Inside my head
Spinning around
Dreams and aspirations gone awry
Future peace mocked by the war-torn pieces
Of a world gone mad.
Alison Jean Hankinson 20/12/2016
Author: alisonhankinson
Walking tall whenever I can.
Benevolence. All that is good
It is the time of year where we put aside differences
Share olive branches and give forgiveness
As we recognise that human spirit is often all we have left to celebrate
In a world which sometimes seems to breed hate.
Bjorn asked us to reflect on a complex year where many have been stretched and shattered, and the pieces of peace seem broken beyond repair and then there is the despair as the void fills with the thoughts and prophecies of the great hereafter.
The paradox- we don’t know what we don’t know and yet this might just be as good as it gets.
I learned late in life that my time is the one thing that I can give that can be of use and beneficial. It is something that is extremely precious and therefore I try to choose to use it wisely, and be it for netball coaching or having tea and conversation with good friends it can and does truly make a difference. It isn’t about the quantity or the number of moments but about their meaningfulness.
When we give our time with love to another to focus on their story and their need we truly honour their spirit. It is irrelevant if their journey has been more complex or blessed or held more tragedy or good fortune. What is relevant is the state of their suffering or well-being at that one moment in time and what you did to honour it.
In my life I am blessed I have family and friends to share my journey, food in my cupboard and enough to nourish anyone who needed to knock on my door and ask for sustenance. I have the ability to work for a living, have made the most of my opportunities to be educated and empowered and hope that I have the wisdom to know that if this moment is the point in my life where “this is as good as it gets,” that I savoured it for what it was and accepted the joys and sadness for the experiences that they were.
If you ever get an opportunity to help heal the soul of another take it with both hands and know that somewhere there is someone who would do the same for you. With love at Christmas-time.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
d’VerseOpen link night#186
http://dversepoets.com/?tag=dverse-open-link-night
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One Small Moment.
One small second
separates my life from my death
The surgeon stitches
focused only on his task
to save the life that falters here.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
d’Verse Poetics It’s All in the timing.
It’s all in the timing!
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Portpatrick
Going out to dinner
Romantic you and me
I forgot my wallet
Hurry let us flee.
Image- Wikimedia- Portpatrick- Photographer Arnold Price.
Sorry it probably isn’t the slightest bit poetic. We accidentally did this not once but twice in the same pub/restaurant…
It was New Year’s Eve and a group of us would brave the weather to travel to a tiny place called Portpatrick to experience a real Hogmany. We would arrive and were usually relatively “not sober” by dinner time and wandered around the few pubs and eating establishments rather merrily……my husband and I always ate our evening meal in the same hilltop restaurant on NYE, the first year we accidentally left without paying drunken and happy beneath the stars- we went back and paid later in the stay. The second year we were jovially recounting our tale-drunk as skunks in the harbourside bar when we suddenly realised we had done it again. We did return to pay the next day.
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For Ellen
Grief rolls over me
In huge tumultuous waves
leaving you behind
This time of year it always feels like the end of something and the start of something new. Even though we are in summer it is the end of the school year. It is always a time of reflection and it has also been a time of leaving for our family. I left my parents behind in Jan 2006, my last living visual memory of my mother was seeing her crying in the rear view mirror as we drove away to our new life here in New Zealand. It was only supposed to be a see you later, but it was a goodnight.
This year I am returning to spend time with my family and I have to say goodbye to some colleagues and friends after a very complex 11 years and it is very very difficult, they have walked beside me when I needed them. However the most difficult thing I have to do is to leave my eldest daughter here, and I sincerely hope for both of us it is simply a see you later and not to all a goodnight. This might not have been how the prompt was intended to be interpreted but it is what it spoke to me.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Haibun Monday: And to all a goodnight
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Emily Elfin
She’s my secondborn
Cherubic smile, big blue eyes
Churlish Elfin charm
Nymph divine hides within her
Magical mystic manner
© Alison Jean Hankinson
This is my contribution for imaginary. My elfin child who has always been able to mix the imaginary world with the real world.
