This poem has been a time in the making.  The original notes which form the basis of the thought were written a while ago and, as I was writing them, I felt that the poem would virtually write itself.  I have learned from hard experience that such feelings are almost always woefully wrong.
     This poem has gone through many drafts, and I am not sure that they have reached a conclusion - but I also think it's worthwhile posting what I have done so far so that I can read it with a certain degree of distance.  It's only then that fruitful future directions can be selected.
     With my poetry, if the inspiration is not 'swimming' then it has to be 'trees' - and that was the case with this poem.  I find the tree-change between winter and spring magical.  I never seem to find the apparent resurrection ordinary, even though I know it happens.  My mind drifted (as it does when I am sipping my special brew) to how early humankind must have viewed the transformation of an arid landscape into a verdant one.  One line I did not use from my notes was, "All language lives and dies in trees" and, while I am not convinced that I believe that, the line did contain something which I thought was important.  I felt that the life of trees (and plants) must have posed fairly important, basic, fundamental questions through human time as soon as human memory developed and distinctions were drawn.
     This (again) is a sonnet-like poem which seems, at the moment, to be a format that I am trying to explore.
     I am drawn to the opening and closing words, I feel that there is a satisfying circularity - which I do not necessarily see as comforting.
     This is a poem that, having written it, I am still coming to terms with.

Questioning

Corruption rots.  And makes the loam

that roots a single tree upon an empty plain.

The wind-curved branches punctuate

a thought – and apprehensive minds

form words, trying to tame

wild concepts breaking from the earth.

(The unforgiving lash of life.  Again,

luscious and fresh.  A green, green curse.)

Anchored fecundity runs rings around

the seasons’ captives struggling for faith:

bound tight in buds, or hidden in the sound

of leafless wood that, cut and burning,

spits and sizzles in the flames
mocking the mortality of death.

I wish (do I?) that I could say that I wrote the last line with the same confidence as John Donne.  I realise that any possible variant on the, 'Death thou shalt die' theme is bound to be seen as triumphalist and essentially Christian and a lineal descendent of that wonderful phrase.  I can only say that such thoughts are not mine.  I would point to the phrase, "The unforgiving lash of life" and suggest that there is little positive in this poem, and the "apprehensive minds" are "trying," not necessarily succeeding, in finding meaning.  I think the final line is a paradox or double negative or pun or animistic personification or something - but not comforting!

I was chasing a fugitive thought that I thought that I had had during my swim.  I could not remember if it was a real thought (something usable) or just a vague direction.  I could not remember topic, subject or depth.  Just a vague feeling that something which might have been was now consigned to not at all.  That doesn't stop you make a desultory sort of attempt to trawl through closed memories hoping that something magical will happen.  Well, it didn't and whatever apercu I did have will have to remain a lost treasure!
     But I wrote a few scrawls about the loss and found myself trying to make something of the negation, so to speak.  Then the memory of 'fishing' in Roath Park came back to me and a few jotted lines later the title, encapsulating another memory, was written down and soon I had enough to persuade myself that the lost memory had prompted something constructive after all!
     The title seems to promise that the following poem will be something like one of Aesop's Fables - as it happens, the poem is not like a fable, but the concept that an approachable story might contain a thought is one that I think is appropriate.
     I think this poem is about something like intellectual responsibility and an acceptance that new information might disrupt previously held assumptions.
     By the way, the dog's name was Penny and she was one of those dogs who spoils you for any future canine interloper for your affections!

The Rabbit Who Sat & Stared

Ideas breed elusiveness –

so you’re ashamed to say.

Sometimes they watch you

watching: hiding in full sight.

           

            They’re like those

tiddlers in the curving stream in

Roath Park’s wildest part:

there, and not there – some sort of

thought experiment protected

by refraction. 

                        And the clumsy

hands of childhood stayed by

what-if-I-do-catch-them – then, what then?

           

            Or like our dog. 

High strung and Labrador and spoilt. 

