I can’t think where January has gone – nearly at the end of writing daily stones for http://www.writingourwayhome.com/ .  Never mind, there’s a new Haiku Challenge for February at http://pendownmythought.blogspot.com/2012/01/haiku-challenge-is back.html 

Does the far off Indian Ocean still sparkle
behind a fringe of casuarina trees?
Does the surf still roar against the reef?
Does frangipanni scent the air with heaven
When I’m no longer there?

Is that little row of shops along the road
still there to buy our war-time rations,
where Mister White weighed sugar into packets?
Or is it razed,  a supermarket car park,
now that I’m not there?

Is that hill to school as steep to cycle now?
Do children pedal up it, puffing hard?
Or swoop by in cars, oblivious
to countryside and nature
when I’m no longer there?

The dream cottage that we lived in,
newly wed in Worcestershire -
does anyone still tend my ideal garden?
Do church bells opposite still call to prayer,
or do the hatted faithful go elsewhere now,
when I’m no longer there?

The linden tree below the house still soothes my soul.
The village market still supplies our needs.
Acquaintances all smile ‘bonjour’  in passing.
The gentle hills of Normandy are tranquil,
and for the moment, we enjoy them -
because we are still here.

Process Notes
http://margoroby.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/a-sense-of-place-tuesday-tryouts/ this week was a prompt for us to examine our sense of place.  This unleashed in me a cascade of memories that left me gasping, provoked a couple of pages of closely written notes.  I left the topic to germinate for a couple of days.  Jock happened to read the notes I’d left on the dining table, and started to say “If a tree falls in the forest and no-one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?”  We were about to set off to town shopping, and throughout the 20 kilometre drive this afternoon I was scribbling frantically to put into words the thoughts his question sparked in me.  Today’s poem is the result.

I Googled to find the source of his quotation, and discovered that it was not from a poem, but from a philosophical concept:

Philosopher George Berkeley, in his work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, proposes, “But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [...] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [...] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.”^[1] Nevertheless, Berkeley never actually wrote about the question.

In the 1910 book Physics by Charles Riborg Mann and George Ransom Twiss. The question “When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is nearby to hear it, does it make a sound? Why?” is posed along with many other questions to quiz readers on the contents of the chapter, and as such, is posed from a purely physical point of view.^{[5] from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest}

BOY:  You know what’s the first thing visitors always say, after (puts on a silly voice)  ‘My how you’ve grown?’  As though I wouldn’t have. Course you do. (resumes silly voice) ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Did you ever hear such a stupid question.  I’m a boy, aren’t I.  I don’t have much option. I have to be a man.   …’Oh, I see,’ you say ‘You mean what sort of career do I want?’

Well, it’s easy enough to fob them off – engine driver – passé.  Ok then, rocket scientist.  But even that’s old hat now.  They all want to be web designers or accountants and boring stuff like that.  Not me.  I want to be a bum.  And that’s a word my mum won’t let me use.  But I really do want to be a layabout.

So how am I going to get into the layabout business?  I mean, you need money for that.  Now where’s the most money? Apart from banks, I mean. It might be a good idea to start as a pop singer, and then when I’d made loads of dosh I could graduate to being idle and dissolute. … You what? Oh well, yes, there’s one problem to that, though.  I can’t sing. Or play an instrument come to that.   Oh hell, neither can most of the chart singers.  Okay, that’s what I’ll do then.  Shall we form a Group?  We could call ourselves The Idle Layabouts. Or the Bums.   Ha! Ha!

 (the boys grin and shove each other about.  The bell goes and they quickly stub out their half-smoked fags and put them carefully back in tatty packets before strolling off)

*

Scene 2 -  Thirty years on……

a cubicle in a large open office.  40-ish MAN is talking on  the telephone, an anxious frown on his face.  

MAN: Now, dear, don’t you worry about a thing.  I know we’re hard-up now, but just think how we’ll be when I get the next rise.  I must be next in line, and if I keep my nose to the grindstone and my head down, they can’t pass me by one more time.  Can they?

So you see, we really can’t afford to go on holiday this year.  I need to be here, to show what a worker I am, how I can be counted on to cover for the others.  And anyway, since the credit crunch there’s no spare cash for holidays.  Why don’t you take the kids to your Mum for a few days and have a bit of a break?  Next year we’ll do something really special. Must go now, dear.  Old Hitler’s walking down the office.  Love you.’ 

(MAN puts down ‘phone, stares at pile of paperwork, shakes his head and starts typing on his computer keyboard.)

Two hundred and fifty-three years ago today
a humble labouring lad was born,
to leave a glorious legacy of poetry and song.
still celebrated today with piping, reciting and haggis,
a tradition honoured in this house, but without the piping.

Another small stone for http://www.writingourwayhome.com/

Our ancestors are also in there somewhere -
mother’s collection of Chinese porcelain –
her acquisitive nature revealed.
Pictures inherited, intensely disliked
by one or other of us – no room on the walls.
Broken bits of computers,  domestic machines,
good to neither man nor beast.

All this stuff is not important, and could go at any time
It’s our inner core that matters -
in the minutes before sleep we revel in memories,
relive old times, recall old friends and family,
still living or not, cherish them,
while keeping our surroundings clear of clutter.

Prompt from http://wewritepoems.wordpress.com/:  Yes, we keep material tokens of moments we recall, yet they are only mere visible tips above the sea beneath wherein lay the actual feelings and memories held in more silent fondness and regard.  Find those elements inside yourself, let them come drink some light.

for http://www.writingourwayhome.com/

for http://www.writingourwayhome.com/

the remark which, like lighted fuse,
explodes the myths,
exposes old sores to painful air,
insult forgiven but still rankling,
unconsidered slight, unkind if not untrue -
all better banished to obscurity.

http://dversepoets.com/2012/01/21/poetics-b-%c2%a6-o-%c2%a6-r-%c2%a6-d-%c2%a6-e-%c2%a6-r-%c2%a6-s/  asks us to think about borders.

and Joseph Harker at http://namingconstellations.wordpress.com/category/reveries/ has us searching for symbolism, not my forte, I have to confess, but I did try.

for http://onesingleimpression.blogspot.com/ 
and River of stones 22

Supper is prepared, only needing to be shoved in the oven.  And now I plan to be a slob in front of the snooker on TV, or - most likely -  fall asleep.

for http://isawsunday.blogspot.com/

I kid you not, at the start of a poetry course, the tutor circulated a list of so-called archaic words he did not wish to see in our work.  My response was to write a sonnet using every one of the proscribed words, and send it to him.  Fortunately, he had a sense of humour!

for http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/wordle-40/

Bilingual dialogue

Gobbledegook, soit
n’importe quoi
     My mind’s a fog.
     They’re burbling at me.

Blah blah de blah
et tout le bazaar. 
     I understand nothing.
     Why can’t I tune in ?

Elle est folle,
la pauvre Carole. 
     Aha, a phrase
     I think I know.

Mais non, j’ai tort :
elle dort. 
     I’m awake.
     I need to be ill
     in my own language

Confusion,
perfusion,
piqure.

Nightmare

I feel a poem coming on.
I am losing touch with reality,  
mixing my hallucinations
with the surreal didactic dialogic
pattern of your mind.

Where did this come from?
I don’t know, but it’s all to do
with too much time spent
on internet forums, reading,
assimilating, posting rubbish.

In looking for inspiration, I came across an old one of mine written for With Real Toads: http://vivinfrance.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/homonymic-mishmash/