Monthly Archives: December 2019

Late in the year …

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woman

Woman, Leeds Museum

I am very glad to leave this year behind me. Those of you who’ve been following the blog for some time know that the chronic Brexit stress had badly affected my health. I was in and out of hospital for a series of investigations, blood tests and scans. The National Health System (NHS) is extremely short on resources and staff, but every individual I met treated me well and as an individual. Brexit will now happen, so I must apply for settled status soon.

I got the all-clear late August and my second collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous came out last month. The poetry world is extremely competitive, so I was delighted to be asked for a manuscript! My third book, a pamphlet called A Stolen Hour, will be published Spring 2020 by Grey Hen Press.

The small paperback Creative Visualisation by Shakti Gawain is my Desert island favourite. I’ve had a copy for decades. First published in 1978, it’s been a bestseller since. On or around New Year’s Eve I always take stock. A regular item on my seasonal To Do list is the gratitude list. On a personal level there is a great deal to be grateful for.

 

Creative Visualisation

 

Thank you for following my blog. I leave you with a poem about 2019 and a blessing for 2020 – a new year and another decade.

 
Late in the year

It was late in the year, too late
for the year to end in an orderly manner.
This year had no manners; it stopped
suddenly in July and now it was travelling
at speed, but in the wrong direction.

Four horses pulling the carriage
splash through puddles on the rutted road.
Through an archway into the yard – a square
dark patch – a small whimpering dog
left behind now the owners have moved.

This year is like that farm, empty
and cold, a broken window, dead
birds in the chimney, overgrown grass.

The lanterns on the carriage are getting
smaller still and the road is a dead-end
stony track ending high up on the moors.
It was that kind of year, we were lost
and not all of us would survive it.

 

Blessing

May inspiration come to you
whether you’re awake or asleep.
May the poems you find be yours to keep.

May you create easily to give you a lift
while your inner critic works a different shift.

Appointment – Fokkina McDonnell

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Almost Solstice

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solstice

 

As a Dutch national living in the UK I was unable to vote in the elections on Thursday. Never has Friday the 13th felt worse: those results and interminable rain, rain.

A couple of friends have just lost a parent, or friend, another friend is about to have the last Christmas with her father. Hospice care has already been arranged for him. I count my blessings and I count the days until Solstice on my fingers.

 
Waiting

The water meadows
are waiting
for the storks to return

 
always invisible
the other side
of her face

 
in this book
there is snow
on every page

 
even an old potato
can be turned
into a Christmas stamp

 
the naming of colours
is not a science.
I vote for bird’s nest grey

Mid-December

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garden_fox_in_snow

 

At our Manchester Poets Christmas meeting on Friday someone read Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. This poem, along with The Road not Taken, is one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems. Many people who are not poets have come across them.

Here is Questioning Faces, a short winter poem by Frost. It has marvellous precision and economy. It inspired my poem Mid-December. It is based on a real observation: seeing the fox in my rear garden under the light cast by the helicopter. Getting the end-rhyme across the two stanzas was an interesting task.

 
Questioning Faces

The winter owl just banked in time to pass
And save herself from breaking window glass.
And her wings straining suddenly aspread
Caught color from the last of evening red
In a display of underdown and quill
To glassed-in children at the windowsill.

 
Mid-December

Some people might pray for the day
to end, so they can cover glass
panels with ceiling-to-floor lined drapes,
or plain blinds that click into place.
Sitting by the radiator
I count the nights before Solstice,

think of the fox who’s come to stay.
She, padding across stiff white grass,
makes no such distinctions, escapes
gardens, water meadows; her face
now up to the police helicopter
beaming light on the world that is.

St. Nicolaas, 5 December 1957

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_Groeten_van_St._Nicolaas!__St._Nicholas_and_a_helper,_St._Nick_is_in_a_white_robe,_orange_cap,..._(NBY_1458)

 

Traditionally, both St. Nicolaas and Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) arrive in ports in the Netherlands on a steam ship towards the end of November. A white horse awaits the holy man who rides through the streets. In the week or so before St. Nicolaas’ evening, children would leave a carrot for the horse in their shoe (few of us wore clogs!) by the fireplace. The evidence that St. Nicolaas and Zwarte Piet had come down the chimney to visit was there the next morning: some sweets, chocolates or a small piece of marzipan in those shoes.

Black Peter is a helper, distributing sweets to the children who’ve been good. However, he also carries a large bag. Any child that has been misbehaving during late November-early December risks being noticed and being carried off to Spain in that bag.

The competition from Father Christmas has become stronger over the last decades. In recent years, there has also been a controversy in the Netherlands about Zwarte Piet and a small UN Human Rights deputation even came to investigate the accusations of racism and colonialism. Some councils and schools now have a white helper (not blacked up) and elsewhere St. Nicolaas visits on his own. The controversy is ongoing with demonstrations, petitions and activism.

On the 5th of December I will be in the UK, on a writing week. I still love marzipan, but I am cutting down on sweets and I have asked St. Nicolaas for a large batch of good, new poems! The poem is from my debut collection Another life (Oversteps Books Ltd).

 
St. Nicolaas, 5 December 1957

We’re crowded in our dining room.
Grandmother has closed her face.
There’s me in pyjamas, smiling.
I’m next to my father’s father.
His heart will give out soon.
I’ve just been given a book;
animal stories with illustrations.

My brother too smiles, because
our mother isn’t there.
She may be in the kitchen
or upstairs, ill, thinking
about walking out on us.
My father has taken this photo.
He too will have closed his face.