Who chasing a wild rabbit,

just before it slipped

into the longer grass, it stopped

and turned and sat and stared

at our brave hound,

                       

                        who promptly

ricocheted away, angle obtuse,

and sniffed and snuffled grass

ten safe feet far from

that unmoving thing.

Ideas glare you out, defying

the intentions that you thought you had.

Protected by an obviousness

that you so rarely see.

As it happens I did catch (once, and only once) a tiddler in the Park stream and put it in a jam jar and took it home.  It was dead within an hour or so.  I realise now that the care that I took over it: giving it a clean jar and fresh, clean, cold water from the tap was exactly the environment that the poor fish did not want after its muddy, vegetation filled original home.

     I would like to say that this death had a profound effect on me.  But it didn't.  I went out into the back yard and played in my wigwam and all, as far as I was concerned, was well with the world.

Only connect

This poem (another sonnet-like poem) is a prime example of the how-did-you-get-here-from-there sort of thing.
     My starting point note for this poem (as it turned out) was about the fact that my smartwatch decided not to talk to my smartphone when I was about to start my daily swim.  I have an app on my watch which (magically) counts the number of lengths that I do, uploads them to my phone and then I can have a breakdown on time, speed and distance, etc.  At least in theory.  Recently there has been a marked disinclination to upload any of my swims to my phone, but, up until today, there was no problem about my watch recording my efforts.  But today, the watched sulked and refused to play ball (so to speak) and resolutely refused to note anything.
     As the watch was still telling the time, I swam as I used to by giving myself a time limit.  But, and this was the real start of the notes for the poem, I felt sort of bereft that the exact number of lengths was not being counted.  
     Now you may say that as I swim a metric mile in a 25m pool, all I have to do is count to 60 and my swim will be done.  If you think that is easy, then you are not a swimmer.  Although I swim in a very straight line, my mind meanders like the oldest of ox-bow filled rivers and I never, ever manage to count more than five lengths with any degree of accuracy.  So, to count 60 lengths is, for me, a physical impossibility.
     I actually swim 64 lengths as my first length is an uncounted warm-up.  So I start my 60 lengths at the far end of the pool and finish at the other end (the proper end) having swum 1,525m.  I then swim two lengths breast stroke to cool down.
     You may be wondering why I am explaining this in so much detail.  Well, it is to show you how far I have come to rely on my watch to give me such wonderfully accurate information.  And that information is stored on some computer somewhere and it is matched with other swimmers who are in a sort of community in the area.  We have never met and are never likely to, but we know that we are there and we also know how far and how fast we swim.  So, not having my information uploaded was a sort of loss, and for the 'community' too.
     I began to think about that odd 'loss' and began, as I sipped my tea after my swim, to make a few notes in my trusty notebook and it was in there that I used the word 'validation' and linked it to some sort of mythic electronic community.
     The darkness of the final poem was not something with which I started, but that is how it developed.
     I do recognise the literary provenance of the title, but I felt that it fitted and I liked the pun.
     This is a very compressed poem and I am aware that not everything will be immediately obvious, but this is something which took me a number of drafts and it says what I wanted it to say.  I think.
     The lack of question marks in the first two lines is intentional.
     As I often say about the poem that I publish here: I will come back to this at a later date and try and read with a critical eye.  It may change.

Only connect

What validation do you need

to fill the void of being.  As yourself.

Mere effort is not bright enough

to clear those shadows (breaking at the edge)

that slide, as something bleaker

than fragmenting glaciers.

Dissolving definitions blur

togetherness and friendship’s

currency’s an easy counterfeit.

That rolls and clinks behind a glass

in light, drone-heavy hives.

And cells are etched in air.

And weightless words compel.

And bells demand respect.

As ever with my poems, I invite responses either here on this site or via my email.   SMR

Lost little song

A swimming pool is one place where you can see all the Ages of Man in their naked majesty - from the very young (much, much younger than they ever used to be when I went to a swimming pool in my youth) all the way to the very old and infirm.  They are the nearest we get to a living representation of those allegorical Dutch genre paintings from the seventeenth century.

