Last year I tried doing a poem a day during advent – I had found a poetry prompt advent calender online. Bur I only managed about 6 before I got too busy with all of the other pre Christmas tasks. This year I didn’t even start until a week in, but hopefully I can fit in more than last year in the next 16 days.
The first prompt was “Once upon a December” so this is what I wrote
Once upon a December night
When sky was dark but stars were bright
I took your hand and gave a smile,
We lost the whole world for a while
That frosty cold December night
Once upon a December eve
As snowflakes settled on my sleeve
We danced beneath the sky, care free.
So cold but happy as could be
That cheery crisp December eve
Once upon a December morning
As carols told of Christ child born
You took my hand and asked of me
myself, while down on bended knee.
Oh such happy December morn
Once upon a December day
While children wait to see the sleigh
You smile at them then pull me near
To breath devotion in my ear
This joyful bright December day
I have a stash of old notebooks full of thoughts and scribblings. Some pages hold just odd lines or paragraphs, some poems I have maybe just started and never finished. And some have finished poems that I have long forgotten writing, or have never shown to anyone. I can lose hours reading back through these notebooks. Sometimes I am looking for inspiration – to take a line or a half finished poem and make something of it. But also I get lost in memories. Many of my poems, especially the older ones are really just me putting my feelings down on paper. As I read them I can remember what I was doing when I wrote them, or why I was feeling a certain way. I can also see how I have changed over the years – how as I have grown my perspective has changed and my confidence grown. This poem was written at a period when I was lacking in self confidence and was a bit of a social chameleon.
A few days ago I was having a conversation with someone about attitudes towards young people. Particularly the judgement thrown at them purely for acting like they are young and inexperienced and know less of the world. We have all been there at some point – we all learn as we travel through life. Admittedly, some of us learn better than others, and sometimes we learn the wrong lessons altogether. But being young is not inherently a bad thing, and is something an individual has absolutely no control over!
This conversation brought to mind a poem I wrote back when I was a youth and was feeling judged for being young. It took a lot of rummaging through old notebooks but I eventually found it. Written when I was just the tender age of 16, here it is
The dying hate us For we are still being born. As we laugh and joke They shake their heads in disapproval; We are living too much for them. They love the life they are dying, why should we live more than they can?
They try to take our life from us They complain to everyone And grumble remarks as we pass. We can do no right. If we try to live a little bit for them, To rejuvenate their dying breath, They do not want to know. Our life threatens them, And they are untrusting and suspicious.
Their birth was so long ago, It is forgotten, And they cannot understand those Who live like they’ll die tomorrow.
When my children were small I had a notebook in which I would write down some of the cute things that they said. For example, the time my son asked “why do you have beard on your arms daddy?” or the time my daughter rolled her eyes back as far as she could and exclaimed in disappointment “I just can’t see my eyebrows!”. But as well as being entertaining some of the things they said were actually quite insightful and poignant. When someone recently shared a video of kids being asked what it meant to be kind, some of the answers were really quite profound. It got me thinking about how as we get older we sometimes make things unnecessarily complicated when to children they seem straightforward. Children see the world through very different eyes to adults. As adults we have been shaped and damaged by life experiences and although these are unique for each of us, we all have something of cynicism, prejudice and pain in the lens through which we view things. Children often speak with a refreshing honesty too, saying things we would be too embarrassed to say, and seeing straight to the heart of a situation when we may have to peel back layers of assumption and expectation to reach the same point. Maybe listening to what children have to say sometimes, can help remind us of what is really important.
I listened to a child today
She spoke with a wisdom that belied her years
And gifted me her insight.
