inspiration – Page 16 – Hues of Hankinson

In Memorium

Memory of love

Breaks through the torrent of tears

Summer fading fast.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Shadows of yesterday, promises of tomorrow.

Today we took my Dad’s caravan to Kirkudbright for him. As this year has progressed I have learned to accept that it isn’t about the wealth we have or the belongings that we possess but about the moments we share with the people that we love.

Mum passed away in August 2008, she is probably still giving someone grief up there for how untimely that was at 64, as she had worked all her life and never got to draw her pension. I had emigrated to New Zealand in 2006 with my husband and the girls, and got stuck with our property falling into negative equity following the global recession and no hope of returning to the UK, and I didn’t even make it home for the funeral.

My sister held everything together. She helped Dad and sorted affairs and then continued to shoulder the weight of Dad’s illness. He was diagnosed with cancer less than six months after mum’s passing and the weight loss that we had put down to grief was actually the cancer eating away at him. He had some major surgery to remove a lung and was given fairly low odds of survival, but survive he did, and whilst he was unable to receive any chemotherapy, he was too ill and frail, he slowly healed and recovered. He was never really able to return to being an active solo captain on his boat without his beloved bosun and the years rolled by until in 2011 he got his beloved Emma dog. He then grew from strength to strength and got his first camper van in 2013, followed by an upgrade in 2015. In 2016 finally after seven years, we managed to sell our house in NZ and we returned home at the beginning of 2017.

Fast forward to today and the latest roadtrip as we were able to drive Dad’s newly acquired caravan north to Kirkudbright for him. It is these moments that make all the complexities and turmoil of the last decade somewhat worthwhile.

Driving to Kirkudbright itself was a trip down memory lane, we often went there camping as a family when we were younger, as Dad had lived there as a child. Ironically Galloway had also been a favourite haunt of my husband’s family. My husband and I honeymooned for 2 nights along the same Galloway route at the Isle of Whithorn in 1994, the car breaking down in Dumfries on the way, robbing us of a night’s money. We then camped and visited Dumfries and Galloway fairly regularly in our early marriage even partying on down for Hogmany in Portpatrick with friends on numerous occasions. Emily learned a lot on the journey northward. Every name on every road sign brought back some distant memory and now there was a new excitement as what we were embarking on was a new adventure, and a new opportunity to create new memories both for and with Dad.

Our lives can and do change so rapidly. It is important to treasure and cherish each moment that is of meaning and see it for its true value and worth especially when we live in troubling times where values seem to be challenged and dropped so readily and with such ease.

I was glad to be able to have today. I hope there will be many more days like today.

It was a day full of promise. It took a long time to get here but we got here in the end.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Are you going away with no word of farewell?

Mother

Died suddenly

Bereft beyond belief

I mourn her untimely passing

Tears shed

Still night

Stars beguile me with their beauty

My heartfelt loss immense

Grief engulfs me

Silence.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse poetics. It is a reverse cinquain? My song choice was Tom Paxton. “The last thing on my mind”.

Tom Paxton

It’s a lesson too late for the learning
Made of sand, made of sand

It will soon be the anniversary, she passed away in 2008, suddenly without saying goodbye, she was 64, and I was on the other side of the world and didn’t even get home for the funeral. We all feel it still. She was my mum.

Dreams lie lost amid the sands…

Lazy Sunday.

Somewhere between the sea and the sky,

my dreams fly free.

They rise and fall

on the gentle breeze

beyond the heat haze on the horizon.

My spirit with the seagull

soaring and then stalls suddenly,

shattered upon the rocks of reason.

©Alison Jean Hankinson.

This is my quadrille for d’Verse based on “dream”. The images were from our lazy Sunday afternoon walk yesterday. The sky was endless, the birds were amazing. In the distance you can see the sea windmills, they looked like they were dancing just above the horizon.

Lady, Green and Red.

Lady loved the plants’ light green
With flowers brightly red.
Her face angelically serene
Had leaves to shade her head.
She sat upon the mantelpiece
Amidst the Christmas cheer
Overshadowed by the nativity
And the radiant poinsettia.

