Tag: loss

The Last Winter recedes…

We walked to heal our hearts and minds. The wind cut through like glass but the sunset set the ripples alight on the water. It was spring and a time of birth and regeneration. New life blossoming all around. But we walked with heavy eyes.

We walk often, it gives us chance to talk, or not as the moment requires. We walk to fill our souls with the soothing spectacle of the distant mountains and listen to the gentle lap-lap and let it wash over us. We are losing a loved one who is between the autumn and winter of his life and the knowledge that he is slipping away is becoming more than a whisper on the wind.

Spring blossoms slowly

Sunset cuts through the anguish

Life melts like glacier.

 

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse.

Man in the doorway…

Deadbeat

Bereft- bile rising on a tide of crimson tears

Soul surrendered.

 

Forget the humdrum faces of the faithful

Languish in the liminality of loss that lengthens the hours of every day since.

Bury your head. Bury your heart.

 

That which hath gone and cannot be gathered

For the past is passed, and whilst not to be forgotten cannot pulse again with life

Dust beckons.

 

Hooded, labelled, lost on the fringe

Of a world that ceased to care, no compassion.

Deadbeat.

 

© Alison Jean Hankinson

This isn’t my usual style and it is a poem for the man in the doorway many months ago, perhaps it is his back-story. It is for Napowrimo day 13.

This is for open link night with d’Verse.

A mother on raising sons.

My first was stillborn,

My cries carried across the fields on the cusp of a winter storm

The snow lay thick on the ground,

I lay like a mewling ewe and cradled her in my arms

Before the long walk home.

 

There were others, each swelling of my belly a signal of his pervasive masculinity.

Three brothers followed by a changeling child and so we were cast aside forced to live as outcasts

I moved boulders and stones and tilled the soil, back-breaking into the dead of night

A bairn on my back and another one snug as a bug deep inside.

He couldn’t feel my pain.

 

One by one they all moved on, they wearied at our laborious life

They found themselves new families and took themselves a wife

And I was left behind, old hag with sagging breasts

No milk to nursefeed bairns on winter nights

No place for my wearied bones to rest.

 

© Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for imaginary garden with real toads where we were invited to write in the voice of another.

Love you to Timbuktu and back…

My mind has gone to Timbuktu

I’d like to meet it there

It may be buried amongst some books

In a scholarly “libraire”.

 

I used to know the names of towns

And fun places by the sea

But now I can’t remember where

Or what I have eaten for my tea.

 

I think it is still a novelty

To see you sitting here with me

Your face is strangely familiar

Your love and kindness plain to see.

 

You take my hand with tenderness and press it firm against your face

Somewhere my memory stirs anew and I remember your embrace.

 

©Alison Jean Hankinson

According to the WHO globally there are about 47 million people who have dementia, with about 9.9 million new cases each year.

This is going to be my contribution to open link night for d’Verse. With love.

Towards Troubled Waters.

 

When I was loved by you I knew who I was

When I was loved by you the sun shone daily

And I could feel the warmth on my face

And there was a seductive security in your firm embrace.

 

When I was loved by you I could rest a while

When I was loved by you I could close my eyes

And hear your gentle breath through my restless slumber

In my turbid life you were my shelter and human anchor.

 

Now I am lost at sea, tossed and torn on turbulent tides

And you have left me for the love of another

Eyes wide open and sleep eludes me now.

 

Whose pillow will support my weary head

As I sail away from the safe shelter of your love

I stow the anchor slowly as the windlass grinds to a halt.

 

©Alison Jean Hankinson.

This was written for d’Verse where Bjorn challenged us to write an Italian sonnet. I have no idea if this lives up to what I understood of the form but I did give it a go. The image was from Wikimedia and labeled for reuse.

carl_bille_-_et_skib_pc3a5_et_stormfuldt_hav

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you going away with no word of farewell?

 

Mother

Died suddenly

Bereft beyond belief

I mourn her untimely passing

Tears shed

 

Still night

Stars beguile me with their beauty

My heartfelt loss immense

Grief engulfs me

Silence.

 

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse poetics. It is a reverse cinquain? My song choice was Tom Paxton. “The last thing on my mind”.

Tom Paxton

It’s a lesson too late for the learning
Made of sand, made of sand

It will soon be the anniversary, she passed away in 2008, suddenly without saying goodbye, she was 64, and I was on the other side of the world and didn’t even get home for the funeral. We all feel it still. She was my mum.

 

Beyond the shadows.

Maternal misgivings

Miscarriage numbs

Shades of silence separate us

Sorrow prevails

Suspended in shadows

 

Marriage meltdown

In grief defeated.

Barren and bewildered

Love lies

Dormant in the dust.

 

Test-tube babies

Twin harbingers of joy

Anchored in re-kindled love

Sunshine streams through

The clouds

 

©Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse where we were asked to use the word “shade”.

 

 

Footprints in the snow.

footprints_in_the_snow_in_minnesotaChristmas lights glitter and glow as the festive season is in full flow

An unexpected and unwelcome visitor steals through the shadows

Puts prime of life on ice and she is gone too soon.

Shattered souls weep amidst the shards of broken glass.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

image: By Gina Paulucci (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Living with loss.

It has been a very complex holiday period. We are packing up to move back to England in the New Year and whilst it is a period of reflection on what was and has been, and there is excitement at the prospect of what might now be in our future, the overall prevailing theme has actually been of loss.

It is hard to really describe what happens when you experience sudden and unexpected loss especially when it seems “unfair” not that any death is really fair. The truth is for those whom are closest and suffering the most, things will never really be the same and no amount of platitudes and musings will make it any easier. My heart goes out to Rosie who at the tender age of 17 must now find her own path through life without a mother to share her journey and all I know is that you never really get over losing your mum.

When our children were small it seemed so easy to be able to make things “better”, a sticking plaster for a grazed knee, a promise of a trip to the zoo, pancakes and ice-cream for dinner or a story about a skin horse who was so loved his hair was rubbed off and he became real.

I guess some of the loss is about the loss of being able to protect our children and make everything alright. Rosie must face the world without a mother’s love and I must leave my Ellen behind to make her own footsteps for her future.

Goodnight Katherine and God Bless. May all our children walk forward with courage and lead brave and worthy lives.