poems – Page 4 – Hues of Hankinson

New Year rises

It was a turbulent week just like the weather. We saw the wolf moon shining bright in the New Year sky and it brought tidal wrath to the coastline. There were forecast to be High tides and they arrived at the same time as storm Eleanor. Around Cumbria and the Furness peninsula storm surge brought debris and made some of the roads impassable.

As we return to work and tried to re-establish the pre-Christmas normalcy in patterns of life and leisure we know with certainty that we are walking forwards into a turbulent future likely to match the week and mayhem of the wonderful wolf moon. Two supermoons this month, I wonder what the next one will bring.

High tide storm rising

Whispers of windswept dreams fly

New Year, wolf moon chides.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse haibun monday.

Whilst I am here this is the wonderful d’Verse anthology that has recently been published and is available to purchase on Amazon.

Chiaroscuro – Darkness and Light, dVerse Anthology, 2017.

This is a collaborative project between the dVerse poets and dVerse team. Over 100 poets from around the world contributed to this anthology. We selected not only the best poems but also those poems that take the reader through a journey from the darkest places to the brightest. From the deepest sorrow into happiness and love. From the darkest streets to woods in spring. Come enjoy our journey.

Now available at Amazon North America and Amazon Europe.

Simple things

It was a simple gesture

…………………. As the sun rose the seedling grew

Nosed its way nonchalantly through the weeds.

……………. Caressed by early summer sun,

Nourished by November rains.

With all its might it pushed through the merriment

Of opportunistic pumpkins and weary watermelons

And reached high for the sky,

………. One leaf at a time,

stretching sighing saluting the sun.

It was a simple gesture

…………. It spoke of unfaltering love.

………………………… The sunflower smiled

………… And reminded me that life is enriched

By the simple things.

©Alison Jean Hankinson.

This is for d’Verse meeting at the bar, where we were asked to consider silence. This sunflower was in my garden in NZ, planted as a seed by my husband to cheer me up in Spring/summer 2014 when I was unable to tend the garden following major surgery. I could see it from the bedroom window.

Crunch

It was pride,

I wore my heart on my sleeve,

shared my hopes and dreams.

You brushed them aside

they scattered like confetti

and shattered as you trod on them.

One by one, I heard them break

under the crunch

of your negative footfalls.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse quadrille where we were given the word Crunch.

I had a difficult few weeks and took a bit of a battering in a very bizarre job interview. I did speak up for myself(and cried on the way home…) but I do worry that somewhere in this current climate we seem to have lost our values, our compassion and sense of humanity.

The photos are intended to be the opposite- the restoration of the spirit and soul.

Someone had to do it…. Take 5.

Brubeck Blues

Sax to the beat

wilful wistful wily

Drifting down the street

Repeat.

Piano vamping

Blues scaling

E flat minor Brubeck stomping

Five four time, once more

Five four time.

For d’Verse….TAKE 5…..

Image Wikimedia

Halloween

Puffball potions

Toadstool faeries

Ravens guard the graveyard.

Harbingers of untimely death

Old Witch

Wizened

Haglike

Demdike

Whispers on the wind

Caustic curses

Widow wastes away.

All Hallows Eve

Wakening the spirits of the dead

Old souls rising.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This time of year is a time of remembering youth and stories of old as we head towards Halloween and Bonfire night. This is for d’Verse where we were asked to focus on one thing that this time of year represents to us.

Emily is still in hospital so it is a short visit and I shall do all my reading later in the week, so bear with me.

History- Old Demdike was one of the Pendle Witches she died in custody in 1612 at Lancaster Castle. The other 10 were later hanged. It was a time of great superstition and James 1 was greatly concerned with treason following the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. At Halloween when we were young it was traditional to walk up Pendle Hill in memory of the witches.

In peaceful sleep.

With patient love he watched her as she slept

She who had held him close to breast as child

Deep within his chest his aching heart wept.

Whilst she appeared contented in her dreams and smiled

As though her fears and troubles were finally reconciled

For soon the relentless punishing pain would be gone

Yet in his memory-this moment of love would linger on.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse where we were asked to write in Chaucerian stanza. First time I have done this.

The final slumber….

I am not sure I got the meter right.

The image is my Grandmother and her eldest son Frank.

Killing me softly with her song…memories of mum.

Sunshine over Shap

Last embers of summer smoulder

Leaves linger lazily

Brittle against the breeze.

Once upon an autumn sunrise

We hung our lives out on the washing line

Pegged our pain and memories side by side

Peeled back the layers revealed the years of anguish

Aired the past and put it out to dry.

The gentle winds of autumn swept away the tears we shed

We both knew who we were and we collected all our worth

And meaning in one basket of crumpled washing.

We folded and sorted it and stuffed it back in the drawers

So no-one else could see.

Brittle against the breeze

Leaves linger lazily.

Last embers of summer smoulder

Sunshine over Shap.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is my contribution to Open Link Night at d’Verse.

I change not…

As a leopard cannot change it’s spots

I cannot change, no matter what

I am that I am and was

I am a sea of hope

Wave of salvation

Breathing new life

To your dreams

Me.

Alison’s response to Vivian’s opening of the nonet.

This was for Jilly’s challenge- Casting Bricks to Attract Jade.

The first part of the nonet was from Vivian and this is my completion…

Whispers of madness.

White walls, empty Halls

Echoes of silenced pain and lives put on eternal hold.

Unmarried asylum seekers in days of old

Imprisoned indefinitely to save their souls.

Families wanted them hidden away

To arrest society’s decay

Often damaged not decadent

Guilty of innocence rather than indolence.

Incest often lead to childbirth and illegitimacy

They were declared insane because of forced intimacy

What madness masqueraded within

When authority had power and victims powerless remained?

I am putting this into d’Verse open link night. I wrote it last year when I reflected on how things had changed so much in terms of attitudes to mental health. These women were often asylum seekers and deserved better than they got.

I have been working this year with families and carers in crisis, who have a loved one experiencing psychosis and Bi-polar.

Image- Woman In A Psychiatric Ward With Two Dolls. Stock Photo, Picture in public domain.

The Four Last Songs. Music and Chaos.

A cadenza shrill and sharp

Pizzicato from the harp

Andante and legato

Swan song from the cello.

Clefs, chords and counterpoint

From fiery exposition to development

Magnificent muti-tonal orchestration

Tumultuous recapitulation.

Finally four last songs

Lamenting loss, lyrical and forlorn

Musical maverick Strauss is gone

The garden mourns.

This is for Real Toads, where the theme is Chaos. Bjorn talked of physics and mathematics, and it brought me round to music. Music is very mathematical and can be very precise and beauty and precision is borne from weaving together many delicate strands. It reminded me of two great twentieth-century composers who pushed music to its chaotic and mathematical limits. Alban Berg and Richard Strauss. Alban Berg’s Violin concerto is a masterpiece of mathematical precision, but I opted for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. The final line is from these and is the first line of September, written by Hermann Hesse.

These are my late September images…