Components of resilience

"Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence."

Hal Borland, American author and journalist, notably for the New York Times (1900-1978) in Countryman: A Summary of Belief, 1965.
 

Blueshift

Unslain, dressing wounds I cannot see

haggard – unsure of knowing this world

just when I thought I did but again

someone unmade it

the feeling creeping back

that this unworld

unrecognisable, unfigured

untasted, ungripped

is redshifting away from me

and now, unfeeling alive,

I am unmyself

shifting to blue.

 

like mirrors

"How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten."

Daphne du Maurier, novelist (1907-1989), in Frenchman's Creek (1941).

She will

When she will realise

she can move mountains

with her green gaze

when she will realise

she's the neutron star of girls

when she finally understands

she's shaping the world

in her gentlefirm hands

when she finally understands

she's greater than the Sahara sands

when she sees at last

that she's better than us all

and her love unsurpassed

when she sees at last

the good in her contrasts

when she finds out

she's stronger than us all

the strength in her doubt

when she finds out –

she'll move mountains

and supernova our soul

she'll make rain fall

where it never rains

she will light places

we didn't know existed

she will rewrite the tale

of what it is to love

she will lift the darkest veil

on skies we only dreamt of

she will fit the universe

in the palm of her hands

cup it like a young plant

water it with a verse

and we'll all be born again.

 

where the cliff met the sea

I set up my bed

by the break of day

I strung clouds together

wove rain as wallpaper

my bedroom was floating

on the placid ocean so

I stuffed my pillowcase

with the colours of space

with the day's sunshafts

I braided a farewell memory

One that I will keep deep down

and wait for the night to drown.

A Poet's Advice (1958)

"Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel...the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

E.E. Cummings, American poet, essayist, playwright, painter (1894-1962)
 

I am not as I was

I am not as I was, dear flowers –

this buffeted, battered body

to whose contact you recoil

this body hooked on drips

which will not heal

was all I had to make a stand

to make myself heard

to give you birth

and to love you.

I may not be as I was,

but I give it all to you.

I am not as I was, my friends –

days drift into other days

drift again in so many ways –

unforgetting what time does –

I haven't been the best of dads

and of friends –

but please, watch over them

for the sake of what I once was.

I am not as I was, my love –

you know I wrote because I was

and you let me – checking the ties

with our daughters weren't slacking –

you were the mountain

shielding and guiding

feeding the hopes of us four –

and when I finally realised –

we silently had to unignore

the swelling in my abdomen.

I am not as I was

rings like a testament –

a raucous admittance of defeat –

forced to throw the towel –

I fight, I am fighting!

But soon I won't be any more –

leaving you my friends

to watch over my loved ones

– and you my love

to watch over our flowers –

Soon I won't be any more –

but tonight I am –

not as I was

– but I am –

“non sum qualis eram” Horace, Odes, Book 4, 1

Fragment #111

hearts ago I was a mountain

my summit so far up in the clouds

nobody would dare climb it

in fact covering an equally deep abyss

so nobody would see how empty I felt

a sigh from now I'll be an ocean

 

goldenbrown

kinder-than-life eyes

                                   goldenbrown gaze

                       a forest path without ends

                                               fuddling travellers

                                                                      with scented words

meandering through memories

                                    and feelings we knew we had

             your fingertips lighter than blue

                                    more present deeper down

                                                            dark in the underocean

                                                awaking space

                                    creating unlight

            switching nights on in rooms

one after the other

            – maps that had been explored

                                   discarded after a while

                                               shut off, forgotten –

minutely stepping in each

                       removing protective whitesheets

                                   sometimes just feeling through

                                               tasting treasured keepsakes

                       deftly handweighing, eyes up

           and the faintest of smiles

and moving to the next room

unheeded, fearless perhaps,

                                              were the footsteps left

                                                                                    in the accumulated dust

                                   today I wander off

                                                                      room after room

                                                                                                        smelling your laughter

                                              whitenoising your palewhite silhouette

                                   echoing like glass dewdrops

           in the forest of your eyes your

kinder-than-life eyes

                                  goldenbrown gaze

Ideal Idle

"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen."

Jerome K. Jerome, humorist and playwright (1859-1927), in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)