Memory of love
Breaks through the torrent of tears
Summer fading fast.
©Alison Jean Hankinson
Tag: loss
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.
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”.
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.
Christmas 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.
Love in Sonata form.
Spring
He saw her across the room and his heart stopped for a subtle second
She was forbidden fruit from the garden of Eden
A thing of beauty and innocence with an overtone of darkness and despair
He knew that his love could make her brightness soar and bring light into her soul.
Summer
Their love flourished under the summer sun,
He brought warmth into her life
There was colour in her speech and
He offered her a freedom and release
That before she had not known.
There were infinite possibilities
An eternity of love that would nourish
And heal from within and banish
The spectres of solitude and silence
He would be her sanctuary.
Autumn came and darkness cast it’s cloak across their days
His light across the room was dimmed by her shadows
Her innocence tarnished by forgotten promises and the broken bonds of love
He knew that his love had enslaved and condemned her to an eternity of pain.
Their love had died with the embers of the sun.
Winter won.
Alison Jean Hankinson
This is for d’verse
Make Music of Those Words–dVerse MTB
Influence of music through Sonata Form. As a trombonist I have always had music close to my heart and soul. I learned through classical genres and one of my favourite forms is sonata form. If you listen to something like Beethoven’s Pathetique it is very clearly written in sonata form. The first movement is the Exposition and contains the themes in their melodic infancy, they grow through major and minors in the second movement or development and in the Recapitulation, the final movement there is a conclusion with developed references relating to the the early themes. I find Sonata form is a good analogy for life, love and pretty much everything. I tried to capture its essence in the poem through the development and then loss of the relationship and use the season to represent the movement of time.
