Month: September 2019

IF ONLY

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I was concerned about posting this poem, but it is a reflection of how a person can feel when their body is totally dependent but their mind is still very active.  The desire to really LIVE is still there, but the ability to do so is not.  Here is the poem:

 

If only
I could be
What you want me to be
If only
i could cry
If only
I could tell you how I really feel
If only
My pain was acceptable to you
If only
I didn’t have to
Keep up the false front
If only I could say
“I want to die
Because I cannot live
But really
I want to live
But my body will not let me”
My mind is still there
Alert as ever
I am aware
Aware of everything
I want to taste of everything
To LIVE
But all that I can taste
Is the bitter pill
Of pain
And dependency

LANGUAGE OF HEARTS

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I met Him while down on the ground,
We both spoke the same language,
It was the language of hearts,
Not the language of power
Where hearts have turned to stone,
It was a language of tears.

The world despises tears,
As it pushes us onto the ground,
But we are not like stone,
Pain and hurt forms our language,
Tears form their own power,
The power to heal hearts.

We all have sacred hearts,
When we can cry tears,
Not from a position of power,
But from way down on the ground,
It’s a universal language,
When our hearts are not stone.

It’s easier to be stone,
Nothing touches our hearts,
We speak our own language,
We cannot cry tears,
Unless we fall on the ground,
Losing all our power.

It’s frightening to lose our power,
To be kicked, like a stone,
Pushed further r onto the ground,
By many hardened hearts,
Come, cry with us your tears,
Come and speak our language.

For you it is a new language,
Now you’ve given up your power,
You may be frightened by your tears,
Now you haven’t a heart of stone,
Together, let’s join our hearts,
As we both lie on the ground.

When we’re on the ground we lose our power,
Our language can’t come from hearts of stone,
But from hearts empowered by tears.

#FOWC. Wistful. Snowy Memories

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FOWC with Fandango — Wistful

“This house is a bloody mess,” Shelley yelled at Mick.

Mick was in his usual position, sitting in his recliner chair with his laptop on his knees, engrossed in his various forums. Beside him were plates that he had had various snacks on, and mugs that had once had coffee in. Shelley was furious. There was so much clutter in the rather small room that Mick had adopted as his own, that she could not even walk through it safely to remove the offending objects.

In her fury, Shelley retired to the bedroom where she started going through the drawers underneath the television set. She had forgotten that the photographs were there. As she looked at them she felt exceedingly WISTFUL. There was their old house. Small but beautiful. Well, in her eyes anyway. At the end of the road were trees and behind them the wonderful hills that she used to climb with her dogs. Though you couldn’t see them, there were lakes as well.

In her mind, Shelley went back to that place, remembering all her escapades there. She had known some real characters. Life had never been dull. In particular she remembered the snow. You could go out in the afternoon, travel just a few miles, then return to the small town where they lived, to find yourself cut off by the snow. Then, you had to park your car and walk the rest of the way home. Shelley shivered as she remembered, suddenly not feeling so wistful. Outside, the sun was shining. She made her way out into the garden, and thanked her lucky stars that she no longer had to face the rugiurs of winter in that place. She would never be cut off again.

TODAY I WILL WEAR PURPLE

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Blackbirds are black
Violets are purple
I will wear purple today
Edged with black
Singing a melancholy song
On my darkened path
Pausing by the wooden seat
Where once you showed me bright flowers
Wild with delight
Waving in the breeze
And now you wave goodbye
With the same wildness
Mad as ever you were
But brightly coloured
Yes,
Today I will wear purple like the violet
Giving fragrance by the wooden seat
Edged with black
Fragrance of death

 

WOODEN GATES

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The wooden gates were closed today
Keeping me from the beyond
Many dragons I had to slay
Demons assailed me on the way
Many there were who would naysay
Nothing could break ole death’s strong bond
The wooden gates were closed today
Keeping me from the beyond

A DEATH

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The last time I saw her she was a little, wizened old lady. I say “saw” but I am blind, so I didn’t see her properly. I couldn’t make out the features on her face, or her hair. But I could just see that she was huddled inside a sort of pale lemony coloured blanket. She was so tiny, with her head just poking out of the blanket. She wasn’t in a bed, but in a recliner chair in her living room. I had had problems getting in because the room was so cluttered and I am blind. She always was cluttered, with just the narrowest of gaps in the hall to squeeze through into the living room. There, against the wall was her beloved shopping trolley. We always said we would bury that with her, she was so attached to it. But there is to be no funeral. It is how she wanted it.

I made my way to the settee with difficulty, falling over her sticks and one or two other things as well. Being blind, I did not see the commode right in front of her chair, and right in front of the coffee table near to the settee where I was going to sit. I knocked it. Fortunately, it and its contents did not fall over!

