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 .
Glasson dock steeped in sunshine, the echo of the empty space that was the Babagee. Barges and boats and banter of family gatherings shimmers across the water beyond the broken hulls. The old stones of the lockgate still holds the memory of your footsteps.
Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for the Quadrille with d’Verse hosted by Grace tonight, Still is the prompt and it is on there somewhere. The image is from Wikimedia and is of the derelict Babagee before it was demolished.
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…
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.
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.
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
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
(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:
Pre-empted vision
And what stands between us
Is only time and space.
Meaningless when you consider the vacuum
That we have already crossed.
Alison Jean Hankinson
We were asked to use visual prompts to be inspired- the idea of new beginnings, this particular image spoke volumes to me- as we are just about to embark on a new journey and leave behind our precious daughter Ellen. We will be worlds apart but I believe that love, all love-especially a mother’s love can span the abyss of any darkness, cross any void and penetrates the cavern of eternity. ( The same Ellen as in Ellen has a fever., but she was only 18 months old then and now she is 17…)
Image-New beginnings at the ends of the earth- by- Michaela Sagatova, see web link below:
This is for “beginnings” at d’Verse Poetics, hosted by Mish
One small second
separates my life from my death
The surgeon stitches
focused only on his task
to save the life that falters here.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
d’Verse Poetics It’s All in the timing.
It’s all in the timing!
Going out to dinner
Romantic you and me
I forgot my wallet
Hurry let us flee.
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.
Hues of Hankinson 