Starlings on the rooves
Hip-hop hopping, tip-tap tapping
Snow stomping flappy happy
Getting in the winter mood.
Fiery looking foxes putting on their groove
Foxtrotting through the frosty frozen fauna
Racing hastily through the forest
Working on their festive foxy moves
Red squirrels with dancing shoes
Snowy soft shoe shimmy shuffle
Acorn tapping troubadours
working the winter wonderland blues.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
Getting the groove on for d’Verse...
When I grew up in days of old
And the sun set over yonder
Old folks spoke in northern brogue
It made me stop and ponder.
In the backstreets of old Rossendale
Where buxom lasses were bonny
We spoke with a local dialect
And people say we talked funny.
In claggy weather we had council pop
Winter woollies when feeling nesh
Mam put our mittens on a string
It made us kids look gormless
If we mithered we were clattered
Told to keep our cakeholes shut
They chided us umpteen times
To keep the back door shut.
We played hide and seek in ginnels
Cleared snow from neighbours paths
Skriked our way through family traumas
Sweated cobs when’t’sun were’t crackin flags.
We spoke a different language
Didn’t give tuppence for what you thought
We’d go t’foot of our stairs
If anyone sold us short.
Fresh air and love we lived off,
With Church socials on a Saturday night
We might have not talked proper
But we treated each other right.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Image Eden Methodist Walking Day- C 1972
Image Eden Methodist Walking Day- C 1979
I am linking this for the last OLN at d’Verse.
Brogue: a way of speaking English, especially that of Irish or Scottishspeakers:
The town hall clock, hands of time
Counting the minutes, measuring the moments
Of our paltry lives.
We don’t look up enough
Sometimes we don’t see beyond our own story
Yet still the hands move round.
That same clock struck 11, sixteen years ago.
Same minute, same location, same season.
The leaves fell to the ground in remembrance.
Synchronicity in those hands
You were so small then in your red coat.
Time stood still for that one moment.
I captured your essence in early digital perfection.
The father, the child, the moment
Beneath the town hall clock, the hands that never stop.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for d’Verse. It is my ode to the town hall clock which seems visible from just about everywhere in Lancaster. The theme and timing is appropriate as it will be Remembrance weekend. The feature image was taken after the service in 2001 where ironically my husband was in the remembrance parade before he became a veteran of war.
City skyline
Frosted borders fringe the kerbstones
Mist mysteriously rising from the River Lune
Castle walls clear against the backdrop of a steely blue sky
Last umber leaves sombre against the sun’s glistening rays
Beautiful day to breathe.
Indeed we are infinite.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
We are infinite came from the perks of being a wallflower– one of my favourite film scenes, the tunnel. This morning was so beautiful and fresh that it reminded me of this, especially travelling across the bridge. I was driving though so couldn’t get a photo. This one I have used under creative commons. Credit below.
Image- credit:
© Copyright Paul Harrop and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Herbs and bits of stick
medicines to cure
gardening lemongrass, hogweeds, valerian.
Rituals and superstitions
lunar chart an astrological schedule
The garden thrived.
Chinese medicine, English folklore
Everyday magic
Layman’s alchemy.
Alison Jean Hankinson
A second contribution for d’Verse MTB, using the erasure style…a second stab at Magic…but from a different source….
Image-spices and herbs by futureshape.
All the house was silent
Night-light burning on the mantelpiece
Off to sleep.
Spring came
Long days in the garden
Rides in the wheelbarrow.
Long June evenings
The bracken swayed gently
The sun sank lower.
Thicket of raspberry canes growing tall
Tropical jungle in long sunlit hours
Fairy huts in the flowerbed.
Quiet evenings in the wood
A tear fell to the ground
And a flower grew.
A mysterious flower
Slender green leaves the colour of emeralds
Blossom like a golden cup.
The moon had risen
The forest was beautiful, fronds like frosted silver
Tree-trunks wild danced with their shadows.
Velvet grass dancing, the fairy kissed him
Springing jumping whirling
He was real at last.
Alison Jean Hankinson.
This is for d”verse MTB.
I ought to add this is a form called erasure or blackout.
The text was too large to put the whole as a picture….see if you can spot where it came from….The other image might help a tiny bit….it is Emily’s…shh….
Charlie was a pheasant
Who lived out in the bush
He came out when the sun shone
Eating insects in a rush
His wife was rather drab
In plumage next to him
She strutted across the garden
In sunshine frost and rain.
Mating calls would echo
Springtime rooster ruled the lair
Sometimes he had a harem
For the pheasant chicks to fare
Charlie was a pheasant
Who didn’t live for long
But in this time brought happiness
Despite his awful song.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
Submitted for d’verse open link night.
A nagging doubt
As my footsteps dulcet echo across the darkened dismal cobbles of a dreary street
Dutiful.
A whisper of solace
As our lives we share, and you weep and ache with despair
Comforter.
A cacophony of cheeriness
As we stride with gusto into growing uncertainty
Supporter.
A melancholy melody of metamorphosis
As I struggle to flutter and fly, reaching for the stars in the sky and knowing that I
wore the mask of the chameleon.
A rich and colourful cadenza of congeniality
As I reminisce and retreat
Into my own colourless void.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
This if for poetics at d’Verse.
The image was labelled for reuse and was in the public domain- wikimedia-
By Nic McPhee from Morris, MN, USA (Corn and sunflower (butterfly is optional)) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Butterfly jitterbug
Scantily across the mildewed road
Sordid sounds of rank and file
Perturbed the air
Candyfloss tears
Mistaken identities
Purriri moth in damson tree.
When the wind blows cold
I shall wear my purple hat
Forgive me.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for d’Verse.….mmmm have no idea if this is right…
The image is from flickr by Pamela Kelly.
A cadenza shrill and sharp
Pizzicato from the harp
Andante and legato
Swan song from the cello.
Clefs, chords and counterpoint
From fiery exposition to development
Magnificent muti-tonal orchestration
Tumultuous recapitulation.
Finally four last songs
Lamenting loss, lyrical and forlorn
Musical maverick Strauss is gone
The garden mourns.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for Real Toads, where the theme is Chaos. Bjorn talked of physics and mathematics, and it brought me round to music. Music is very mathematical and can be very precise and beauty and precision is borne from weaving together many delicate strands. It reminded me of two great twentieth-century composers who pushed music to its chaotic and mathematical limits. Alban Berg and Richard Strauss. Alban Berg’s Violin concerto is a masterpiece of mathematical precision, but I opted for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. The final line is from these and is the first line of September, written by Hermann Hesse.
These are my late September images…
Hues of Hankinson 