For everything there is a season.

 

It's been a while since I posted on here and, even then, I was mostly posting drafts of poems, most of which have gone through several rewrites since. Plus, hardly anyone reads this blog so, mostly, I don't bother.

What's new since I last wrote about my life or experiences? I have retired, had two hip replacements and both my parents have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which is heartbreaking and occasionally hilarious but mostly it's depressing watching their faculties deteriorate.  Both are in homes. My son has changed careers and is enjoying being a classroom assistant. My husband enjoys looking after the garden and suffers with various aches and pains but still climbs the ladder to hang the bird seeds and coconuts high up in the elder tree.    I knit easy things in pleasing colours and do my best to do some exercise. Nothing very exciting. Just an ordinary life. I go to a writing group now.  Sometimes, I perform my poetry at open mike events.

Autumn is underway and the nights are getting shorter. I feel the effect of this as an inward motion, a slowing, a darkening as I go through the annual inner adjustment to prepare for winter both within my body and inside my head.  It’s not that I dislike autumn and winter; I simply undergo a change and resistance is futile but it's a bit of a proccess all the same. 

In memory of summer, this is a haiku, shaped from some lines I wrote in  June, when I was feeling cherished by the sun, despite hobbling around on crutches at that time.

 

Elder

After the shower

leaves shine. A thousand diamonds

under a warm sun.

 

Perhaps I should write a haiku about October? October with its weakening sun, decaying leaves and rotting matter, allowing the natural world around me to act as a part metaphor for my parents' minds, safe in the knowledge that the summer is scheduled to return, unlike their reason. As the writer/s of Ecclesiastes knew, the earth keeps turning and renewing itself, or it should do if we manage not cock it all up. 

There are lots of archaeological programmes on TV, which posit the question of why ancient people erected stone circles and other monuments.  Maybe it’s enough to recognise that they were completely wedded to the seasons, in awe of time, of life and death, understood the inevitability of aging and had a need for blessings. In often harsh reality of life, they wanted to acknowledge and celebrate ‘something’ before they had reachd the stage of developing the  language skills to write and read ‘holy’, wise or uplifting texts.   Not so different from us really.  

Winter Feeding Station

Every day the goldfinch squabble around

the niger seed in the metal feeder. 

Flashes of red and gold tumbling through air; 

not so much a charm as a bickering..

Plainer sparrows, males sporting neat black caps, 

perch on bare branches before swooping in.

Their tastes being  much less specialised, 

sunflower and nuts will serve well enough.

Winter guests include bramblings and redpolls

but the robin is never far away,

while starlings dressed in snow spotted suits

gather on the boughs of the Elder tree.

The greater spotted woodpecker not yet seen,

still deterred by the pesky squirrels

Joan Bailey

Advent

 Twenty-four days to Christmas, twenty until the shortest day.  Time to light an internal flame, prepare for Christmas, burn a blend of orange, clove bud and cinnamon oils - and frankensence, unblended - and try to fight the urge to sleep forever due to diminished light and arthritis.

In November, I attended a local poetry event 'Write Out Loud'  where we were challenged to write a performance poem on a seasonal theme.  This is my effort. 

Advent Homily 

Mark the days of Advent now the year is drawing in.

Wrap a blanket round your shoulders as the shortening days grow dim.

Take a walk towards the farm house at half-past three

and watch the distant sun set through the branches of the trees.

Pour yourself a drink on reaching home and send a festive message on your mobile phone

to those in your address book now facing life alone.

Read a seasonal story or a verse.

You don't have to share a faith to appreciate

The Journey Of The Magi or Mole's happy carol singers,

or enjoy the old familiar rhymes of In The Bleak Mid-Winter.

Or to learn how loyal Gerda melts the Snow Queen's icy splinters.

Create a festive playlist with your favourite Christmas tunes.

Bake a batch of mince pies on a Saturday afternoon.

Burn a candle on the Solstice to mark the longest night

after which the Earth will journey back towards the light.

On Christmas eve, when Advent ends

be glad if you're at home with friends,

while others face uncertainty

on a scale hard to conceive

on which it's estimated there's 43.4 million refugees.

Resolve to make a sound donation or attend a demonstration or write to your MP.

And when on Christmas Day you toast

to peace with woman and with man,

know you have the power to make

a difference where you can.