I sat on the settee “looking” at her, wishing I could see her face.

“I can’t talk,” she said.

“It’s O.K. You don’t have to,” I said. But she made anjolly good fist of it anyway. She found the breath from somewhere.

I didn’t know whether I was meant to be there. She never liked me. Not since I upset her world by coming into it. But she was my mother. And you always feel something for your mother– don’t you?

Strangely, I loved her. Despite all the abuse that she meted out to me. People say,

“How could you?”

But I did. And I loved her more than ever now. Now that she was so frail and fragile. Although I could not see properly, I could just tell that if you squeezed her she just might break. I longed to go over to her and comfort her. Hold her hand. Maybe even put my arms around her, gently so she didn’t break.

I don’t know what we talked about. I think she mainly talked about her recent stay in hospital when she “died” twice. According to the Consultant the next 48 hours would be critical. He asked if she should be resuscitated or not. My heart froze. This was IT. Only it wasn’t. Not then, anyway. She pulled through. Advanced sepsis it was. Plus her kidneys were only working at 15%. And her heart was not working properly either. She was dehydrated, and after they had brought her back to life again they put her on a drip. Injected fluids into her for a week. Plus antibiotics.

But she was invincible. And now, there she was, sat in the chair. My love for her burned inside of me. But I could not show it. She hated to be loved. Love was not what she wanted. Admiration maybe. And worship. And fear. But not love. Not so long ago, just before she was rushed into hospital, I had been to see her. She had actually seen me coming, from her chair, and had got up to come and open the front door. She was so tiny, even then. She could hardly breathe. Emphysema. The noise of her breathing chilled me inside. I put my arms around here there, at the door, and cried. She just stood there, unmoved. No response at all. She didn’t like love. But I’ve already said that haven’t I!

Anyway, she’s gone. Out of my life now. I grieve. And I love her still. But she never loved me.

THE GREAT LIE

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When it’s broke
Let it go
Don’t be deceived
By the colourful show
Going back is destruction for sure
Life needs to mend
Don’t go back for more
There may be a hole
As big as the earth
Don’t fill it with rubbish
That’s not what you’re worth
There’s one great big Lie
That once you believed
That their love was for you
But don’t be deceived

LAST NIGHT I SANG

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Last night I sang my own song
Unique with steely tones
A song that lived in me for long
Years amongst driest bones

I sang it loud there was no wrong
The notes were perfect ‘midst your groans
Never to you did I belong
Last night I sang

I thought I heard a clanging gong
The drama played through heaven’s moans
But empty was the play among
Rusted steel and empty thrones
Love is all that can be strong
Last night I sang

MEMORIES

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I held in my hands today my past,
And now it becomes the present,
Re-created before my eyes,
Living deep in my heart,
Always these things were in my memory,
But now the memory has changed.

Is it really me who has changed,
My present lives in my past,
It is so much more than a memory,
Transforming me in the present,
Things that live in my heart
Will always glow in my eyes

Blind now are my eyes,
How much my life has changed,
But love still lives in my heart,
The good that I knew in my past,
Comes to life in the present,
Love is much more than memory.

Sometimes I rely on memory,
A substitute for my eyes,
Darkness fills my present,
For now the sky has changed,
Beauty lived in the past,
But now it lives in my heart

One day your love warmed my heart,
I see you now in my memory,
There were good days in the past,
I saw myself in your eyes,
The colours in my life changed,
I see rainbows in the present

How beautiful is the present,
There’s dancing in my heart,
The song has never changed,
It lies deep within my memory,
Redundant now are my eyes,
My joy was born in the past

GOING TO THE END

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Going to the end
Sometimes singing
Sometimes crying
Knowing it will soon be over
Watching the dying leaves
Showing their bright colours
Before dying
I pray that I
Like them
Will show bright colours
Adorning the paths
That others tread
Though in darkness
Spreading light
Though in sorrow
Cultivating joy

RDP SATURDAY – Autumn

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https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/83440335/posts/2421356788

For a few years now I have dreaded the coming of autumn. A black depression would come over me, and I would find it hard to shake off the fear that engulfed me. The dwindling of the light and the growing darkness seemed to suffocate me. It felt a but like the end if the world to me. Cut off from society for long hours in this terrible darkness. And the memory – yes, the memory – of chemo.

I started chemo in the month if September. That autumn was dead to me. I would be taken from the house, where I was bedfast, early in the morning, and not return home until after it was dark. The darkness stifled me. Each day was gruelling. I just wanted this time to be over, and to be able to welcome the Spring, when my chemo would be over.

