Bird dead in the road
Should be love serenading
Metaphor for Spring.
Alison Jean Hankinson
We have had a wet windy cold snap as spring is supposed to move into summer it feels more like Autumn.
Category: nature
Summer storm 1985
Across the raging Ocean
Hurtling home from France in a skittish Dufour
Bobbing in the ocean like a pea in a drum.
Drum lost her keel in Fastnet fright
We were stranded at sea off Selsey Bill
Limped into Shoreham late evening
Summer storm.
Alison Jean Hankinson
A memorable sailing trip with my parents in August 1985, as a teenager, still not sure how we survived, the auto-pilot couldn’t hold our course it was a little bit rough to say the least. Dad’s little Dufour was 26ft….Simon Le Bon’s Drum was more like 78ft….
For Quadrille at d’Verse. Challenge STORM.
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In this life…
In this life of complex order and sequence
Is a simplicity and fragility that is there to guide us.
We must value the moment we hold in our hands
Take it and treasure it and place it in our conscious mind.
In this life of uncertainty and fragmented disenchantment
we must honour the souls of the ones that came before us
So that that our own endeavours however meagre and small
Will have dignity and connection in their labour and toil.
We must appreciate the moments of beauty and bounty
And be humble and honest and have integrity.
Lest all that we know should be gone tomorrow
In this life of tragedy and human sorrow.
Alison Jean Hankinson
Whilst I wrote this on Saturday it was entirely with the sentiments of d’Verse poetics challenge that was looking for poems to save the soul….and I think we have suffered greatly in the last few weeks with the attacks on London and Manchester and I wanted to peel back the layers to what is still important and will always be important.
Today was a very blustery day….a pooh bear kind of day, and so long as we remember to feel the wind on our face and acknowledge it for what it is we are still clearly alive and functioning.
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Storm clouds gather over Heysham Head.
Against the backdrop of the sea
My love for you rises with the tide
No plain nor perfect place I would rather be
With my time-worn soulmate at my side.
Sunset over Lakeland Hills
Windmills as far as the eye can see
Hand in hand we walk the sands
No plain nor perfect place I would rather be.
Storm clouds on the horizon
Wind blows strong across the land
Sudden wind chill makes us shiver
Hand in hand we walk the sands.
We head for home across the Head
In the Church ruins shelter and hide
Against the backdrop of the sea
My love for you rises with the tide.
Alison Jean Hankinson
Submitting this for open link night. At d’Verse.
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Sunset Silhouette
The sun goes down across the sound
The sky across the water shimmers
I see your footsteps in the sand
Your fading silhouette gets dimmer
In this moment my dreams abound
For fear of loss recedes and withers
My love for you is strong as hewn
From landscapes framed in moon.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
This was really hard, it was for d’Verse and we were challenged to write in a form called Ottava Rima. This was beautiful Morecambe Bay Sands .
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Fear receding….
The transition to seaside life has been a total joy. However dark and difficult the long days of winter were with their obstacles barriers and uncertainties and the fears that we would somehow fail. There was always a small smattering of hope that things would eventually work out for the better. We have been able to rekindle our love for our own culture and connections, track back through pathways and places that were already part of our story and re-establish the significance of our own place in this wonderful landscape.
The move in springtime to Heysham has been a wonderful and welcome move into what promises to be a pleasant phase of our lives. The sea and scenery are endless sources of peace, calm and serenity. The joy to be able to walk and witness this place in all its beauty and glory for just a small part of each day is genuine food for the soul. There is a song by Groove Armada it is such a seaside song, it talks of sand-dunes and salty air and it is just the sentiment of this place, a seaside town resting on its laurels and trying to reinvent itself as the coastal jewel in the crown resting at the foothills of the Lake District. Mountains on the horizon, resplendent in a salmon sunset, windmills stretching out to sea as far as the eye can see, ancient history carved into the headland and wilderness, wind and wavespray.
Mid tide Glasson Dock
In sprightly spring-time sunshine
Fear and dark thoughts ebb
Alison Jean Hankinson
This is my late offering for Haibun Monday and is about fear receding.
oops just missed the link by 35 minutes…
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The Ghost of Winter past.
I remember the soft snowflakes
Delicate as lace
Framed by the cold frigid moonlight
Falling gently to the ground.
Shrouding the world in a pure white blanket
Which sought to cleanse another winter
But pure white turned to grey
And the peaceful night became another dirty day.
Alison Jean Hankinson
This is my contribution for d’Verse open night.
The image is from pixabay,
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Postcard From The Barrows On Heysham Head.
This changing landscape
Is food for the soul
Misty moody blues beyond the ruins of St Patrick’s
Hues of sand and stone beyond the headland’s horizon
The mysterious mudflats home to the sandwalker of Morecambe Bay.
Wish you were here Heysham.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
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Kestrel
Virtue her’s is beauty
She hesitates then pounces
And in a flounce of majesty
A reverie of gracefulness
Swoops to savage the delicacies of a dew-sodden dawn
Reap the rewards of a cold rancid morn.
Narcotic silence
Renders love unto my soul
Removes the talons from my heart
Her beauty numbs the pain of death.
Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for the open link night at d’verse.
The image is Common Kestrel in flight from wikimedia.
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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
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.
Hues of Hankinson 