Joan Bailey

Earworm

I listen as I sit beside my mother's bed,

which she thinks is a bus, though, unlike me, she is unaware of its final stop.

I sit by this static vehicle

as she dredges broken fragments

from a seabed of confusion.

Her index finger keeping time like a metronome.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

To and fro.

To and fro.

Tick tock.

She's been like this all afternoon

addressing the blank wall,

ignoring visitors.

Her rhythmical babble full of strange surprises:

'Under the Zion Methodist

Under the jelly belly

Milly Molly Mandy.

As Mae West goes under her vest

Onion jelly.

Under the Zion Baptist

Zane O' Mally.

At the gay call centre,

the yellow rose of Texas

is under a lilac sky.

Oh Rachel! Oh Rachel!' she cries.

Rachel, the grandmother she never met.

Rachel, who took her daughters to Australia

from where they would return,

leaving her bones interred in the dry earth beneath the thirsty Queensland sky.

I remember the lock of Rachel's hair,

which I found in a small round tin.

A careless child, I would curl the auburn strands around my fingers, till they disintegrated like my mother's mind.

'O'Mally,' she mutters, 'O' Mally.'

No one in the family knows who he is and whatever Mae West is doing under her vest, we leave to the imagination.

In my hands, I almost hold the yellow rose of Texas knowing I will be earwormed by the tune for the rest of the week.

Joan Bailey

Oasis

 We - well, you mostly - created an oasis in our back garden. I helped but in a random way, buying plants here and there but you did the digging, the planting, the tending.

I took advantage of the council's offer of a compost bin. Twenty years of good, rich fertiliser from vegetable peelings. Twenty years of decayed soggy lettuce, sprouting spuds, wet parsnips and wizened  carrots. It made me feel less guilty for over buying and not producing as many home cooked meals as intended. 

You made the little pond for frogs, filling it with tadpols and oxygenating plants with the help of interested friends. 

We left the self seeding Elder, which was little more than a bush when we moved in, to  grow tall. You hung seeds, peanuts and lard cakes for the birds on its boughs.

I saw some gold finches in the clough and a colleague told me how nyger seed would attract them to the garden. Flashes of red, and yellow jostling for places on the feeder. Their high pitched musical twittering a sweet addition and, in the evening, the blackbird's resonant song. 

We - you mostly - created this green space between the high laurels, planted by a former owner, a miserable bugger by all accounts, who wanted to screen out his  neighbours and, in doing so, gifted us this private space, this little oasis visited by hedgehogs and squirrels.

Somewhere to chill. Somewhere to forget the petty conflicts of family or work and the state of the nation with its never ending meaness, injustice and scandals 

Somewhere to screen out thoughts of people being bombarded by bombs thousands of miles away. People whose oases have been ripped up, ripped apart, ripped away. 

Destroyed. 

Thousands of people who have lost those they love. Injured, uncertain. afraid; who have to start over with nothing. 

Joan Bailey 

Herb Robert

Herb Robert has crept in and colonised some pots near the bin without my permission.

Yet I find him to be a welcome addition.

Trust this invader the experts say: he will bring bees and butterflies. Just cut him back if he gets in the way.

Rub his leaves on the skin to avoid midges but never cut his flowers and put them inside overnight or death will surely follow. 

Who would think such as this could herald such sorrow? 

Sources speculate about the origin of his name.

Views differ. 

Some believe he was named for a medieval monk, who used plants and flowers to relieve sickness and pain with their curative powers. 

Or is he named for the puck known as  Robin Goodfellow, the Shakespearian sprite, who circled the earth for King of the Fae on the titular midsummer night?

Whatever...

He can live anywhere: woods. commons, hedgerows, cracks in the pavement. 

He doesn't much care. 

All he needs is some soil, the rain and the God given air.

Joan Bailey 

Mudlark

Rooting through debris like a Victorian scavenger. Clearing a window on the foreshore of time. A glimpse of the past in a piece of old pottery: figures of rowers on broken blue Delft. 

And not  just the boatmen but some unknown person who ate bread and cheese from this long gone plate. Long gone, like the woman who once wore the glass beads displayed like bright sweets on a string long frayed. 

Treasures discarded and washed back up again, long hidden beneath the grey, muddy sand, suddenly illuminated in the light of the morning, as you offer them up in your wet, muddy hands.

