Friday, 29 March 2013

PHOTOGRAPHS & MEMORIES



I have been looking through old discs of photographs today. I have two reasons for do this. Firstly someone told me that home burned cds deteriorate over time, so I thought I’d better transfer them to my hard drive before they lose too much information as most of them are over ten years old. It was also a chance to look back and see how things have changed.

Here is a poem about my youngest daughter and how when she was younger she would bring her photo album to me and ask who all the people were.

My daughter brings her photo album,
It houses the dead within its pages.
“Tell me who these people are.”
We view our family at different ages.
An out of focus Aunty Eileen,
Always so clear in life.
“Here’s the first photo of you – just born,”
And one of my dear, dead wife.

These people will age no more,
Forever they will remain
And captured ourselves in turn
Will always be the same.

It’s a little clichéd but it was in my first collection Burning Music.


This brief poem came out of my desire to include the word molecule in a poem. Again, if I am honest, it needs to be part of something else. I have a box of lines that I have had to take from poems, even though I love them, to make the poem work. Do you ever do that?

to your cellophane smile
no molecule can cling or residue stain
as you sidestep damage again and again



In fact it did become the beginning of a poem, again from my first collection. I think like the other poem it’s too obvious.

To your cellophane smile
No molecule can cling or residue stain
As you side-step damage again and again.

In your harbouring hands
All facts may be transformed to aid your glory,
Interpretations given to any story.

Your body language swears
The stance is always man on a mission.
I cry out “Beware this man is a politician.”

Keen eyed readers of this blog will have clocked that I recently used the body language swears trope in a poem.


My latest orphan lines arrived this week due to my car breaking down in four lanes of rush hour traffic. When I got home I couldn’t get beyond this couplet.

Suddenly static in rush hour traffic,
I start to panic at potential havoc.

I still have to make it into a poem.





Today’s title comes from an old song by the late Jim Croce.


I am going to post on Tuesday this coming week, I want to put up more photographs.  Have a good weekend. 



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