     It wasn't quite that which prompted the following poem, but it was pondering on the difference between my own competent pace and the pace of the youth swimming next to me that made me think.  I suppose it was motivated by envy.  After all, I am never going to be as young, slim and fit as he, no matter how hard I try - and I can assure you I have no intention of trying that hard or even at all!

     So I began to think (because you have to do something to counteract the boredom of going up and down and up and down for sixty lengths somehow) and I reasoned that the kid was probably as good as he was ever going to get, he was at the apogee of his physical potential, and therefore the only way for him is going to be down.  So I imagined a sort of momento mori moment and that became the real motivation for the poem.

     As I was writing it I felt that I needed the discipline of a concentrated poetic form and as I developed the poem it seem naturally to form a sort of sonnet.  I have obviously played fast and loose with the form but it gave me the structure that I needed. 

     I like the ending, but I am not sure what it means.  Perhaps I will in time!  The same goes for the title, but it is what I think I meant.

Lost little song

Young, slim and fit. And

mocking my sad speed

(though I was twice as fast as

the slow woman in the other lane)

his skimpy briefs a studied sneer

to a more generous covering

(double-bowed to counteract

the push-off-pool-dragged lines

trying to slip my tummy's

smooth incline to impropriety)

he flaunted youth

and promise cut his strokes -

though water's cling's insidious.

I know.

I have a feeling that this poem is going to be fairly drastically revised before I am finally satisfied with it.  There is something about writing a short poem which puts the whole of your technique under the microscope and demands introspection.

This poem, like so many recent poems is a result of an evening session in Barcelona with the Poetry Group.  As the leader of the group is going back to California for the winter she first thought of having 'Departure' as the theme, but that we deemed too depressing so we responded to its opposite.
          As I have recently had a fairly significant birthday, my mind was drawn, during the meditation part of the evening to thinking about the form that the Pensions people have sent me (26 pages long) which, in one section asks the applicant/claimant to list all the addresses at which he has lived!  Which, if nothing else gave me the opportunity to use a punning title!
          It was this systematic re-visiting that gave a focus to my thoughts and in the poem I drafted I linked form filling and the going back over a life.  It was almost like a variant on, "A History of the World in 100 Objects" re-written as "A History of SMR in X Addresses."  And that X is appropriate because I have only lived in about ten addresses in my life!  Which seems remarkable in some ways.
          It is not surprising that the address that stands out for me is that of my childhood home, the first house that I can remember clearly - though the elements that I brought back to mind in the poem came as something of a shock.
          I'm not sure, to be frank that the part about the May tree actually fits with what I thought that I was going to say, but I am prepared to give the ideas some time to settle down to see if they will make sense eventually.  I think that there are ideas of innocence and experience; belief and superstition, rejection and society somewhere in it all, but it will take me further time to discover what I think I might have said!
          As always any comments will be very gratefully received.

Returns

Form-filling . . . so prosaic.

But I’ve now reached the age where

Section 10 (and further space if needed)

must be filled with each and every

place in which I’ve lived.

And so I’ve packaged to and fro

with evidence from off-white

envelopes that capture

my first land-locked house –

an empty space in memory –

to Spain, and by the sea, today.

And, of them all,

the Cardiff house

in Dogfield Street, Cathays

(odd names) becomes the one

that claims most visits

from my mind.  Because

there was a time when

corner shops were where

they ought to be; and

counters were too high to

overlook;  and butter, loose,

was bought by weight

with cars, odd interruptions

on the empty streets.

And in the other corner

(looking back through

walls) the brick-beds fill

with marigolds; nasturtiums

play at senses with the sweet

repulsion of the May trees’

urgent scent. 

                       I once made up

a posy of the blossom and

was hurt by my small gift’s

rejection, and did not understand,

‘Not in the house!’

I gaze at distant views

where I still try

to find again, something,

I didn’t think, I’d ever lose.

But, my feet drag with

years, and I’m

always too slow

discovering, again

what I know

isn’t there.

With this topic members of the group were more eager to explain what they were thinking about, rather than share any poetic attempts, and the discussion about the raw material that came to the surface in this sort of exercise was very revealing.