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…
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.
Always Rosemary
Posted: September 21, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: World Alzheimer's Day 10 CommentsThe 21st September is World Alzheimer’s Day. This poem, written five years ago, is dedicated to my mother in law, Rosemary, who lived alongside of Alzheimer’s for a number of years.
Sleeping now.
May your blanket be woven of spring time threads,
and flamespun from the azalea outside your window,
wild garlic fattening the woodland paths,
your fields, bested by bluebells,
Welsh oak, wild cherry, the rising sound
of saplings, keening in the breeze.
The crushed camelia heads that cushion the verge
below the trees
that you loved to see
as we were Fishguard, ferry bound.
Red petals gracing too, the secret garden,
where, a few snatched weeks ago,
we picked for you
Derek’s daffodils,
lingering strong and plump,
golden on your windowsill.
Sea thrift and campion binding the two Heads,
Dinas and Morfa dipping Westwards,
unwittingly majestic and yet, now, forlorn.
No longer held in your view.
Yet you loved to look out over these landmarks,
contemplating, ruminating,
reflecting perhaps,
on kinder, gentler days,
as you stared across the Bay
sometime sea shimmered,
at others, murk misted
and
“Can’t see Dinas Head’, you’d say.
But cliffs and headlands prevail,
rock steady,
as you well knew,
through older age and illness,
stoically surviving,
cup of tea reviving,
discomfort, trauma,
bravely borne.
Ages slipped by, unwittingly,
as such they do,
and gradually,
and I am sure,
unwillingly
you gathered your very self in,
breathed deep,
withdrew.
Harder to distinguish then
your hopes, your fears,
the altered state
the change of mind.
Some things are, it seems,
beyond the ken
of us, the ones to remain behind.
Left, bereft,
to nurse your memory,
there must be laughter,
there will be tears.
But for all that changed,
across these widowed years,
you remained
a smile,
a crossword clue determined
a flash of will.
And of this I am,
ever certain,
always Rosemary,
somewhere,
it might seem to be
adrift,
yet fixed,
blossoming still.
Resting now,
sure enough and
ready to greet us
from
behind the ethereal, floating curtain.
Heroes
Posted: August 20, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized 11 CommentsHats off to the unsung heroes
Consistently saving our lives
The cleaners
Shelf stackers
Checkout people
Delivery drivers
The post workers
Rubbish collectors
Street sweepers
Waiters
Baristas
Checkout workers
Carers
Kitchen porters
Washers up
Laundry staff
Hairdressers
Reception people
The list goes on…
Unheralded
Underpaid
Undervalued
Passing by without much sound
But now we know
They’re the ones
Who really make the world go round
Friendships and community
Posted: July 27, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe Borrowed Boy. I’m really looking forward to reading this new novel by my friend and colleague, Deborah . And I’m intrigued to see how she will have woven some of our community based work into her story. Exciting! Deborah can be found here on WordPress, search for Abra K Deborah.
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
Gentleman Jim
Posted: May 25, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsThis is a poem for a good friend and erstwhile colleague, Jim MacDonald, who died recently. It was written on the day of his funeral, a startlingly beautiful May day.
Jim was a huge fan of Southampton FC, and he and I and a bunch of friends went, over the course of several years, to see various stages of Le Tour de France.
The poem is for Jim, for his children, Elizabeth and Daniel, the family and all his friends…, in particular, for ‘the gentlemen of Le Tour’ and other friends from ROCC days.
The May tree is snow white, pink flushed, startling
the sycamore, bobby dazzling in a sapphire stained, swallow diving sky.
As we await your presence,
For that one last trip
I take the sun, the heat
Divine
(fierce today, aslip over this bittersweet spring of ours
with it’s malevolent harvest darkening the way )
Daydreaming of French roadside cafes,
Belgian bars,
Saddlebags stuffed with cheese, bread and wine.
One less now
to effortlessly charm the women in the boulangerie,
make short work of a cold beer
To sip strong coffee elegantly.
You were kindness, nonchalance,
Good humoured grace
As the Peliton flashed by,
The sibilant hiss of tyres on hot baked asphalt
A glimpse of Indurain’s tour bus.
Never one to make much fuss.
The celebrant noted that
“memories and stories
Don’t just stop…
You are but a breath away”
Yes, even as
The Saints go marching in.
The strange thing
About death
The world continues to spin
Whilst we, the grieving
Rest
Suspended
Normality, temporarily
Upended.
Sad to say, for
“The gentlemen of Le Tour”
One set of wheels
Turn no more.
But yes,
From Orkney to Pompey
Exultant memories prevail
The road still rises
The sunset pale.
Likewise
Across French fields and roads,
The hill climbs will still be there
The stages, time trials,
Triumph
Good companion to
Despair.
Le Tour is our collective
Treasure house of joy.
Remembering him
Our gentleman Jim.
20/05/2020.



During self isolation. Guest poet, Mary Jenkins.
Posted: April 14, 2020 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment(The novelist Helen Carey and her cousin, poet, Mary Jenkins, plus Maisie, on Carningli mountain one summer day, in pre-virus times)
Mary sent us the two poems below and I felt that it would be good to share them.
Two poems, written by Mary Jenkins during self-isolation, March 2020.
Swifts.
“Run away, Mary. Escape.“
“It’s not safe here.”
Normally, if things get tricky and dangerous,
“Flee” it says to me –
But I could fly away instead.
Like the swifts?
How would that be?
“Fly where to?” I ask.
Swifts don’t fly to a place (unless it’s nest – building).
It’s Flight.
All the time, every day every night
Round and round the world.
Often breeding in China.
Feeding, drinking, sleeping
And even mating on the wing.
Lucky things I say, and brave.
We have to “stay put” now.
And we can also fly with the swifts.
Black.
Black is the “in – colour” this spring;
Matt Black Ash buds, opening now on stout
Twigs and trees;
Inflated, ebony nosegays
Are breaking; bursting out
of their cosy night attire
of winter past –
to pale, utopian lime – green, little bouquets.
Beyond my wilder dreams of us , me, the world.
2.
And Black iris rebels against
established grass patch
By growing here where it’s triangular and unknown
half –way down the garden –
You shoot up amongst white –striped stems to guide and lead us.
We need “Black” to enlighten us now to sunshine.
Thanks for sharing these Mary.