Queen Victoria’s wedding dress

Honiton ruffles crafted on Devon bobbins

Royal Couple

Honiton ruffles
Crafted on Devon bobbins
In a back-street living room
Spitalfield silk sewn
With simplicity of soul
captured her gracious beauty
White Lace for lovers
Flowing soft against her thigh
Shared dreams of royals at dusk
Lascivious lust in mind.

Alison Jean Hankinson

This was a response to d’Verse Meeting the Bar; the Choka

Anyway this was my second ever attempt at a Choka..I tried to understand the form. Queen Victoria did love Albert and married very young at the age of eighteen, she had nine children during her life-time, and was grandmother to 42 grand-children.

d’Verse Meeting the bar

Image: By Engraved by S Reynolds after F Lock [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

For Ellen

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Pre-empted vision

And what stands between us

Is only time and space.

Meaningless when you consider the vacuum

That we have already crossed.

Alison Jean Hankinson

We were asked to use visual prompts to be inspired- the idea of new beginnings, this particular image spoke volumes to me- as we are just about to embark on a new journey and leave behind our precious daughter Ellen. We will be worlds apart but I believe that love, all love-especially a mother’s love can span the abyss of any darkness, cross any void and penetrates the cavern of eternity. ( The same Ellen as in Ellen has a fever., but she was only 18 months old then and now she is 17…)

Image-New beginnings at the ends of the earth- by- Michaela Sagatova, see web link below:

Visual prompt

This is for “beginnings” at d’Verse Poetics, hosted by Mish

Beginnings d’Verse

Ellen has a fever

It was the coldest night of winter,

snow on the footpaths and icicles

hanging from the window ledges.

Every window open to biting frost as Ellen had a fever

Cradled in the crook of my arm her chubby hot hand curled around my fingers.

Alison Jean Hankinson

For Quadrille#23 Curl at d’Verse.

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Living with loss.

It has been a very complex holiday period. We are packing up to move back to England in the New Year and whilst it is a period of reflection on what was and has been, and there is excitement at the prospect of what might now be in our future, the overall prevailing theme has actually been of loss.

It is hard to really describe what happens when you experience sudden and unexpected loss especially when it seems “unfair” not that any death is really fair. The truth is for those whom are closest and suffering the most, things will never really be the same and no amount of platitudes and musings will make it any easier. My heart goes out to Rosie who at the tender age of 17 must now find her own path through life without a mother to share her journey and all I know is that you never really get over losing your mum.

When our children were small it seemed so easy to be able to make things “better”, a sticking plaster for a grazed knee, a promise of a trip to the zoo, pancakes and ice-cream for dinner or a story about a skin horse who was so loved his hair was rubbed off and he became real.

I guess some of the loss is about the loss of being able to protect our children and make everything alright. Rosie must face the world without a mother’s love and I must leave my Ellen behind to make her own footsteps for her future.

Goodnight Katherine and God Bless. May all our children walk forward with courage and lead brave and worthy lives.

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.

d’VerseOpen link night#186

http://dversepoets.com/?tag=dverse-open-link-night

Portpatrick

Going out to dinner

Romantic you and me

I forgot my wallet

Hurry let us flee.

portpatrick_harbour_-_geograph-org-uk_-_1012939

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.

Flee

For Ellen

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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.

Haibun Monday: And to all a goodnight

Haibun Monday: And to all a goodnight

Love in Sonata form.

Spring

He saw her across the room and his heart stopped for a subtle second

She was forbidden fruit from the garden of Eden

A thing of beauty and innocence with an overtone of darkness and despair

He knew that his love could make her brightness soar and bring light into her soul.

Summer

Their love flourished under the summer sun,

He brought warmth into her life

There was colour in her speech and

He offered her a freedom and release

That before she had not known.

There were infinite possibilities

An eternity of love that would nourish

And heal from within and banish

The spectres of solitude and silence

He would be her sanctuary.

Autumn came and darkness cast it’s cloak across their days

His light across the room was dimmed by her shadows

Her innocence tarnished by forgotten promises and the broken bonds of love

He knew that his love had enslaved and condemned her to an eternity of pain.

Their love had died with the embers of the sun.

Winter won.

This is for d’verse

Make Music of Those Words–dVerse MTB

Influence of music through Sonata Form. As a trombonist I have always had music close to my heart and soul. I learned through classical genres and one of my favourite forms is sonata form. If you listen to something like Beethoven’s Pathetique it is very clearly written in sonata form. The first movement is the Exposition and contains the themes in their melodic infancy, they grow through major and minors in the second movement or development and in the Recapitulation, the final movement there is a conclusion with developed references relating to the the early themes. I find Sonata form is a good analogy for life, love and pretty much everything. I tried to capture its essence in the poem through the development and then loss of the relationship and use the season to represent the movement of time.