d’verse – Page 5 – Hues of Hankinson

Shifting sands

It has been a complex business. I had thought that coming home would have some kind of natural simplicity implicit in its processes. After all we weren’t trying to migrate to new pastures we were simply returning home after an extended spell overseas…11 years in NZ. I hadn’t expected it to be smooth, there were going to be hurdles and obstacles but I had expected it to have some kind of “this is your home” ring to it. I think the shifting sands of Morecambe best sums it up. Things were the same but somehow different. Faces were familiar but somehow not recognisable. In our absence, the shifting sands had changed the landscape.

In spite of this there was an absolute joy in recognising and reconnecting with familiar buildings and walking in the ghostly footsteps left from our previous wanderings and the feeling of warmth and belonging were rekindled by the crisp winter evening air, the ghostly morning mists and the memory of plants and flowers long forgotten in childhood.

Pussy willow tree
In February drizzle
Catkins caress spring

Today for Haibun Monday we were asked to reflect on the best things of life being for free and the catkins this Sunday did it for me. Long forgotten childhood treasure.

#d’Verse

On the edge.

October gold rolled down across the valley

Set fire to the moorland putrefied the summer roses

Cut the Lifeline.

I somnambulist walked the moors, saw the hues

Tasted the mists, breathed the rancid air- embraced it in my lungs

I welcomed the ritual of the seasons, I had no fear of death

Death is nothing to be afraid of my friend, see it not as the end, merely as the beginning.

Strange voices whispering through the boughs of an ash-dead spruce

Had October gold severed my lifeline.

Yea though I walk- first it was a voice whistled on the wind

And the valley of death come unto me

the voice strengthened until it became a choir of heavenly angels

Fear not thy destiny-lay down the misted shroud that marks the path to the golden sepulchre.

Stop the voices I cried in terror

Stop the voices! Stop the Voices

I am too young to die

I have no staff to guide me through this cavern of darkness.

I shall not succumb to my fate- Give back to me

The light of life.

The hands that first betrayed me-

The human hands that cut the cord at birth

The hands reached out to embrace me.

I clung to the naked flesh and was received.

The breeze softened for a moment

The hypnotic trance was broken

October passed swiftly over the valley

And my destiny was fulfilled.

Alison Jean Hankinson

Image from Wikimedia- Title: Moorland above Attadale With Lochcarron across the loch, left. By Toby Speight

http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/608

For d’Verse (d’Verse expressionism ) meeting the bar an attempt at expressionism? Bjorn stated “The simplest and most effective way to define expressionism is that you present the world in a totally subjective perspective. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.”

So I have revisited something I wrote many years ago and attempted to do this.

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

Childhood Haunt.

The promenade bathed in winter sunshine,

Seagulls, chips and gravy, Blackpool rock

Then the Winter Gardens in all her splendour

bringing memories and echoes of a bygone era.

Reminiscing on a lifetime of cherished holidays

Whispers of childhood wishes and ghosts of summers past.

Alison Jean Hankinson

The challenge for tonight’s quadrille was Ghost. Today we revisited many ghosts as we took a road trip to Blackpool a place that will always hold a special place in my heart.

d’Verse quadrille #26

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

Heversham Head

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Burnished brambles soft

underfoot on winter hike

brisk I catch my breath.

Returning to England after eleven years in New Zealand and finding the immediate transition from summer soaring heat to winter chill more than a little breathtaking the temptation to hibernate has been more than very real, so it was with some trepidation and a whole lot of zealous determination that made me venture forth on Sunday to conquer Heversham Head post Sunday roast in Sunday best with hiking boots. I managed to avoid face-plant in mud..and was rewarded with landscapes beyond imagination.

Alison Jean Hankinson.

This is for Haibun Monday with d’Verse in response to the challenge and guidance provided by Bjorn. The image (my own) was taken following a brisk walk up Heversham Head on Sunday afternoon and is from the descent at Fluster Gap. It was rather chilly and bracing.

#d’Verse haibun Monday

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 Road to Wollengong

Comradeship a sculpture

in memory of Michael Dwyer

on the road to Wollengong

A tribute to an extraordinary man

with compassion and a care of others

With whispers of lives past

Hopes and voices of futures yet to be dreamed

amidst a sunny seascape

Alison Jean Hankinson

For d’Verse Quadrille #24

d’Verse quadrille #24

Sculpture Comradeship by Didier Balez

This tells you a little about the life of the man the sculpture commemorates:

Blog-honour of Michael Dwyer

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

Childhood remembered

Childhood memory haibun for d’Verse- Haibun monday #28

Joanne and Alyson Abel had a goat. It lived on a messy piece of land adjoining their house which was probably actually their garden. Our garden was similar- a messy piece of land over a footbridge and formed part of a field. It never got mowed it wasn’t that kind of grass. I caught endless fish in a bucket using old stockings and coathangers and always put them back.

I lived and played outdoors in the summer and I don’t remember the rain, I borrowed other people’s distant sheds and turned them into “ganghuts” or dens in Doubledeckers style. I would track the rivers back to streams and back to source and wash stones in the summer sun. I ate gooseberries from the bushes near the Goyt (not it’s real name) which was a dammed swimming hole behind the school which all the children were forbidden to use- but we all did and no-one died, floating in inner tubes late into the day until we heard the din of the mothers cooking dinner and shouting for their off-spring.

Summer glow in heart

Friendships echo through the blue

Childhood re-kindled.

Images

Water School from the fields

Isle of Man Mill. Courtesy of Wikimedia- Photo by Robert Wade 2011. (My mum worked there as a seamstress)

Isle of Man Mill