Category: Love

The clock never stops

Antique Clock

The clock never stops

tick tock tick tock

He thought it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things

It was only a moment of anger and uttered words of hurt

But now they would always be the last words he said.

Why hadn’t he blurted out he loved her instead.

 

©Alison Jean Hankinson

I wrote this a while back but I am using it for open link night at d’Verse as it has been a moment that continues to haunt me, the idea that we often don’t know what those last words will be or when the last moment will happen and that we have so little control over it all, the clock never stops…

I took the image from flickr Rachael Towne- Antique clock.

They sing for him.

It is the community singing that does it for my Dad every time,

Every rugby and football match those anthems for the common man.

They capture heart and soul, and bridge dreams and memories

And he sings with them, they become one voice,

one song, one breath-taking moment

of shared understanding and surrender,

of solidarity, stoicism and strength.

His heart was broken

In that shared moment he saw it and claimed it.

His grief, his passion, his anger, his will to live

all in the community singing.

They sing for him.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

poetics d’Verse

This is for Poetics and the evening is being hosted by Paul Scribbles and the theme was community.

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His heart was broken is a play on the words from The Proclaimers song Sunshine on Leith which is the anthem for Hibernian Football club. It has become one of my dad’s favourites even though he is a Turf Moor fan at heart.

Here is a link to a rendition of it:

Hibs 2016

Glasson Dock Revisited.

Glasson dock steeped in sunshine, the echo of the empty space that was the Babagee. Barges and boats and banter of family gatherings shimmers across the water beyond the broken hulls. The old stones of the lockgate still holds the memory of your footsteps.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for the Quadrille with d’Verse hosted by Grace tonight, Still is the prompt and it is on there somewhere. The image is from Wikimedia and is of the derelict Babagee before it was demolished.

d’Verse quadrille

 

Sunset on Mount Tiger

A house is not a home if it isn’t in your heart.

A house is not a home if it isn’t the place that lifts your dreams

And makes you smile and puts the gladness in your eyes

When the sun sinks in the west and the summer lingers on.

 

Our Mount Tiger home was filled with love and kindness

They all belonged, the children laughing, the turbid teens,

The thieving possums, lonely pheasants and quirky quails,

The irritating huhu bugs, mesmerising puriri moths and startled skinks.

 

Our house was small but wore a warm place in our  hearts

Our lives were kneaded and fashioned and left to prove in the sun.

Going home at the end of the day was like a long slow sigh

As the work was left behind and we were back where we belonged.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

d’Verse poetics

The challenge for poetics was to write about a building and we were really supposed to create it. This was our home on Mount Tiger, a small rectangular box atop a hill with a steep acre of bush, and we were the visitors the custodians of the land, we shared our home and landscape with all who had come before us and thrived around us. We had lavender for the bees, wildflowers for the butterflies, cabbages for the caterpillars, and I think the birds and rabbits lived off my vegetable garden. It was a beautiful home for my family to grow up in. We didn’t build it but we did grow it.

 

What am I?

 

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I am the face of hope,

In the fast fading light.

 

I am the distant dream

Driving forwards, when the day draws to a close,

The Star-bright shining in a suburban sultry night.

 

I am the laughter and the tears, the fear and guilt and pain,

Felt by all the mothers before me, the broken and the humbled, the joyous and loving,

I am the seed, the seedling, the roots, trunk and branches.

I bear the fruit. I am the womb of time.

 

I am me, fifty and finally come of age, woman.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

It is open link night #190 at d’Verse and so we are encouraged to submit anything we choose, this was part of something I wrote a while back, and I guess it is what I need to believe at the moment. Returning and coming home has been nothing short of gruelling, nothing has been simple at all. It has been a little like hurling yourself from a small cliff into a ferocious and stormy ocean. I have to know deep down that it will come right and that the storm will pass. To do this I have to peel back the layers and remind myself of what I believe I am and then slowly start to pick myself up again.

The image is Ellen and the tree- the second version…and my children are very much a symbol of what I am.

 

The Pearl in the Oyster

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Ethereal moonlight

Bathes the window casement

Teases me with her chaste beams.

 

Opulent flowers

Reminiscent of those blood-red roses

Shed their petals on a dusty mantelpiece.

 

Beautiful memories

Reverberate off these stone bare walls

Rekindle flames in these sad eyes.

 

Love is a sham

Clandestine mausoleum to those pretty days

So I force a smile to suppress my saddened heart.

 

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

d’Verse

This is for tonight where we are asked to have a heart by Lillian.

Image from Flickr….entitled-Valentine’s Day jewelry and roses by State Farm.

Original can be viewed here: Roses

 

Social Media and the crimes for our times.

 

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(If it was the Whales- we’d save them)

When Shep died and we were still young

We cried for our loss- not Shep’s

Now we have grown up and walked forward

But to our shame our souls have slipped backwards.

 

Rape, pillage and plunder, massacre and torture

Genocide, legalised murder and organised crime.

We can turn a blind eye if it’s not on our doorstep

There’s always a scapegoat, someone to blame.

If it’s not in our country then it’s not our problem

We can share in their loss without suffering the shame

Of committing the crime.

Voyeurism isn’t a crime.

 

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone

Are any of us without sin

When we are the ones allowing it to happen?

 

Alison Jean Hankinson.

This poem is for d’Verse open link night. #189 Open link #189

The image is from Flickr and is of Syrian refugees. This is the link:

Syria refugees

 

Nostalgia

And so we came home to Eden

But Eden wasn’t home anymore

And we had grown out of it.

Seedlings nurtured by parental love

Branching out reaching out towards a world

Where Eden wasn’t familiar

And we had no place to call home.

 

Just an intimation an emotion

A security which represents home.

And then we asked the question

From the sudden realisation

Is home synonymous with kindred love

Is kindred love home?

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

many-paths

This post/poem was added in response to d’Verse Poetics which took a closer look at the work of Ally Saunders.

d’Verse Poetics

The image that I responded to was this one, which is entitled Many Paths. I believe that I have travelled along many paths and have stumbled many times and however hard it is to journey down -my latest path is leading towards my kindred home.

#d'Verse-Poetics: Ally Saunders – A Closer Look

The Nature of Leaving

Colossal mountain

And you know it is hard to climb

Sitting in the starlight,

Carboniferous days

And love turned to stone

When you left the valleys behind

And all that you can do

Is smile at the moon

And start the climb

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse open link night.

d’Verse open link

So today on Friday 13th of January our furniture is scheduled to leave Whangarei exactly 11 years to the day we arrived. We drove over the Brynderwyns on Friday 13 Jan 2006 and saw the vista of Whangarei and Mount Manaia for the very first time. I actually began to write this poem many years ago when it became clear to me that when leaving to pursue our dreams we inevitably leave behind places and people that we have grown to love and cherish.

Arohanui. Great love to all. XXXXXX

 

Crossing over

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Here I stand cap in hand

A lifetime before me

And a lifetime behind me

And in the lamplight the path isn’t clear.

 

Here I lean upon my wooden bridge

Subdued memories ripple downstream in the wake of yesterday

And if I cross- hail what tomorrow brings

Shadows or sunsets in the evening?

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

For poetics d’Verse

d’Verse poetics abridged

Image– my mum and my daughter Ellen at St Annes, Lancashire. Mum was called Anne…

The lifetime behind me is my mum, whom I left behind and lost when I came to NZ, the lifetime before me is Ellen my eldest daughter whom I leave behind when I leave NZ to return to England.