family-time – aspoonfulofsugar337

Shade of Seasons

New year full of promise as winter fades to grey

Blue skies remind us that spring is on the way.

Blood red roses with valentine’s love ooze

Rainy days of April splash in shiny black patent shoes.

Bright yellow sunflowers against the garden wall

Wearing mumma’s high heeled sandals to make me look so tall.

Green grass growing wildly under orange summer sun

Blackberry picking and licking purple fingers in autumn fun.

Silver stars a shining against a dark moonlit sky

Brown brindly witches broom at Halloween we fly.

Pink and fluffy slippers for cold and wintery nights

White sparkly lights on the Christmas tree so bright.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

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The Angel of the North.

Emerging from the darkened voiceless void beneath

Embracing weathered wings span the Gateshead skyline

Reflects our transition from industrial to information age

Celebrates the toil and labour of those beneath who mined.

Above ground we breathe the air and grasp the light

200 tonnes of weathering steel guards our future still

Hope rises from coal’s scarred and savaged wounds

As we pay homage to the Angel on the hill.

Deep-rooted in its megalithic mound

And anchored down by love and stone.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Road Trip to Brighouse Bay.

As a young boy in Kirkcudbright,

Dad sat on the harbour wall eating fish n chips.

Summer bliss.

Wet and windy August Bank holiday

Returning to old haunts with Dad,

Trip down memory lane,

Eating haddock and chips

In the bandstand in the rain.

My offering for d’Verse after a blissful weekend away in the caravan taking a trip down memory lane with Dad.

At the final sunset

In the end

It doesn’t matter what you had

It matters what you gave.

In the end

It doesn’t matter what you avoided

It matters what you did.

In the end

It doesn’t matter what they thought of you

It matters how you perceived yourself.

What joy gave your own life meaning

What peace you found in your own heart.

What indelible moments you left in the hearts and minds

Of the people you loved and who loved you.

©Alison Jean Hankinson

Paul Scribbles asked us to write about “the end” for d’verse.

Being able to give… the greatest blessing.

I can smile and skip and scurry in hurry along the winding road

I can speak, chide and compliment and listen to lighten your load

I have food work and sustenance and a humble comfortable abode.

I am blessed with unfaltering hope and love and wings to fly

And distant dreams to share and amazing opportunities to try

And firm friendships love and family that death will always defy.

My family are a blessing and they give me hope each and every day

When I am lost they give me sense of purpose and help me find my way

They are my anchor in stormy weather when I would rather run away.

May you find your inner strength in the gifts of love you receive

May you give back compassionately to those who are in need

And remember that the most bountiful blessing is in the deed.

Alison Jean Hankinson

This was created in response to Paul Scribbles poetics challenge for d’Verse on the theme of blessings.

Glasson dock steeped in sunshine, the echo of the empty space that was the Babagee. Barges and boats and banter of family gatherings shimmers across the water beyond the broken hulls. The old stones of the lockgate still holds the memory of your footsteps.

Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for the Quadrille with d’Verse hosted by Grace tonight, Still is the prompt and it is on there somewhere. The image is from Wikimedia and is of the derelict Babagee before it was demolished.

d’Verse quadrille

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Sunset on Mount Tiger

A house is not a home if it isn’t in your heart.

A house is not a home if it isn’t the place that lifts your dreams

And makes you smile and puts the gladness in your eyes

When the sun sinks in the west and the summer lingers on.

Our Mount Tiger home was filled with love and kindness

They all belonged, the children laughing, the turbid teens,

The thieving possums, lonely pheasants and quirky quails,

The irritating huhu bugs, mesmerising puriri moths and startled skinks.

Our house was small but wore a warm place in our hearts

Our lives were kneaded and fashioned and left to prove in the sun.

Going home at the end of the day was like a long slow sigh

As the work was left behind and we were back where we belonged.

Alison Jean Hankinson

d’Verse poetics

The challenge for poetics was to write about a building and we were really supposed to create it. This was our home on Mount Tiger, a small rectangular box atop a hill with a steep acre of bush, and we were the visitors the custodians of the land, we shared our home and landscape with all who had come before us and thrived around us. We had lavender for the bees, wildflowers for the butterflies, cabbages for the caterpillars, and I think the birds and rabbits lived off my vegetable garden. It was a beautiful home for my family to grow up in. We didn’t build it but we did grow it.

Childhood Haunt.

The promenade bathed in winter sunshine,

Seagulls, chips and gravy, Blackpool rock

Then the Winter Gardens in all her splendour

bringing memories and echoes of a bygone era.

Reminiscing on a lifetime of cherished holidays

Whispers of childhood wishes and ghosts of summers past.

Alison Jean Hankinson

The challenge for tonight’s quadrille was Ghost. Today we revisited many ghosts as we took a road trip to Blackpool a place that will always hold a special place in my heart.

d’Verse quadrille #26

Crossing over

Here I stand cap in hand

A lifetime before me

And a lifetime behind me

And in the lamplight the path isn’t clear.

Here I lean upon my wooden bridge

Subdued memories ripple downstream in the wake of yesterday

And if I cross- hail what tomorrow brings

Shadows or sunsets in the evening?

Alison Jean Hankinson

For poetics d’Verse

d’Verse poetics abridged

Image– my mum and my daughter Ellen at St Annes, Lancashire. Mum was called Anne…

The lifetime behind me is my mum, whom I left behind and lost when I came to NZ, the lifetime before me is Ellen my eldest daughter whom I leave behind when I leave NZ to return to England.

For Ellen

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Grief rolls over me

In huge tumultuous waves

leaving you behind

This time of year it always feels like the end of something and the start of something new. Even though we are in summer it is the end of the school year. It is always a time of reflection and it has also been a time of leaving for our family. I left my parents behind in Jan 2006, my last living visual memory of my mother was seeing her crying in the rear view mirror as we drove away to our new life here in New Zealand. It was only supposed to be a see you later, but it was a goodnight.

This year I am returning to spend time with my family and I have to say goodbye to some colleagues and friends after a very complex 11 years and it is very very difficult, they have walked beside me when I needed them. However the most difficult thing I have to do is to leave my eldest daughter here, and I sincerely hope for both of us it is simply a see you later and not to all a goodnight. This might not have been how the prompt was intended to be interpreted but it is what it spoke to me.