VIOLETS AT RADIPOLE LAKE

Alongside one of RADIPOLE's many paths, is a place where violets grow. They appear late-winter as a sort-of harbinger of "our" spring. LATE-WINTER/EARLY-SPRING are rather blurry terms these days. In FEBRARY "we" thought SPRING had come, only to be plunged into COLD-WINTER as EASTER and APRIL arrive together this year. And COLD is forecast until the END of APRIL! Beware, you visitors to "our" shores from the antipodes!
My father, dead, seven years now, would love to see these VIOLETS, on his walks. AND now, i go in his stead and remember.
i have a feeling i will be too late to see 'em this year however. Far too late! Seems like a forlorn expectation. Plenty of narcissi...plenty of 'em...

 

 

......I do not see the violets. i look as i progress along the path towards the spot. I LOOK. Then I do see 'em. Just a few, clinging-on for me. They are there. THEY ARE THERE STILL....

 

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THE HEATHWOOD VARIATIONS

(1)

 

(2)

 

(3)

 

(4)

 

(5)

 

(6)

 

(7)

 

 (8)

 

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(Heathwood Road 28 March 2013)

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STINGY ARTIST NEW YEAR GREETINGS 2011 - 2 POEMS

TWIGS

TRIMMINGS

WINTER-WOOD

FROM

CHERRY

BLOSSOMING

STILL

ON

COMPOST

HEAP

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STILL

BEAUTIFUL

STILL

FLOWERING

FLEA-BITTEN

ROSE

ON

A

SINGLE

STEM

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i wanted to write a poem : my 200th blogpost

thru & thru & thru

1)
Rain & rain & rain
thru cold late-winter nights
bursting with intensity
as if on a
hot tin roof
decibels that
comfort and ignite.

2)
Give sleep the elbow
the blacker the night the better
the night
just one stud
in Orion's belt
thru slow-moving cloud.

3)
Lights & candles at bay
my voodoo chile
thru a blur of rain
forget your breath
& tumble out of bed.
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(Golden GOJI Hermitage - 26 march 2013)
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : SEVEN

SEVEN.

Nado : Alexandria

NADO

 

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SIPPA & NADO

 

 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : SIX

SIX.
I had a baby-language, especially in Egypt, all of my own. Some of the words were as follows :

BERNARD = NADO

CHRISTOPHER = SIPPA

MUMMY = MEMMA

TOMATO = MAATO

CUCUMBER = KEMBA

I do not know how I got-on with the Arabic and French that was spoken but I was always calling-out "memma, memma", imploring my mother to rescue me from the many arms of relatives and strangers, who wanted to kiss and hug the little blonde "baby" - a rarity in the Middle-East.

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : FIVE

FIVE.
i was the second of four children, born out of the union of an Egyptian Mummy and a Yogi who wanted to build a boat and sail around the world. In 1949 i was taken, with my older brother (Christopher b.1946), to the Land of the Pharoahs, by boat. i lived in Egypt for about two-and-a-half years. i remember very little. i remember large, square, green floor tiles in a huge room, while standing under a shower with Christopher, in a big white bath. i remember mauve and yellow gauze that was used to dress my burns when i fell on a primus stove. i remember sitting on a bench at a wooden table in a little, dark  room with sun streaming-in through a high, small window and drinking a red cordial through two straws. And i remember sugar-cane, munching and crunching at the strands and fibres to extract the sweet juice. i don't actually remember anything else. i do not remember being terrified of the hoards of little crabs at Stanley Bay beach... OR of being led by the hand by Christopher into the water, which was up to our necks before we were rescued... NOR do i remember being given a swing by my Uncle Cesar, dislocating one of my arms at the shoulder joint in the process. Would one want that memory?  Anyway, we returned to England on "The Empire Windrush" in 1952... and I've not left these shores since!

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : FOUR

1948 : 3 photographs

 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : THREE

THREE.
My mother entered me in a "Beautiful Baby" competition at the local summer fete. I was six months old. The judges, failing to notice the crusty cradle-cap,under my neatly arranged, fair hair, awarded me first prize! "You were so beautiful, you should have been the girl of the family," my aunt would say in later years. And also that, "Your mother was so happy, anyone would think SHE had won first prize."
Well, in a way, my mother had. And she took me to a photographic studio in town, to record the occasion.
My mother also wrote to Margaret Brady of "HEALTH FOR ALL" magazine at this time, for a remedy for the cradle-cap. Almond milk was suggested as an alternative to regular feeds - maybe the breast milk was too rich for me...and to drink a lot of water before breastfeeding...and not to drink milk herself at this time. It worked.

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY : ONE & TWO

ONE.
I like it that my date-of-birth resembles an arithmetical progression. It's easy to remember. ONE. TWO. FOUR. EIGHT. = 1st February 1948 = 1/2/48.

TWO.

The day i was born, in Peartree Nursing Home, Bitterne, three thousand miles away, my cousin, Rosy, was being born in Alexandria. I've always liked it that i have a twin cousin. We now live ten thousand miles apart. i would have last seen her in 1952 - sixty-one years ago! Occasionally i get some news.

 

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(to be continued)

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Bernard Hemensley/Goldy Hermitage @ Poetry & Ideas

poetry & ideas

Snow in from the south. Here in the south, spring-buds nipped by Siberian winds. Below freezing. i have struggled thru a night of nausea, a spinning room, and perversely, heat-stroke in this unheated home....At 4 the snow was falling as a sort of slush and the road was clear....At 5, a hot, sweet drink of chicory with soya was the ultimate in pleasure, reassurance and relief....Around 6, it was more light than dark - snow-glow...and the radio dj played "Midnight in Moscow"...

View : out front

View : out back

Golden GOJI Hermitage @ 7
11 March 2013
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Reflected light, from a cloud-covered sky, that is not black enough to suppress this songbird's entreaty to the heavens, for dawn not to break just yet...Then, a blackbird, in my mind's-eye, releases a few notes into this morning's dark, and cares not for a listener...It is a song, sung in not-knowing...i open my arms, eyes, ears and heart to the silence that ensues...i am engulfed in a silence that does not know...

First "frog" sounds, at four this March morning, spring from the old pond - a "voice" of ecstacy, in the soft rain, falling on everything, as i pad bare-foot to catch a glimpse, of what is truly, a toad. But it IS now Spring...it IS now Spring...and i feel its sounds and stirrings in warm rain on my skin, when it is impossible to sleep... impossible to sleep...