This is her in a film made recently:
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Fast falls the eventide
We were still waiting
Yellow ribbons fluttering
on a light sea-breeze.
You should have been home
Instead you were shards of war
In Basrah Palace
©Alison Jean Hankinson
Paul Scribbles asked us to write about “the end” for d’verse. I will write one too, but I also wanted to submit this one.
I wrote this last year. I was fortunate in that Dave returned safely on my birthday 2003. He was one of many Lancaster and Cumbria Volunteers (TA) that were sent into Iraq (Basrah Palace) with Queens Lancashire Regiment in 2003 on a compulsory call-out- the British public were generally unaware that this happened. I couldn’t see how he could survive, there were attacks, riots insurrection, IED’s, he was recovering vehicles from dangerous places. I used to pray he wouldn’t die alone. He survived but his colleague Captain Dai Jones wasn’t so lucky. The girls were four, and he missed their first day of school, but at least he came home even though at times he was definitely shards of war. We had an old fashioned lamp-post in our garden and we tied a yellow ribbon round it to demonstrate we wanted him to come home. We still have the ribbon somewhere.
Image of tree from wikimedia
by Ildar Sagdejev
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Christmas Voices again..
Dec 11 The Grandma
Tinsel on the tree
Smells just like christmas cheer
love this time of year
Dec 12th The Store Manager
Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Come inside and spend your lolly
Make my profits soar.
A continuation with the voices…not sure I can sustain it to 25…I might have to resort to elves and Rudolph…
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Spring calls
Bird takes spring steps- sings
Love songs from bare bough of tree
Winter is long gone
The stilted shrill calls her home
To nest in cherry blossom.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Tanka for Carpe Diem #1091 Sonata in E, Op. 1/3 by Cecilia Maria Barthélemon
Image: Bird amidst the cherry blossom/https://www.flickr.com/photos/freedomiiphotography/8366458291/
https://www.flickr.com/people/53884652@N03
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A year ago…dark satanic mills
A year ago we were on our way… we had driven to Auckland, boarded the plane and we were probably somewhere around Australia now…mischief is sat on her cushion and she is thinking…mmm a year ago we were at the cattery…
School had finished and it was CHRISTMAS…. we still have a week to go this year…no wonder we are all grumpy.
A whole year ago…it felt so good, we were so excited, it was the holiday of a lifetime, funny that a trip “home” could be classed as a holiday of a lifetime but it was. The girls were 16, old enough to appreciate it and we had been gone for 10 long years. We took them back and helped them to reconnect, we took them to visit people and places that were part of their history and heritage. We wanted them to know the buildings and the customs and the language and the meaning of what it is to be English.
We love all that they have had and experienced here in Whangarei. We love all that they have learned and the friends they have made but we also wanted them to know their roots, they stand on the shoulders of giants and they need to know that part of the story too.
We come from the mill and mining towns of Lancashire, our forefathers were immigrants who came to build canals and railways and they gave blood sweat and tears to make Britain great in the Industrial revolution. They were working folk, the wives and women were brought up to be strong and steadfast. They men eked out an existence in the Pit or the factory and they found their strength and support in the Church, the Union or the Alehouse in no particular order. They lived loved and died amongst the bricks and the dirt, the smog and the soot, the dark dismal days of winter and the bracing breezes of brief summer days.
I wanted them to see the bricks, and feel the warmth of the hearts and souls who walked before them-whose existence they owe their own story and fortunes to. A year ago still feels like yesterday.
Image: Ancoats, Manchester. McConnel & Company’s mills, about 1820. From an old water-colour drawing of the period. Scanned from A Century of fine Cotton Spinning, 1790-1913. McConnel & Co. Ltd. Frontispiece. Scanned by Mr Stephen.
Hues of Hankinson 