Now, six years later, I have learned to love the autumn again, and to re-live happier autumn days, and now once again I see colour. Glorious colour (though only in my mind’s eye, for the chemo left me blind) and hear the crunching of the leaves beneath my feet (though I can no longer walk either so this just takes place in my mind). Those dark days have now left me, and I feel a thrill, just as I used to before cancer, at the onset of autumn.

LOOKING FOR A HERMITAGE!

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It is hard to believe that it is almost the end of September! It seems only yesterday that we were in that really hot weather. But I am looking for a hermitage! Well actually I have been looking for one for quite a while, but now I am looking in earnest. Throughout the sumner I have been eyeing up bus shelters and those old red telephone boxes, but I thought someone might complain if I took over one of those. Though some of them are full anyway – of scarecrow! There aren’t any caves around here, or I might have nicked one and set up home in it.

However, we saw a lodge on a mobile home site recently, that was for sale. Today, we went to look at it. The site was absolutely amazing, with trees and bird feeders all round. It was just beautiful – as was the lodge itself. Small, but beautiful. And……..it was just outside Blyton, my home village that I have been longing to move back to.

We were told that there are hundreds of goldfinches there, singing their heads off in the mornings. It really was the most beautiful hermitage.

We have been very very tempted by it, but sadly, , the owner of the site was rather overpowering and we felt he could turn out to be rather intrusive and policeman like. So we gave it a miss.

However………if anyone knows of any good hermitages in North Lincolnshire, please let us know!

TAKE, EAT

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TODAY MOST OF THE BERRIES ON THE ROWAN  TREE  HAD ALREADY BEEN EATEN BY THE BIRDS!!!

 

Today
They were all gone
Berries plump with new life
Already their life had journeyed
Plucked from
Green tree
As the summer sun died in skies
Now grey, winter waiting
Offstage, while birds
Feast, store…….

Plumpness
To see them through
Dark days and raging storms
We too have a banquet prepared
Take, eat,
Savour
The delights there for the taking
Nourish
Your soul
And live through the darkest of nights
Sustained by Love offered
Freely, just take
And live

JUDGEMENTS MAY COME

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Judgements may come but beware
The boxes your head might declare
In defining another you box yourself in
Thinking that you are the one to win

Who is to say what’s right and what’s fair
Of truth so many may have a share
Beware clanging words just making a din
Judgements may come

Defining another with hardly a care
Is really a damaging painful affair
No one can live in another’s skin
Or say what may be that person’s sin
Human fragility lays a soul bare
Judgements may come

BLUE POPPY

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I don’t remember which I saw first,
Your centre, bright yellow, open to the world,
Or your petals, wafer thin, deep in blue,
But as I looked I saw that you
Stood erect and proud,
Opening your heart to the world,
Offering pure yellow,
The sky darkened as I stood,
And a chill filled the air and my heart,
You closed your petals,
Covering over the bright yellow,
Now you were sad,
Now you needed to protect yourself against every blow,
I saw, as I watched, how easily you could be crushed,
Yet how strong you were,
In that moment
You offered yourself
And your truth to me

LOSS AND SURVIVAL

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Loss is such a hard thing to face, be it loss of any kind.  For me, it has always been the birds that have kept me going.  They speak so much to me.

As some of you know, I have experienced a lot of bad physical pain lately, and that problem continues.  But in the mornings after a night of pain, I have heard, at around 5 a.m, what sounds like a song thrush.  My husband has seen one in our willow tree lately, so maybe it is that one singing.  When I hear it, come the dawn, I am able to concentrate on that, through my pain.
This last week my pain has not been only physical, but has been deep deep emotional pain, from my family.  Things that are very difficult to tell here, but the pain was gut wrenching.  So gut wrenching that I almost felt I could not survive.  The sheer sense of loss was horrendous, as I lost the whole of my family in one fell swoop.  Not physical death, but as good as.

How does one bear such terrible loss?  I don’t know.  But I still hear the song thrush, and the  doves and pigeons.  I truly believe that without those things I would not have survived.

THE CALLING OF MY NAME

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I heard tonight the calling of my name
Upon the wind when tears did sting my eyes
In soft and gentle tones caressing all my pain

I listened hard,and there it was again
Blowing through the trees a whispered sigh
I heard tonight the calling of my name

Here in this place You made Your purpose plain
I answered You not even asking why
In soft and gentle tones caressing all my pain

I’d waited long to hear Love’s sweet refrain
My grief so strong I thought that I would die
I heard tonight the calling of my name

Sweet peace embraced my soul and I did gain
Love’s rich reward eternity came nigh
I heard tonight the calling of my name
In soft and gentle tones caressing all my pain

THEFT

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THIS IS HOW A MALIGNANt NARCISSIST WORKS  (I am ok.  It is not personal)

 

There were no boundaries for you,
Not even to my soul,
You stole it and made it yours,
And fed upon its lifeblood,
You climbed upon it,
Entered in,
Took from it all you could,
And now I’m dead and you will live,
Thriving on stolen goods.