I listened to a child today
She spoke with the reasoning of innocence
And opened my jaded eyes
I listened to a child today
She spoke with a compassion that shamed me
But filled me with such bright hope
I listened to a child today
She spoke of such wondrous possibilities
And made me pause and ponder
I listened to a child today
She showed me everything I could become
And gave me desire to fly
Today’s prompt was to write a poem in a single sentence begining” She told me”
She told me once about an amazing day, when the sun had shone down from the bluest of clear skies upon a child of undetermined age while she skipped gleefully through the field, wiggling her fingers through the waist length grass that was dappled with the reds and yellows of wildflowers and hummed with the frenetic activity of creatures she could not yet name, but which fascinated her curious eyes, hungry eyes that drank in every drop of the idyllic scene, before he found her and roughly grabbing her arm dragged her back to her cold, grey-skyed reality.
Posting 2 in 1 today. Although I have not been posting everyday I have actually been writing everyday. Some of what I have written has just been odd lines or stanzas, but here are 2 completed poems.
The first prompt I used was to right about an explosion of joy. As I was short of time, and because I love them, I wrote a haiku.
So incredible An explosion of pure joy He said "I love you"
The second prompt I used was to write a poem either about a birthday or to someone on their birthday. This prompt happened to fall on the day my son turned 16, so of course I wrote a poem to him.
You are no longer a babe Standing tall above me As we celebrate this day of your birth A day where once there were balloons Where parcels were passed, statues danced, and lions slept But time has passed and You have outgrown these things Now as you stand next to me You stand in a place ‘twixt man and boy Know that I will always be Stood here beside you As you find your feet in a fast changing world And take your place in the unfolding tale
For today let’s just celebrate The wonder that is you
We have recently been doing a tour of high school open evenings. My daughter, my baby, is in her last year of primary school and we are visiting a number of schools so that she can choose where she goes. This has led to a whole host of mixed feelings in me. Firstly I cannot believe how quickly the last 11 years have gone. Secondly, school seems to have changed so much since I was there, it looks a lot more interesting! Thirdly, what a shame it is that we do not appreciate it at the time. School days, although not without their own ups and downs, are free of many of the stresses and worries of adulthood and working life, and if I could go back now I would want to learn, and would make much better use of the opportunity to do so. But the strongest of these emotions comes from the increasing pace with which time passes. My baby is no longer a baby, far from it, she is growing up so quickly and that is bittersweet. She has always been a lot of fun, fully living up to her middle name, Joy, but as she has grown she has shed a lot of her shyness and self consciousness and shares her Joy increasingly with those outside our home. Yet I miss the times when she would climb sleepily into our bed in the early morning. I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t always happy to see her, especially on weekends when I could have slept longer, but now that those times are over I am left with a little sadness at their loss. She no longer pesters me to play with her and her dolls, when I would rather be doing something else, and now I mourn the missed opportunities. Bedtimes are significantly quicker as I no longer need to read chapters of her favourite books when she reads them herself. So for now I will make sure to make the most of the times she does want to spend with me, for in no time at all she will be testing her budding independence. A few years ago I wrote this poem about her. It will always put a smile on my face.
Early each morning Sleeping Beauty creeps into our bed. She rises with the sun and plods, slumber footed, into our room Wriggling her way between us, she lifts my arm to wrap it around her, Snuggles in and let’s sleep claim her once more. Roused from my dreams I smile at the warmth of her against me, This innocent child of mine. Hovering between sleep and wakefulness, I try to re-enter my dreams, But cannot, and so I gaze through sleep fogged eyes At the perfect curve of her cheek, speckled with a gentle spread of tiny freckles; At her long lashes, fanning out on her cheek below the lids that currently hide her brilliant blue eyes from my view. This beautiful face, so full of love and trust, causes my heart to swell. Her delicate, wilful, big-hearted, enthralling personality radiates through every pore. I am tempted to squeeze her into me, to hold her so tight as if to never let go, but I do not wish to wake her, so I content myself instead with a gentle kiss on her forehead. Drifting away, my eyes close once more, as a dreamy smile crosses my face And I rest with our beloved Phoebe Joy in my arms.
Life, as I understand it 