This was to add to Frank’s (Frank Hubeny) poem, he wrote the first stanza and the second I wrote. Linked to Jilly’s Casting Bricks August Challenge as the second part of a cooperative poem.

The beauty of imperfection.

In d’Verse we were asked to focus on imperfection for our haibun Monday Wabi-Sabi. My haiku isn’t a proper one as it is human.

Today I started my new job and met some new work colleagues. One beautiful lady was in the office with her baby, she was on maternity leave but had come in to share the joy of this young man. He looked beautiful and his arms were so open and he looked so uncurled and yet it took me back to the arrival of my girls. Ellen emerged in a state of perfect relaxation, but Emily’s arrival was more stark and primaeval, the screams were of real anger and short-lived. She was whisked off to the SCBU within the hour when I told the nurses it sounded like she was barking. Unbeknown to us the damage was already done.

Emily was diagnosed with cerebral palsy in the November on my birthday, was classed as having spasticity in all four quadrants and we were told she might never walk. Ellen and Emily worked together on this and she walked at 16 months old. We just carried on as best we could and she has achieved so much in her 18 years so far, and her imperfections are actually just a part of her surreal beauty and magical character. What she has achieved so far in her young life is way and above what many people without such obvious imperfections achieve. I told some of my story and was horrified at the irony-all is not what it seems and this little fellow had a similar story, but my little girl with her imperfections is nothing short of inspiration for others who are treading these uncertain imperfect waters.

Winter frost beckons
Stiff frozen imperfections
Sibling love melts ice.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Beyond the shadows.

Maternal misgivings

Miscarriage numbs

Shades of silence separate us

Sorrow prevails

Suspended in shadows

Marriage meltdown

In grief defeated.

Barren and bewildered

Love lies

Dormant in the dust.

Test-tube babies

Twin harbingers of joy

Anchored in re-kindled love

Sunshine streams through

The clouds

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse where we were asked to use the word “shade”.

Love beyond the grave.

She gave away her heart

Beneath the beating sun

He held her hand so close

She was his only one.

In time, they knew, love grew

More each day and more

The years went by, youth flew

Old age caught up for sure.

In death she held his heart

And wept for days of old

Her tears ran down his face

Against her skin his hand felt cold.

Love lingers on beyond

Though tears she sheds no more

She takes his love to Heaven

His soul to meet once more.

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A second attempt for d’Verse…at trimeter…wonder if I got it this time?

The image is my Great Grandfather John Henry Mcclanaghan and his wife Frances with their eldest daughter Frances. Taken about 1904. theirs was an unusual love story. Some of it is in the link below.

Salford Pals

Any Old Iron

Roaring “Rag and Bone”

Bellowing “Rag and Bone”

Poorhouse strays, poverty weighs

Pawnshop dray, debtors pay

Loanshark says,

change your ways

Or else….we’ll end your days.

The challenge that Frank set at d’Verse was to create a poem in trimeter. I had to think and try really hard and I am not sure if it is or isn’t so hopefully it is. Frank said “For this challenge, write a poem that uses trimeter lines. All of the lines in the poem do not have to be in trimeter, but enough should be so that one can tell this meter was used on purpose. The poems do not have to rhyme nor must they have any other sound qualities about them.

The rag and bone man used to come along our road in the 1970’s shouting “Any old iron” in fact we used them a bit like a swap shop, we put things on the cart and sometimes we took something in return. I was a child.

The image was labelled for reuse from Flickr and was actually from Newcastle libraries. this went with the photo:

Tor623, Rag and Bone Man, Newcastle upon Tyne
Description: Laszlo Torday arrived in Tynemouth in January 1940 from Hungary and took most of his photographs of Tyneside during the 1960’s and 1970’s. They reflect his interest in the streets and people of Newcastle especially of central Newcastle and the suburbs of Heaton and Jesmond. : The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises 100 photograph albums of black and white prints plus 16 boxes of colour transparencies. We are keen to find out more about them.