poems – Hues of Hankinson

In the doghouse.

It had adorned the bookshelf for thirty years,

The beautiful lover’s rose sealed in the long-stemmed glass that he had given her on their first anniversary.

He had slipped,

CRASH

glass…

Fell to the floor

SMASH

Broken beyond recognition.

He was in the doghouse.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse quadrille night. We were asked to write about SMASH.

The glass with the rose has travelled halfway round the world and back in shipping containers, spending weeks at sea….so I have no idea how it remains unbroken.

And God makes three

Turbulent thoughts keep me awake long into the night.

I hear the church clock chime half past three

I wonder if sleep will come and rescue me from the horrors of my mind.

She is just out of reach, the day is long, I call her name over and over again.

I will her to turn and face me, to know the dangers and the joy that mark the journey ahead.

I will her to collect the gifts that I have left for her in my imaginary trees.

A gemstone, aquamarine to give her courage and strength.

An amulet in the form of a necklace fashioned from a treasured threepenny piece.

An orchid dipped in silver to remind her of her inner beauty and remind her of her feminine strength and stoicism.

She is her mother’s child. Strong and stubborn with a compassionate core and a kindness that cannot be compared.

But she has her own demons, they stare her down and gnash unsparingly at her heels making it hard for her to make headway in the ferocious fetid storm of my mind.

I will her to turn to face them, to burn their eyes out with her own inner fire, to blind them with her light.

My child you have the strength of you, and the strength of me,

And then there is God and God makes three.

We are with you through the long lonely night and into the joy of a new day and a new dawn.

We were asked to think about signs. This came from a really vivid dream I had a while back. I think it was when my Daughter was experiencing a lot of change and the dream felt very real. I think I wanted her to know that it will be what it will be, and that we have to trust that it was supposed to be this way.

Big Sister.

Shared stories of woe,

broken hearts, stubbed toe, family first

Bond beyond breaking.

It is national poetry month, and this is dedicated to my own sister but also to a dear friend who had to say goodbye to her sister today.

©Alison Jean Hankinson.

Whalebone and lace

I wanted you to know I had worth

Beyond the kitchen sink and the classroom

I was shaped in whalebone and lace

My dreams fashioned and woven

Delicate structures faded from regret and loss

Unheard songs and stories stitched in unseen seams.

Hidden from view by what you all chose to see in the lines on my face

A smile here, a kindess there, eau de cologne on a summer breeze

Handbag, lipstick, loose change. Sad eyes, tears shed, loves lost, hearts bled.

But I was shaped in whalebone and lace

Beyond the confines and drudgery of my miserable life

I wanted you to know I was beautiful and had worth.

Alison Jean Hankinson

This was for Toads, and it was about Bang-You’re dead… I kind of went off at a tangent at first and thought I was supposed to kill someone, so wrote a poem about killing someone with a cricket bat… it had a touch of dark humour about it, and then I thought maybe that wasn’t what it was supposed to be…this was actually attempt 3….

The image was portrait of Dona Isabel de Porcel by Goya. creative commons.

Across the Bay

Brisk breeze beguiles  
Winter sun warms the weariest of souls. 
Across the bay snow atop the Langdales.
Gulls glide as eventide
Sheds a subtle ombre orange sunset glow across the sheltered sands.
Whisper me home.

Shade of Seasons

New year full of promise as winter fades to grey

Blue skies remind us that spring is on the way.

Blood red roses with valentine’s love ooze

Rainy days of April splash in shiny black patent shoes.

Bright yellow sunflowers against the garden wall

Wearing mumma’s high heeled sandals to make me look so tall.

Green grass growing wildly under orange summer sun

Blackberry picking and licking purple fingers in autumn fun.

Silver stars a shining against a dark moonlit sky

Brown brindly witches broom at Halloween we fly.

Pink and fluffy slippers for cold and wintery nights

White sparkly lights on the Christmas tree so bright.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

P1090358

Sing a song of ninepence.

Sing a song of ninepence,

we’re all going to die

Mummy caught the budgerigar

and baked it in a pie.

Whilst the pie was cooking,

she made the kitchen clean

and served it up for dinner

with custard and ice cream.

Dad was in the garden shed

Sharpening his tools

The kids were in the bedroom

Polishing their shoes.

The cat was in the dining room

and stealthily- I kid you not

Upon the table it did leap

and stole the blooming lot.

