Friday 19 January 2018

PERSONAL WEIGHT OF GUILT

 Thank you for your patience in waiting for this poem to unfold. I have been prompted to present it over three posts from the feedback I have received when I have read the entire poem.
Vainly I wanted the individual pieces of the poem to be considered for what they are.
This fifth [and final] part concerns the fallout from the event. Some people were, I have read, were committed for their own safety, having had some mental disturbance prompted by the effects of the solar flare.
I read of one young woman who had suffered some sort of breakdown and been committed to the local sanitarium. Apparently a young doctor had managed "to cure" her through conversation. I imagine some form of analysis before Freud.

Perceptive beyond the age in which he lived,
the doctor at the asylum simply talked with her,
and traced the misconceptions that had led to her commitment:
an overly religious childhood,
the phenomena occurring on a Sunday,
an obvious connection.

Her personal weight of guilt took longer to unravel,
but it was a common enough story:
the pressure of the over attentive lodger,
her chronic need to please,
a lonely Saturday before the phenomena.


He talked her back to a place in this world.
Phew! That's it. Hope it makes sense and that you enjoyed it.
Normal service will be resumed next post.
Until then here is the sublime Annabelle Chvostek. Annabelle how about a tour of England? Please?
Until next time.

Friday 12 January 2018

MIDNIGHT AMERICA

This post is a continuation of the last post. 
I have been writing about the 1859 solar flare. It is sometimes known as the Carrington Event, after the astronomer who observed the sun flare.
Last post I shared the first two parts of the poem. Here are the next two. The first concerns those people in America [where the effects were experienced most acutely as it was night time]. The event took place on a Sunday and many people interpreted it from a religious perspective thinking it was the end of the world.
The second poem is more fanciful. I had read that the telegraph system was powered by the solar flare. Someone discovered that if the batteries were disconnected from the telegraphic equipment it would still work.
I wondered what if the Sun had wanted to speak to us and its words had been picked up by a telegraph operator and discarded.

3.
Cut to midnight America:
Drawn out of doors
to stare at the false dawn light sky,
to wait for a miracle,
unsure if they really wanted one,
then going back to bed
the morning is Monday.

Apart from the worried ones,
the ones that drank in the park until it didn't matter any more.
The ones who woke at first light baptised in dew.


4.
Beneath the power of the sun,
even the telegraph system went down
but there was this one operator,
having figured out the battery had to be disconnected,
that the solar storm would power the wire,
who listened to the letters chatter
as the key talked unaided.

He was a remorseful man and
the reproving words of love from the sun
amplified the burden he carried.
Halfway through the message he stopped writing,
tore the paper, put it in the waste bin.
No one ever knew.
I shall post the fifth part next time.
Here is more Arthur Lee and Love.

Until next time.

Friday 5 January 2018

AN INDIFFERENT GALAXY

I've been working on a rather long poem for some time now. It came about after I read about The Great Solar Storm of 1859. I'd first heard of it in passing a number of years ago and when I came across a more detailed reference it led me to research the topic more thoroughly, which in turn led me to want to write about it.
There are a number of reasons why the storm is significant. It was the first time a solar flare had been observed and its effects charted. Also because of the telegraph the effects of the storm could be followed across the globe [specifically Europe and America]. It was a global event. Thirdly it was of such a magnitude that if it happened today we would be in trouble as it would knock out satellites and cause havoc with our electronic equipment.
Here are the first two sections of the poem:

The Solar Storm of 1859 in Five Acts

1.
The sun had been alone since creation,
ignored by the local stars,
who outshone it, bigger, brighter, better.
Gotten above ourselves, the sun reflected,
only it never reflected, it blazed, it burned
it turned hydrogen to helium,
shouting its light to an indifferent galaxy.

And its children disappointed.
Some had rings, that was true,
and most had managed to have moons of their own,
but that third one, the almost binary,
seemed intent on throwing away
any advantages the Cinderella zone had bestowed.

So the sun flared and the sun spat,
a ball of plasma tumbling through space
and the earth took it square on the jaw.

2.
At this point I invent an imaginary ancestor
to people a cottage in Cheadle,
to walk out that night and look up
at the shimmering green blanket
of the Northern Lights that far south.
I was after achieving different voices for each part of the poem. This is why the first section is light and I hope humorous. In the second section I wanted to show how far south the Northern Lights came due to the solar flare.
Once I started reading about the event I wanted to convey some of its magnitude to the reader.
The Cinderella Zone is  the distance from a sun that offers the best opportunities for life to evolve. The earth and its large moon could almost be a binary planet.
I leave you with Arthur Lee and the last incarnation of Love.
Superb stuff. Forever changes is one of my all time favourite lps. I think I'm on my third copy, having worn the other two out.
Until next time and the rest of this poem.