The warm embrace
of the sun's rays
And the moon's
cooling gleams
As you stretch out
your arms
And embrace the world
embrace our planet
embrace your friends
embrace your family
embrace yourself.
A man in a beige tracksuit
next to two from Southeast Asia
I wonder what your stories are
I wonder what your stories will become.
You, the lad who’s earlobes are gauging
No, they’re not evaluating
But rather being s t r e t c h e d
Will he then smile from ear to ear?
Man, his coffee was good
I wonder, I wander,
What stories brought him here.
My own story brought me here, to Schiphol
Time travelling or travelling time?
Working hard or hardly working
these are the questions the moment seeks to answer.
An older gentleman
With the battle scars of the elements
Crossed upon his brow
Sat opposite me on the metro
And held in his hands
His hard-worked and tough hands
(No ring adorned)
He softly held
A packet of ham from the supermarket
The same way my beloved holds me when I’m down
When all grey becomes bright and colourful
I hope the famed ham was nice:
perhaps it partook in a good sandwich or two,
perhaps he framed it.
Tired from a long day’s walk
we rest our weary feet
and sit around a table to meet
and cover the missed day’s talk.
The five lads sitting opposite
take out banjo and fiddle alone
playing, singing tunes of evermore
washing away life’s grime and grit.
The young and naïve poet sitting nearby
tries to capture the jovial mood
but his pen’s no match for the fiddle’s shrewd
tunes of times long whizzed by.
The cold warmth of the autumnal indoors
brings us together here across the world
what an amazing life it is, I behold
the Celtic music healing my sores.
Hope.
Just one word
Says so much
If only we had more hope
less misery, we say
But that’s not hope
Hope is knowing
Believing!
There are things out there for us
within us
which give us hope.
Hope gives us hope.
Cherish it.
Nurture it.
Don’t forget to hope.
Over the rocky mountains
Shadows of grey on black
Absent are the light fountains
A distant travelling pack
A twinkle of light down below
Shining on my deep desires
Of living in nature’s mellow
Amongst the tree spires
Perhaps these cathedrals of stone
Can quell the mind’s races
Preaching in their grand tone
Of life’s past traces
Perhaps the hush of greenery
And eternal calm of peace
Will wash away the misery
And provide sought truce.
January’s fog as thick as hot milk
Shrouds, bleaches, suffocates the landscape
Only the lone farm’s lights twinkle through the glaze
Setting the milk a bold yellow ablaze
From the window, a young lady watches
Only the candlelight’s shadows move
She can smell the dust, the memories, the toil of long ago
Looking where her grandmother’s tulips used to grow.
Her grandmother was a hard-working woman, never fazed
by any menial tasks or obstacles
Her back bent, as she weeded the tulip patch
Before the thorns and thistles snatch.
She would tell her “don’t you step on that precious soil!”
As the baby girl made her first steps
Almost trampling where the tulips would be in the spring
Her grandmother would swoop and home safely bring
Now the baby girl is a young lady
Watching the fog creeping over where Granny stood
it spills across the earth mound
surrounds the house round and round
The memories of all the years
With grandmother by her side
Now it’s the granddaughter’s turn
To preen the tulips before the summer sun’s burn.
After reflecting on this poem that I wrote, I was reminded of Seamus Heaney’s Digging, It’s an excellent (and very famous) poem covering a somewhat similar theme to this one here.
I want to write a poem about Christmas
About love, and the tender caresses
of good, home-cooked food,
of the shadows of a love
and of last year’s shadows.
How this is the last Christmas I’ll be spending here
A new house, a new home coming near
This one will retire to memory;
as I suppose we shall all one day
one day, it’ll be me and you
memories of us—
reduced to spiritual dust.
But I fail to do that:
I can’t write of Mary
and the way I wished she’d travel
through our souls, our bodies
but maybe I should write of Mary and Joseph
after all, their lad’s had a birthday.
Neither of us will be doing any travelling:
my Mary, well, she was very clear
and the famous lad, well,
he’s a bit on the pale side
(to put it very mildly)
and Santa’s monopolised the market.
In the last minutes of Anglo-Saxon Christmas Day,
writing this in bed, and as proud as a sticky sun ray
with Joni Mitchell lodged nearby:
I’ve yet to see life from both sides
and I’m bloody well looking forward to it
to find out where peace, love and all that waffle resides
maybe on the other side of December 31st
maybe Mary will show me one day.
Then I’ll discover what life’s both sides are
by then I hope to have refreshed my repertoire
and replenished hope’s anguished reservoir.
You, sitting over there with your AirPods in
or you, with those funky glasses
and those trousers retrieved from a dustbin
What are you thinking? How are you doing?
What did you do today?
Yes, the wind was blowing
but weather’s so damn blasé
about the whole thing.
I often wonder what we all go through
John, are you also wondering about life
or maybe your investments failing to accrue
What’s Maria wondering? The same as Sophia?
Yes, he was cute but he’s got a girlfriend
and maybe we should talk about local politics
No, let’s not
What are you listening to, you with your AirPods in?
I hope it’s as nice as as Chopin or Purcell
they didn’t really have auto-tune (it’s a bloody sin)
Or Springsteen, he’s pretty good
when you’re in the right mood
I’ll never know anyway
maybe it doesn’t matter
It’s fun to think, though,
of our collective cranial banter
Overcome by melancholy
Once more on a giant metal bird
Leaving home behind,
Going home,
Flying home for Christmas.
Leaving love behind
Love which was not to be
Not the right time, day or year
Leaving friends like family behind
Leaving home behind
But coming home!
Leaving all the sweat, tears
and stress all behind.
There’s nothing like a parent’s embrace
Of that I needn’t dream.
“What is home?” they ask me
Home is whatever you make it to be
Home is going from one home to another
From love, friends, stress and bother
To family, love, togetherness and a previous life
What is home? This is home. Home is life.