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

Fast falls the eventide

We were still waiting

Yellow ribbons fluttering

on a light sea-breeze.

You should have been home

Instead you were shards of war

In Basrah Palace

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Paul Scribbles asked us to write about “the end” for d’verse. I will write one too, but I also wanted to submit this one.

I wrote this last year. I was fortunate in that Dave returned safely on my birthday 2003. He was one of many Lancaster and Cumbria Volunteers (TA) that were sent into Iraq (Basrah Palace) with Queens Lancashire Regiment in 2003 on a compulsory call-out- the British public were generally unaware that this happened. I couldn’t see how he could survive, there were attacks, riots insurrection, IED’s, he was recovering vehicles from dangerous places. I used to pray he wouldn’t die alone. He survived but his colleague Captain Dai Jones wasn’t so lucky. The girls were four, and he missed their first day of school, but at least he came home even though at times he was definitely shards of war. We had an old fashioned lamp-post in our garden and we tied a yellow ribbon round it to demonstrate we wanted him to come home. We still have the ribbon somewhere.

Image of tree from wikimedia

by Ildar Sagdejev

Spring calls

800px-bird_amidst_cherry_blossoms Bird takes spring steps- sings

Love songs from bare bough of tree

Winter is long gone

The stilted shrill calls her home

To nest in cherry blossom.

© Alison Jean Hankinson

Tanka for Carpe Diem #1091 Sonata in E, Op. 1/3 by Cecilia Maria Barthélemon

Image: Bird amidst the cherry blossom/https://www.flickr.com/photos/freedomiiphotography/8366458291/

https://www.flickr.com/people/53884652@N03

Who moved it?

Missing- Who moved it?

It wasn’t where it was supposed to be

It should have been there for all to see

Someone had moved it carelessly

Missing

Treasure

Response to the daily prompt. california_high_desert_sunrise

Image creative commons-Sunrise in Joshua Tree California 01/05/12 Jessie Eastland

Treasure of the sun.

From the east comes the sun,

Her mantle red and gold

Her smile and nurturing warmth

In summer days unfolds.

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.

© Alison Jean Hankinson

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.

Mother’s Love

13411939_10209544645598467_2234712537344072344_o My tiny treasures

Look at the scar that you created

I wear it for you with love and pride.

I wear it with stoicism

Disfigured permanently for motherhood

We call it an apron

It hangs loose and saggy like an old washed out jumper.

This was written for the quadrille at d’Verse. Hope it is okay.

Quadrille#22

Elders and their sacred knowledge.

Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war

When God closes a window somewhere he opens a door.

I can kill two birds with one stone but if I am too bitter and too full of hate

I will cut off my nose to spite my face.

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,

But if I take myself too seriously pride is bound to come before a fall

These pearls of wisdom, this sacred prose

Demonstrates and shows

How the old folk prepared the new

Passing their sacred knowledge on to me and you.

Alison Jean Hankinson

Daily Post Prompt
Sacred
japanese-women-by-flickr-user-mrhicks46-creative-commons

Christmas Voices

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I think this is a bit of trial and error…I wanted to create some kind of advent calendar in “writings”…. so this I will add to, and I am going to say the inspiration was from Gemma, my visits to Rimu Park from d’verse openlinknight-185. It asked for a poem, but I hope that I can do 24 that will all become one if that makes sense.

Rimu Park is the retirement home and as I visit I often learn new things about both the residents and my own outlook on life. I love Christmas dearly and I think I want to demonstrate through the full piece that it means different things to different people at different points in their lives. Whilst it can be a time of family and of love and sharing it can also be a time of loneliness and grief not just for people loved and lost but also for Christmas’ past.

December 1st. The Optimist

Christmas lights twinkle

Full of festive hopefulness

Heartaches falter fast

December 2nd. The Sage

Shadows and sorrows

Embers echo-Christmas past

Silent separation

December 3rd. The Giver

Secret Santa gifts

Friendly fun festivities

Given from my heart