The sea knows
loss, its ancient suspirations inhale
terra firma grit by grit
The sea knows
abyssal hobgoblins well up
from their deep-rutted trenches
even on sunshiny days
they manifest their stinking grotesquery
on sabulous shores
The sea knows
violence
never sleeps
is always sighing
Like you the sea knows
some things
are worse
than dying.
© 2018 Karen Price
On my return to blogging in April, I was deeply saddened to discover that one of my favourite poets of all time had died in December 2016.
Cynthia Jobin was a blogging friend and a masterful poet, whose art was superior in form, structure and rhythm. But what I love most in her work is the way she infused it with mischief. Her intellect and humour shines through her poetry.
Sadly, Cynthia’s WordPress site is no longer up. I hope her unpublished work will not be lost.
I will miss you, Little Old Lady. You were a beautiful light in the darkness.
Cynthia Jobin, over at littleoldladywho.net, is one of the finest poets I’ve read. Her poems are exquisitely crafted, evocative, and at times wonderfully mischievous.
A recent poem of Cynthia’s – The Palpable Obscure – is a spine-tingling evocation of the ongoing mystification endured by those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one. In it, she writes:
“Once a day, at least, I stop to wonder
where you are.”
Is this puzzlement not at the very heart of the Human Condition?
If my father were alive today, the 27th November 2015, he would be 83. I started this blog mainly as a response to the lingering grief I felt about his dying. And this poem, which I first posted on the 27th November 2010, is about the day he died.
Like Cynthia, I still wonder…
Eternal Mysteries ( a repost)
With the ring back on your finger
you sighed and slipped away
but forever it’s a mystery
where you went that day
Did you see them watching you
and whispering in your ear?
When you took your final journey,
did you know that they were there?
Did you sense that we were not?
No-one can ever know,
yet child-like we still ask ourselves –
that day, where did you go?
————————–
End of a Dream
C-sharp minor
plays through the eaves
of this house
wind-cold emptiness, the ambient noise
of destruction
where laughter once lived.
Shoji, last opened
to plum-blossom whispers
now lachrymose with silent
half-life
a bird singing
for no-one.
xxx
3/11 – The Japan Times
Things My Father Told Me
After the blast, there was no sound;
people’s shadows crushed into the ground;
the dark abyss of humanity’s soul
revealed by an act – unspeakable. Foul.
For more entries to this week’s WPC, see The Daily Post.
There was a time, when I was much younger, when I was afraid to fly.
No more.
I’m not sure why the change, but since a few decades ago, no longer do I sit white-knuckled in the belly of those big mechanical birds as they defy gravity. Perhaps it’s something to do with my attitude to death. I’m no nihilist, but I don’t necessarily view death in a negative light. My death, that is. The death of others is quite another matter.
The morning after MH17 was shot down, I flew long-haul. I thought not of plane crashes but of the shocking consequences of war, its terrible futility and the immense trauma and devastation that it invariably causes to human lives; of those people left behind, forever suffering the reality of the obliteration of their loved ones. And how this suffering so often leads to an ongoing cycle of violence.
In my hotel room, on the BBC News channel, night after night, images of the crash site alternated with sickening images of Gaza. How to make sense of the human that strolls casually amongst the mutilated dead, picking through aircraft wreckage and strewn personal belongings as if he were evaluating fruit at the local market. And of the human that bombs sleeping children as if crop-spraying pests. How do we get to this?
A week later, on my way to Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport for my flight home, my hosts, who insisted on accompanying me in the taxi to the airport, chatted with the taxi-driver in Vietnamese. I heard the word “Malaysia” and asked if they were talking about plane crashes. They were. And they expressed their alarm that there had been three in one week. I thanked them for their tact, and we all laughed.
Once boarded, I started reading The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, and thoughts of the taxi conversation were forgotten as the book caused me to reflect on how human memory and the subconscious mind work both for and against us in life: the need for revenge versus the need for peace; how we dehumanize “the other side” to make ourselves feel better about what we do and about humanity as a whole; and how memories play a role in our undoing.
Eventually I slept but was bedeviled by catastrophic dreams – we ditched in the South China Sea, a flotilla of boats waiting to rescue us; we made an emergency landing in a busy city street, the fuel-laden left wing barely missing an advertising bollard; I rescued long-dead loved ones from a burning wreckage in a field of sunflowers..
.. the subconscious mind doing its best to exert control over that over which we have little.
Despite our best efforts, accidents happen; death happens.
But war does not just happen; it is made by humans, the likes of you and me.
You’ve probably heard about elephants mourning their dead, but what about cockatoos?
I often pass this family of cockies on my way to work. They’re usually feeding on seeds on the verge, playfully whirling and wheeling, and creating general cacophonous havoc.
But yesterday, they were crowded around on the road; I drove back to see what they were up to: it was a heartbreaking scene.
They were very quiet except for a few plaintive squeaks and squawks.
One kept on nudging the lifeless form on the road.
I wonder if they feel grief.
For more entries to this week’s challenge, see The Daily Post.
