HOME?

Just back from a 3-week road trip in England, with brief forays into both Scotland and Wales, I find myself questioning the concept of home, a place where one feels one belongs. 

Born in Ireland, now thirty years resident in the Channel Islands, I don't regard either place a home: one was my birthplace, the other 'the place where I live now'.   

I wrote this poem, in sonnet-style although not properly a sonnet, a few months ago and think it aptly sums up my idea of home.

                           

HOME

The Eskimo or Inuit,

it’s said, have many words for snow,

a lexicon describing it

in all it’s strange grandeur, although

they have no word for home, it seems.

For those who live nomadic lives,

home is a place beyond their dreams

and no concept of it survives 

amongst their harsh Arctic regimes.

A static man, I find the word

‘home’ one whose meaning subtly shifts:

a comfort but at times absurd,

a tombstone over which snow drifts.

For me, home is not here or there,

home is where love is. Anywhere.

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

FALL

Fall means Autumn in American-English, it also relates to loss of innocence, as in the Biblical Fall, when Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden. 

Today, of course, is the anniversary of the fall of the Twin Towers, to which this short poem refers.

SEPTEMBER           

Rewind events and turn back time

as though to deconstruct a crime 

and then restore the broken lives

of fathers, mothers, husbands, wives.

Bring back to life the telephones,

computer screens, suppress the moans 

of the bereaved, of those who died

when there was nowhere left to hide.

Rebuild the towers, forgive the Cains

who weaponised the deadly planes.

Let hearts be changed and please let all

be as it was before the fall.

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

HIGH WINDOWS

The loneliness of old age, a feeling of life having slipped by unnoticed, the awareness that little time remains: these things preoccupy me and surface from time to time in my verses. 

                           

MISS McCARTHY              

Miss McCarthy, at the window,

wonders where did all the gin go 

as she stands, forlorn and swaying,

watching, outside, children playing

games of hop-scotch with their young friends,

under street-lamps, as the day ends.

Starlings swirl beyond the house-tops,

lovers linger at the bus-stops.

Life is happening around her. 

It continues to astound her

that life causes such distress and

that the pain has never lessened.

Old, alone, she feels the starkness

of the fast descending darkness.

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

CANCEL CULTURE

When you choose to live on a small island in the English Channel, travel becomes something of a challenge, not least of all when almost every journey by air involves transition through London's Gatwick Airport.

2023 has been a particularly difficult year with delays and cancellations the norm rather than the exception. One such lengthy delay prompted this piece of rhyming verse.

                           

            

GATWICK BLUES

Imprisoned in an airport between flights,

I read, but even reading starts to bore.

Distraction comes in countless forms: the lights,

the noisy people that I can’t ignore

who jabber trivialities on mobile phones,

the tantrum-throwing children and the teens, 

the shrieking girls, the hijab-wearing crones,

the idiots in pricy torn-up jeans …

I could rant on but realise it’s true:

the human race and I don’t really gel.

Apart from some good friends (and they’re damn few)

where I’m concerned the rest can go to hell. 

If I believed, I’d pray they’d disappear.

The modern world is not for me, I fear.

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

POEMS AND OTHER LIES

I try to write creatively and not overly depend on obsessive introversion as a source for verse: that said, a writer implants something of himself or herself in almost everything he/she writes, either consciously or otherwise. This little poem, however, is about as close as it gets to pure autobiography.

         

WRITER  

An early reader, I aspired

to be a writer and acquired 

a little notebook, pocket size,

where I wrote poems and other lies.

The habit stuck: I write each day

in search of truth, that old cliche.

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

LIFE AFTER LIFE

This is a reworking of a poem, Invisible, that appeared in my Stone Witness collection (2017). Whereas the original version was written in free verse and was rather more lengthy, the poem below is basically a rhyming precis of its predecessor.

THAT'S LIFE                      

Faces lean in, make sounds, then move away:

they hover like great birds above the cot

where he lies swaddled. Nothing that they say 

makes sense. He is an infant. It’s Year Dot.

So it begins. Time hurries on. That’s life.

He lies in a red room. Faces lean in,

make sounds. Nothing makes sense. Pain wields its knife.

It’s Year Ninety. Ice settles on his skin.

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

A POEM OR NOT A POEM?

In the gloom of post-Brexit Britain, all that sustains us is hope. I wrote this recently. I don't know whether it qualifies as a poem. You, the reader, can decide.

PROMISES                      

Tomorrow promises to be better.

An old friend, you thought lost, will telephone.

You’ll receive a long-awaited letter.

Somewhere a tyrant will be overthrown.

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