’s Wort in full throttle
And pink flushed, sunset resplendent
oliander, a whisper of Greece
and the road to Milapotamos
that we took
so long ago
(and the opsrey, Dinas, fledges
takes fleeting, freewheeling flight
and feels Wales on its wings
maybe anticipates
instinct, deep chested and hidden
Senegal sunshine
fat flowing river
sea hawk’s delight)
The honeysuckle is draped
and honeyed
whilst the weather vane is stilled
the umbrella stifled with gaffer tape mends
no breeze
no sirocco
blowing the wind southerly
from Africa
to lighten the atmosphere.
(but, no fear
for the music still plays,
swaying, stirring, evoking
the sea,
Carningli
Dinas Head
Morfa Head
and the Land of Song beyond
still here
still here)
Teabags (in memoriam)
Posted: May 4, 2018 Filed under: Poem 4 Comments
Teabags
Late July
Stuck on a train
Wishing myself elsewhere
I find myself
Caught unawares
Remembering
Again
Emptying the cottage of
The final fragments of
Your long life
A teddy bear
In fact
Two
An address book
Long yellowed and sweated
Christmas cards
An alarm clock
Parker pens
Photographs and poetry books
No longer gracing your shelves
As we delved deeper into
Long lost cupboards
Light bulbs
Defunct
An iron, kitchen roll
Tin foil, chicken soup
We left
Breathlessly sad
And
As my train journey drags
Here I am
My mind full of the image
Of the small pottery jar
Stuffed with brown tipped
Teabags.
Rosemary (Blossie) Beazley died on 4th May 2015. This poem is for her.