So for d’verse poetics we were challenged to write a Kafka-esque children’s rhyme????? Oh my.

I chose this phrase for inspiration-

I am a cage, in search of a bird

The Ghost of Christmas Past.

The ghost of Christmas past

Came knocking at my door,

He took me to the time

When my little girls were four.

We knelt before the Christmas tree

Presents crudely wrapped but there,

A plate by the fireside

With Santa’s festive fayre.

We walked into their bedroom

As quietly as you can,

My two small girls were sleeping there

In Ramsey, Isle of Man.

In the muted light they seemed peaceful

Asleep and safe and warm

In a home filled with love and family

To keep them safe from harm.

The stockings on the bedposts

Were filled with treats and toys

Hung there by their Daddy

To bring them hope and joy.

Christmas was extra special

In that one particular year

As Daddy had come home safely

From military conflict fuelled by fear.

I thanked the kindly ghost

For reminding me that night

That despite the hours of darkness

Christmas is about recognising the light.

May your Christmas time be peaceful

Filled with memories that shine,

To keep your heart warm through the cold

And lonely times.

The Ugly Grubbly.

Once upon a yucky time lived a grubbly gringly monster groo

He jiggled in the midnight sun

and feasted on wibbly bungaroos

He gribbled beyond the wobbly fronds and bumbled in the forest froo

He wimbled with the flowersong

and with the frimbles flew.

Once upon an ugly time when gringle monsters knew

That clovely bubbly mischief makers

Made life worth living true.

For d’Verse poetics.

Fifteen years on…

Fifteen years ago we were at a child’s birthday party in the Church hall at Bride with our girls, when Dave revealed that he had received in the post that morning compulsory call- out papers to serve in Iraq. It was completely unexpected, he was a serving member of the Territorial Army but we had always been assured that they would never serve in an active Theatre of War, and yet here we were and my then 41-year-old husband was given less than a month to sort his affairs out before being whisked away at the end of May to Basra Palace.

We had only just moved to the Isle of Man with our girls and the whole situation was like some complete nightmare and it was a day full of sadness and grief, and as the children played party games I spent most of my time crying quietly in the corner. In so many ways that moment, that letter, that situation changed our lives forever, and in a sense, I think even at that moment we knew that things would never really be the same.

In fact it almost feels like fifteen years on, we are only just beginning to put it all behind us, the path it sent us down was not an unhappy path but it was a path that was less travelled and it is only now that we find ourselves walking back to the crossroads in an attempt to rediscover some of the life and lives we left behind.

This weekend the sun shines. We have taken a road trip to Harrogate to spend a night at the Old Swan Hotel. A beautiful place that used to be called the Harrogate Hydropathic and is infamous for providing Agatha Christie with a safe haven during a troubled part of her life in 1926. Unbelievably we have been given the room she stayed in as our room for the evening and I feel very privileged.

We stopped off in Skipton on the way through and enjoyed watching the Tour De Yorkshire. They were also celebrating down on the canal and the Accrington pipe band put on a splendid performance and they must have been sweltering in their uniforms. The canal barges looked inviting and the post-industrial landscape told a story of reinvention and rejuvenation.

We came to Skipton quite a few times before the girls were born, we even used it as a stepping stone and caught the train to Leeds a few times when I was having my IVF treatment there in 1998. So it is a place of memories, the last visit the girls were about 2 and in the double buggy, we stopped at what was Woolworths and bought Ellen a toy Jake from the Tweenies and Emily a Mopatop. I think she still has Mopatop, but Jake got lost in the Mcdonalds at Llandudno junction in about 2001.

After Skipton, we drove on to Harrogate where we are staying at The Old Swan Hotel. What a joy, it has its own character and sense of self and here we find ourselves in room 253 which was the room that Agatha Christie stayed in for 11 days in December 1926 when she went missing. It feels a little like serendipity, it has been a dark and deep week and the cracks have been showing and I could happily have disappeared myself on Wednesday and if I had found myself here I am sure it would have been a positive and healing thing to have done. I would like to think that she may have found this too. She divorced the following year and rumours about her mental state at the time of the missing 11 days vary from the concept that she was suicidal, or in a fugue state, to the fact that she was making it difficult for her husband to continue with his affair and he claimed she had amnesia following a car accident. I guess no one really knows. I hope she found peace here. The room doesn’t feel tormented so perhaps she did.