Live love laugh…. the Hankinson way.. Family, Education, Health, Humour, Resilience, compassion.
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.
© Alison Jean Hankinson
My offering for d’Verse after a blissful weekend away in the caravan taking a trip down memory lane with Dad.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