Joan Bailey 

Working On It

Autumn, three weeks into term, energy bills like nowhere else in Europe. Liz Truss is PM (How??? Really, how?) 

Equanimity.  Working on it. 

Recipe:

Watch the garden birds, read, peddle on the exercise bike, music, pray for mercy and miracles, love, appreciate those who love me, wine, bit of telly, don't forget the water bottle and eat better. 

Sister-in-law is 80. Off for an Italian meal with family. 

The greatest blow to women's rights in my lifetime

The overturning of Wade v Roe in America is astonishing. It is the most significant reversal  of common sense in my lifetime. Last night, one of my Facebook friends, a wise and thoughtful woman - and a Roman Catholic - with whom I did my teacher training, posted her shock and anger over the Supreme Court's judgement, and expressing concern for her friends in America.  This helped me to express my own thoughts. I am Christian but cannot accept the orthodox view that abortion is a sin. 

I'm a lapsed Anglican and my sister is a converted Roman Catholic. Occasionally, I have attended her church,  most recently when she renewed her wedding vows and for a family funeral. She has been active in the Catholic Church in the past, supporting the bereaved and helping out in other ways and is still quite regular in attendance, even now her kids are grown. I remember one time, after a confirmation service, a woman coming round trying to drum up support for a pro-life thing and my sister firmly saying 'No thank you.' When  the woman had gone. My sister turned round to me saying' I am not into that shit. They have no idea! ' I was so proud of her at that moment.

My sister went  on to work with young single mums who  needed support and later with children at risk of sexual exploitation and she continues to have no illusions about how tough life is.

Abortion is an incredibly difficult thing. It should be a last resort within a nationally funded and supported contraception prgramme. Even though it should be the last resort, no one should feel guilty or be denied the right to a safe, legal abortion. 

I remember reading an article by a female professor, who looked at abortion not simply from the perspective that women should have control over their own bodies  - a given in my book  - but also addressed the pro-lifers with some nuanced arguments, explaining that abortion was, in her view, a necessary evil in a deeply broken world. I have never forgotten this. 

I remember, when I was a young teenager, my mother  talking about how  her own  mother had had an abortion. Grandma's husband was disabled and had been ill for many years. My grandma was the main  breadwinner. He  died when my mother was in her late teens/early twenties. It seems at some point  my grandmother also had a 'fancy man' called Joe. I don't know if this was before or after her husband died but, as a result of this affair, she ended up having a back street abortion, which my mother said was a very dangerous thing to do. I remember asking why and she replied 'because I think they inserted a coat hanger.' For years I had a mental picture of my grandmother sitting on her back step - which she used to make yellow with a donkey stone - dressed in her work-a-day apron waiting for a person  with a coat hanger to sort her problem out.

I remember a little while after this, a friend telling me how  abortion was a very wicked thing  and thinking that could not be true, as the sweetest, kindest, least selfish person I had ever known was my late grandma and she'd had one, even though it could have killed her. I was glad that a woman couid now  get an abortion on the NHS, despite the fact some people made a fuss about it. 

On the overturning of Wade v Roe and the news that half of the states in America will now outlaw the right to an abortion, I feel the need  to express how important our sisters, mothers and grandmothers are and how important is our right to decide for ourselves if abortion is a better option than giving birth. 

The bottom line is this:  abortion will exist as long as  women exist, however offensive certain people find this. It will never be swept away by legislation and moral indignation. The overturning of Wade v Roe will  lead to increased mental misery, even suicide; to increased poverty; to  illegal, unsupervised and potentially dangerous interventions; to the criminalisation of those previously licensed practitioners who will carry on; to  the criminalisation of women.

The righteousness of certain sections of America, who would outlaw reproductive rights, while, in some cases, advocating gun ownership is well know and well commented on. It is quite simply, unfathomable. And to those in any country, who wouid place the rights of the fetus above the needs of the mother, I wouid ask them to consider the bigger picture. 

