CHARACTER STUDY

This poem is written in the Sonnet style but is not a Sonnet per se. 

Three quatrains, rhyme scheme ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, in iambic pentameter, with a volta around line eight and a concluding couplet, GG, is certainly Sonnet form but the subject matter is not quite Sonnet material.  

 

DOGS

He’s a determined one and no mistake.

While others of his age group fade away,

he adds a candle to his birthday cake

and seems immune to ageing and decay.

He is a character, one must admit:

an old man who seems younger than his son,

a giant with a coruscating wit,

a raconteur, if ever there was one.

Yet there are times, behind his ready smile,

one glimpses some deep darkness firmly chained,

like two fierce dogs, both straining all the while

to be let loose, their fury unexplained.

He buys another round. We all drink deep.

For now those two grim dogs remain asleep.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/

WINTER OF DISCONTENT

A winter Sonnet and an image of the countryside on the outskirts of Belfast, where I  lived prior to coming to Guernsey, after a fall of snow.

WINTER

We suffer winter, long for spring:

in doing so we wish our lives away.

Days, like migrating birds, take wing

and, how time flies: that old cliche

we know so well, is proven true.

When brave and young, we squandered time

but now, grown old, as years accrue,

such wastefulness of time’s a crime.

Yet in these bitter winter hours

when old bones feel a graveyard chill,

days are a jar of wilted flowers

to be discarded. How they spill

those sunless blooms, lovingly laid,

so transient, so swift to fade.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/

NOWHERE?

This poem's not about Madeira, which I visited recently: a garden paradise if ever there was one. Instead, the location is an island in the Canaries, arid and bleak in its geography. 

While travelling around on local buses, I watched people alight, in what appeared to be scrubland without any sign of habitation. It made me realise that nowhere is always somewhere to someone.

TOURISTS

Obvious tourists, we ride the noon bus

with clay-faced matriarchs, old toothless men

and one dark child who stares at us

then turns away. He must be nine or ten, 

a child born here and likely to depart

within a decade, never to return.

He’ll leave this arid island if he’s  smart,

flee to the mainland, there to earn or learn.

The bus comes to a halt. People get down.

There are no houses here, no settlement,

only wasteland, dry wilderness, no town,

yet off they go, no sign of discontent,

with shoulders bent and not one backward look.

The bus moves off. We study our guide book.

BLISS

As 2022 turns to 2023 and I drift even closer to my dotage, it consoles me to think that when the mind finally goes it may bring an end to the many self-inflicted torments that we burden ourselves with as we contemplate a life ill-spent.

BLISS

The past will haunt you till you die

they tell you, but that is a lie.

When fuses blow, minds come unhinged:

all history is swept away

as memories, their edges singed

like ash, fly off in disarray.

Regrets, self-condemnation, guilt,

all seep away like water spilt.

Sons, daughters, sit and hold your hand,

bring photographs to jog your mind.

They simply do not understand

the bliss of leaving life behind.