Is the scent
of an ancestor’s skull kicked
down a bush runway –
an elephant remembers
bones and dust,
the echo of hyena
comedy nights, jaws
on buffalo bones
chalk and dust,
a tall silhouette beyond the runway –
a blind man – inhales the dusk
for ghost-lions
before crossing to light
the camp fire
blood and dust
in the dark, leopards
gaze at embers
of an ancient story
fate throws the bones,
a plane flies
into a hillside
flesh and blood,
bones and dust,
and creosote.
Image via http://www.sxc.hu
So many days
we are beyond bereft
at some ancient
god’s puzzled mumbles
beneath the night lamp,
his tremulous finger-fumbles
with jigsaw fragments
of our lives,
his fearful look of surprise
at the countless missing pieces
of his Master Plan,
unaware of the devil dog
chewing at his feet.
http://jmgoyder.com/2012/12/15/children/
http://nrhatch.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/an-unblossomed-bloom/
http://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/no-humour-today/
Don Ritchie, The Angel of The Gap, has passed away
Repost
Angel of The Gap
He looks out at the sparkling sea
and drinks his morning cup of tea
But there’s a shadow to his left,
the darkness of a soul distressed
He knows now he must move with haste
to stop a life from going to waste
“This time, this one, perhaps,” he thinks,
“maybe, I ‘ll pull back from the brink”
The Angel of The Gap, at dawn,
heads out once more across his lawn
to offer balm, a light to see
a way out from their misery,
to coax them not to end it all
and save them from that fatal fall
http://www.smh.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-1yoat
“Never be afraid to speak to those who you feel are in need.
Always remember the power of the simple smile, a helping hand, a listening ear and a kind word.”
Don Ritchie, OAM
To mark this
anniversary,
this man-made construct
Why?
To remind ourselves
of your light lost,
that we miss you?
Ten years on,
no reminder necessary
Image via http://www.sxc.hu
It’s what we are:
shocked to life
at maximum voltage,
rewired by experience
in negative anxiety
and positive joy,
a slow-leaking energy,
static in defeat
In short,
we complete the circuit
and are gone –
subatomic particles
in an ancient storm
Image via http://www.sxc.hu
I try to keep warm
in the memory of you
But within embered years
a cold truth lies
beneath aphoristic ashes –
“Time heals all wounds”,
“This too shall pass” –
Over my dead body, perhaps.
Photo by RIP - ©beeblu.wordpress.com
Above the clouds
the raven circles
below
the world turns
us down
to a fleeting kiss
of ground
in capricious wind’s riddle –
How to unstick gravity?
Pull up!
Pull up!
Maximum speed
unbraking hearts arrested
by clarity
a stark reality
in the whispering
of slow-motion minds –
Are we unstuck?
And the raven hovers
and the world turns
and fear takes flight
Why?
Do I not care or
like others before
deny it’s the end
of my world turning?
Then the raven flies south
on flouncing wind
to drown brown lands
And so
we land
on a world
turning
without end
As is
so often the case,
I took
the photograph
first, then
looked.
Saw the water
messaged fresh across his
name,
and I wondered then
if you were there
in the shade of the oaks
watching me
in distaste.
Young oaks, fresh-leafed
uniformed
in naive acorn pride
stand tall in single file
guardians in memoriam
of those who died
– in Time –
gnarled with salt of tears
whorled in winds of sorrow
and furrowed with fires of rage
young grow old
in a different
age
toward the light, away from fear
with deferential bow
to a Callery Pear
iniquity, depravity
crimes against humanity
conflagration, radiation,
man made this abomination
enormity, deformity,
war’s enduring legacy
experimentation, humiliation
who needs victim’s approbation?
cessation, condemnation?
war has no such aspiration
obliteration, extermination,
then,
our final destination
“In the dream,
she
got on the bus
and left, not
looking out the window,
you
crossed the street
and disappeared
into the crowd, never
looking back”
I
tried to erase
this, but
it’s grown
a monstrous
smudge
Autumn, we lay lines,
unfurling across alpine waters,
to flycatch a trout’s eye
Spring,
we are copper lizards
on rocks trailing
the flowered creases
of Crackenback
Autumns and summers,
we zigzag
to the summit,
always a marking of sorts –
birthdays, deaths, waiting out
open-heart surgery –
from afar
A lifetime of seasons
ago – before I left –
you said
the mountain came down
and swallowed lives,
wanted me to know
that bad things happen elsewhere
too
as if somehow that would make
me see,
stay…
Now, it’s winter –
we’re making virgin
tracks
in snow
when the eye
of a raven catches
mine,
a gelid reminder
of these invisible scars –
the ley lines
that connect this place
to your passing
was it the 500,000th
cigarette
that threw the switch,
sent
your light flickering?
i see you bathed in darkness,
no light, no air,
just the rasping
of short-circuitry
Was the timer on before
you were born?
i don’t know…
Maybe the 500,001st
was the nth
of vice,
lights-out for a pulse
If Leibniz were alive, i would
ask him,
but we wouldn’t
share a smoke
beeblu blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.