Keeping on keeping on (again)

Not the most optimistic title for a blog entry and apologies to Alan Bennett who used the phrase ‘keeping on keeping on’ for the latest of his diary volumes – not that he’s likely to notice. Not that I’m down, just a bit muted, though the first few weeks of term were a nightmare. The impact of COVID on adult student numbers, mostly. Things seem to be coming together now but there are still gremlins in the works and those who enjoy casting shade. Enduring and pondering retirement, even though in many ways I still love my job. I doubt I would be able to keep up, given the work load, without the help and support of my retired husband keeping it all together on the domestic front and for which I am so very grateful.

I’ve been doodling little poems and lyrics and have also been listening to music a lot.  I recently bought the Specials’ latest, Protest Songs. I like it. It has a good range of ‘protest songs’ from the nursery rhyme like ‘I live in a city’, which conjures the incongruous image of Terry Hall singing at a Woodcraft Folk gathering, to another -  but this time deceptively - simplistic song, ‘I don’t mind failing in this world’, which packs a solid socialist message and makes me think what a coward I am when it comes to criticism.  Every time, I hear the lines ‘Somebody else's definition/Isn't going to measure my soul's condition/I don't mind failing in this world.’ I am reminded that teaching observations have been brought forward and walk throughs have been increased. I have been through this so many times but I can never quite shake off the feeling that one is viewed as only as good one’s last observation. It never gets any easier. Both these songs were written by political folk pioneer Malivina Reynolds of Little Boxes fame. There’s a wonderful version of Talking Head’s Listening Wind with guest singer Hannah Hoo,  and great renditions of Fuck All the Perfect People and Everybody Knows. Lynval Golding brings a lifetime’s understanding to Black, Brown and White and Get up, Stand Up.

Reading wise, our book group read The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. A brilliant study of male dominance and women’s witness to men’s sense of entitlement and obsession with power. Truly tragic and very moving. The sacrifice of Polyxena as seen through Briseis’s eyes will stay with me, as will the representation of Achilles as an emotionally retarded man child. Fortunately, men have improved a great deal; despite the recent spot light on male violence, there are many good men out there. Without mine, I would struggle on so many levels.

So far, so self-absorbed but life is pulling me back from my own narrow concerns in different ways. My uncle has just passed away, which means family coming north for the funeral; my mum has to have an investigation under anaesthetic, which is a worry. These things plus several social gatherings on the horizon should also to help counteract my currently inward gaze. 

 

 

Sealed in the Book of Life

 G’mar chatima tova” is the Hebrew greeting on Yom Kippur. It means “May you be sealed in the Book of Life.” (Source: Marriane Williams) 

What a blessing, what a hope to be sealed in the Book of Life. 

 I have always struggled with dualistic takes on spirituality, the goodies and the baddies version of spirituality. All those poor souls on the left hand path off to languish in hell; those poor goats sprily gamboling away from love, light and peace. No one is entirely beyond the pale, surely? 

The idea of the righteous and the unrighteous seems too bound up with social control and religious power. The woman in the pure white gown going straight to heaven, while the  woman struggling with ambiguity goes straight into purgatory. And as for the  big bad woman, she's already on her way to hell, right? No. That doesn't seem right to me, especially if such a philosophy/theology is wielded by those in authority. 

I  did a bit of lazy research on Wikipedia and discovered that, as with Buddhism, there is also a  Book of the Dead in the  Jewish tradition and, once your name gets written in there, you're knackered, unlike those lucky souls who get written into the Book of Life and are  therefore guaranteed a passport to heaven. Surely it's not so simple? People are not wholely or good or wholely bad. 

Despite  my issues with dualism, though, I would want my name to be sealed in the Book of Life, who wouldn't?  To be, metaphorically and spiritually, sealed into to growth, wisdom, love, forgiveness, compassion, to radiate the love of something greater and infinitely precious would be just grand.

For me, being 'included in the book' would not be about perfection or being some goody- two - shoes-holier-than-thou arse-hole but something far more human altogether. Being a good friend, a wise counsellor, to be kind and funny, to be less of dick when it comes to my relationship with other people. To be internally at peace with myself and the world around me, and being filled with the 'divine' spark of life. To be able to get out of bed in the morning with a bit of joy inside. 

That would be nice. That would feel really blessed. 

And because I want this for myself, I want it for all those with whom l share space, those with whom I interact and anyone who has taken the time to engage with my ramblings. 

So, several days after Yom Kippur, and within a wide and very secular context, please accept my blessing  that you 'be sealed within the book  of life.'