Brisk breeze beguiles Winter sun warms the weariest of souls. Across the bay snow atop the Langdales. Gulls glide as eventide Sheds a subtle ombre orange sunset glow across the sheltered sands. Whisper me home.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
© Feature Image courtesy of Dave Hankinson
Summer days fade long before
dull darkening skies.
Autumn steals from the shadows.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Summer slumbers
Moonlit sky
memories subside.
Tide is turning
I am driftwood
soothed by sea.
Twisted and lifeless
shaped anew
By shifting sands.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
Sometimes your life can change in a second. A split second.
FAITH that which anchors us.
There you are swimming along, taking in the scenery, drinking in the wonderful aroma of a rich fulfilling life, clear in the knowledge of who you are, where you are at and where you are heading for and then BOOM.
A split second, no time to weigh things up, stack odds against likelihoods decide on the most suitable path forward and … Just BOOM.
FAITH that which anchors us.
In computer games, it is the moment when the screen says Game Over. You lost your final life, it wasn’t planned, it was some sneaky attack from nowhere, a slight slip of the thumb and the computer registered an 8 instead of a 7 and BOOM- game over. It wasn’t even intentional.
It is likely to be your own fault, a lapse in concentration, a misguided loyalty, a misunderstanding, too much haste in a too pressured job and that is it. Wiped out in a nanosecond. No insanity plea, no curtain call, just fingers gripping the edge hoping that you won’t fall, just silent prayers to an overworked God asking for forgiveness.
If you are lucky and your prayers are answered you will live to fight another day. You will be thankful, and kinder and maybe wiser and certainly more careful. You will always know and understand that everything can and does change in a split second for good or bad, better or worse and you will always know that the split-second can be at any moment in your life-that it is unlikely to have been planned, or heralded by omens and signs. Just BOOM.
FAITH that which anchors us.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
I shiver in the shadows of your unvoiced fears
My fingers icily tracing the outline of your unspoken anxieties like lace
As my whispers leave their memory on your wizened face.
You give me life,
I am the invisible force that keeps you on the straight and narrow
When others clamour and chide and try to pull you towards a doom and gloom and sorrow
That would drown us all.
In silence I stumble forward
And see the smile appear like sunshine after storms
As the dreams and yearnings of those earlier years come flooding back
And rekindle faith and hope and love.
Some may see me as the invisible worm
The memory keeper and in a moment I can change the mood and alter the meaning
Of all of your past and how you perceive your future.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for Tuesday’s poetics at d’verse. With love.
It has been a time of renewal, a time of shifts and loss and mourning, a time of giving and holding others, a time of allowing self to be swept aside. My father in law passed away on Dec 1st, one short week earlier we had finally moved house, the nights were long and cold, I packed and unpacked, we haemorraghed money- my husband was a selfless soul endlessly on the road caring for his father and mother, answering endless telephone calls- moments lost, tablets forgotten, repeated conversations, fragments of life recurring then receding, we collected groceries, cooked meals, later we watched as he listlessly slept and shouted and screamed in some other life, some other world crying through pain for help and searching for security and struggling for each long laboured breath until he was gone.
Each day I have gone to work, in my new job, loving the company of my new colleagues, welcoming the benign banter of everyday life, desperate for a smidging of something that resembled a slower pace, a calmer moment, welcoming the newfound calm of our homely little house, genuinely craving the solitude that I know will energise and bring renewal. The moments where the sky in all its splendour is the most treasured and important thing, when the cold chill biting at my fingers and toes reminds me of the joy of life, longing for the frozen earth to yield to spirited snowdrops and there to be enough space for me to savour the solitude that I love so much.
January brings snow
and frozen slivers of ice
Witch Hazel shivers.
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
This is for D’verse. Love to all and Happy New Year.
Ecclesiastes 3.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
I am full of hope that this new year will see us enter into a new phase of life. For me it is a brave new world. I hope that our expectations are less, that we can live off what we have without desiring things that are uneccessary. I hope that we can judge both others and ourselves less and learn to be tolerant, compassionate and kind. That we begin to appreciate that success is not measured by the amount of money or belongings that we possess and that our status is ascribed by our actions and words and not by our “job” or our “qualifications” or our “bank balance”.