CRADLED

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Cradled in the arms of the night
The child assaulted, beaten, torn
She rests from the arrows of the fight

Vulnerable, this her plight
Waiting fot the coming dawn
Cradled in the arms of the night

Many cannot bear the sight
Of pain in the one who thus was borne
She rests from the arrows of the fight

Everyone talks about the light
Not seeing the pain within her form
Cradled in the arms of the night

None can understand the fright
Of the one that is lying so forlorn
She rests from the arrows of the fight

Alone this being feels the might
Of evil’s grip, in the gathering storm
Cradled in the arms of the night
She rests from the arrows of the fight

INNER VOICE

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Inner
Voice do you speak
In dulcid tones like dew
Sitting in the early morning
On leaves
Branches
Or do you speak in blaming tones
Telling me of my sin
How do I know
The truth

For long
Siren voices
Sang to me in sweetness
Telling me that they loved me true
Wielding
Secret
Knives ready to stab my soft heart
But now I hear silent
Voices calling
In love

The dew
Is gentle now
Just like the inner voice
Telling me that all is well now
And ever shall be well for love
Shall rule
My heart
Not fear or blame but acceptance
Of all
I am

And now I rest caressed by dew
Refreshed made whole again
Speak, inner voice
The truth

HAPPY AUTUMN MEMORY – Skelwith Bridge

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Memories can be very sweet things, though they can be bittersweet too, for they can make you sad also.

As we approach autumn one beautiful memory keeps coming back to me. Why this particular one I don’t know. But it is filling me with joy and happiness as I think of it – though a huge part of me wants to just get in the car and go to that place right now! It is not possible, but I can imagine it.

The place is Skelwith Bridge in the Lake District. Some of you might know it.

I have written before about some of our escapades in the Lake District, and I am sure I could think of plenty more to write about!

I was introduced to the Lake District by my husband, who had camped there a few times as a Scout, and then a Venture Scout. He was totally besotted with it, and what better thing to do when you are besotted with something than take the person you are besotted with, to that place as well? The only problem was that the besotted person was not exactly besotted with the idea of sleeping under canvas on the cold hard ground (air beds did not exactly have a very good press at that time) in the middle of a field!

However, I was eventually cajoled into it with descriptions of the feeling you get when there is only a piece of canvas between you and the stars. Apparently it would be very romantic, and I would be wowed out of my mind!

And so began our camping career. In the Lake District, I WAS wowed, and I never looked back. I couldn’t get enough of it, and as soon as we got home from one camping trip I was planning the next one! I would be reading “Wainwright” avidly, and deciding which hill or mountain to climb next and which route to take. I loved reading books about the Lake District and other people’s walking trips there. I would imagine going on those self same walks myself. I could feel the air as I read, smell the smells, see the hills and mountains.

Never could I have imagined that I would ever become such a besotted camper! Yet we camped in ALL weathers. One time we camped for three weeks when it rained solidly all the time, the sun finally deciding to come out on the very last day. We knew the mountains were there, but we could not see them, for they were blotted out by the rain. And it was actually almost wetter inside the tent than outside it! The condensation soaked absolutely everything, including our bedding! But we didn’t give up! We kept hoping for a better day.

Another time we camped in snow, such that even the gas bottle froze! At that point we DID give up, and head off home. We were in Borrowdale at the time, camping at a very basic camp site yet so beautiful. By the time we got home the news was that where we were was completely blocked off by snow. We had made the right decision!

But autumn was our favourite time. Each autumn we would go there to see the glorious autumn colours. There is NOTHING like the Lake District in autumn. Well, there might be, but we have not experienced it! And, the memory that my mind now keeps going back to is Skelwith Bridge. Some of you may know it. I don’t know what it was about that place, but we returned there again and again. Each day we would end our activities by going to Skelwith Bridge, and walking our rough collie dogs there. The leaves would be the thickest carpet you could ever imagine beneath our feet, and the dogs would leap and play merrily, so happy, and become orange collies, completely covered in leaves. Beside us the water would be gurgling and burbling, and we felt we were in heaven. There was always a crispness in the air, and it almost took our breath away. I have never been one for hot weather, and this was just perfect for me.

Just lately, as autumn approaches, I have gone back there again and again in my mind. It is as if I am there again. A healthy thirty something, and not a cancer ridden decrepit older person. Oh how I wish!

But life is as it is. It creeps up on all of us.

Maybe one day, just one day, we might find a way of going back, even though I would not be able to see it. That is my dearest wish.

Anyone want to give me a crogger! 😀