I love my family unconditionally. There are times in the last few years where we have all faced adversity and unexpected challenges. I hope that my girls continue to walk forward in their lives secure in the knowledge that they are loved and that it is what they give, what they contribute and what they make of their lives that counts. I hope that they have many moments of joy and they have the heart and soul to recognise those moments for what they are. I am already proud of them beyond measure and they have already given me more love joy and pleasure than it is possible to describe.
For me it is a time to express my gratitude for all that is, and has been, and will be.
In this moment we are infinite. (Perks of Being A Wall Flower)
© Alison Jean Hankinson.
It has been a complex year and all I know is that many of you out there will have faced your own tough challenges, some that have been overcome with grit and determination and others that have almost broken you with the weight and depth of their difficulty.
There were days this year where I genuinely thought that there would be no resolution, that the interminable darkness and despair would swallow me whole, that my worthiness had been buried never to resurface under some massive cumbersome rock that could not be shifted.
I learned that it is important to feel wanted and needed and worthy and that for me these things come from the work that I do and the relationships I build with the people around me.
I learned that I need to feel connected and secure and that for me comes from having a home and a place to be in the world.
I learned that heartache and heartbreak are cruel masters that spare no-one and that all around me there are people whose stories would make my own look like a walk in the park, that we all need kindness and compassion. That a smile and a hug are the simplest gifts that can give someone a brighter moment in their darkened day.
I learned that many of us fear death, and that at the end it is not dignity that matters but the holding of the hand, the soothing of the brow, and just knowing that someone sits beside you.
It is this moment that matters, not the money, or the glamour, or the furnishings, the shadow of our former life or the lure of future success, but this very moment.
It is the simplest action of human understanding that matters, listening carefully to those around us, sharing their journey holding their hand as well as hoping they will hold ours, not the politics, the rhetoric, the arrogance of selfishness but the humility that is born from suffering, enduring and surviving.
I learned that it is important to be kind and compassionate to oneself and that every moment is a taonga to be treasured.
Namaste as the year draws to a close.
May there be moments of peace in our life.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
At d’Verse this Monday we were discussing translation and poetry.
My daughter Ellen’s favourite poem as a young teen was the translated version of Past One O Clock by Vladimir Mayakovsky and it has also become one of my favourites. Mayakovsky was a playwright as well as a poet, he often satirised aspects of “the state” and found himself in conflict with the authorities. He reportedly took his own life in 1930 aged 36 although there had always been some doubt cast over the timing and nature of his demise. Both he and Lilya Brik had affairs but even after the relationship ended they remained close.
I have no idea if it is a good translation but feel that it is most beautiful. Having lived in NZ I realise that often it is not possible to create perfect translations, so for example some phrases in Maori are more than just translatable words, a poem is a Taonga, which literally means a treasure or something that is highly valued, but the word Taonga is a much more accurate description it carries a sense of the sacrosanct.
Anyway I have to let you read the poem to understand its poignant beauty. It was left as part of his suicide note.
©Alison Jean Hankinson.
Past One O clock
Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.
©Vladimir Mayakovsky
With love to you all. XXXX
As the day casts its long shadow homeward
I recognise that so much of it has to do with the light.
They say it is always darkest before the dawn and perhaps that dawn is the realisation that the fear, shame and guilt linger longest in the hours of darkness
and they dance and pirouette amongst the silhouettes and shadows to a tune that beguiles and steals the light.
We light candles, we whisper of hope and future happiness and draw circles in vain to cast aside the demons.
We crave love and long to belong to another so that we have a hand to hold in the darkness a kindred spirit to guide us through the pain and suffering and lamentable servitude to solitude.
Sunrise.
Night yields to day and despair drifts away and the endless ebb and flow brings us slowly to the shores of our halcyon dreams.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
This is my contribution for World Mental Health Day. I think loneliness is a huge issue for so many people young and old alike and I think the hours of darkness are able to bring/conjure up their own unique set of torments.
For those who struggle to sleep it seems a long night.
For my girls.
Submitting this for open link night at d’Verse.
Hues of Hankinson 