I was chasing a fugitive thought that I thought that I had had during my swim.  I could not remember if it was a real thought (something usable) or just a vague direction.  I could not remember topic, subject or depth.  Just a vague feeling that something which might have been was now consigned to not at all.  That doesn't stop you make a desultory sort of attempt to trawl through closed memories hoping that something magical will happen.  Well, it didn't and whatever apercu I did have will have to remain a lost treasure!
     But I wrote a few scrawls about the loss and found myself trying to make something of the negation, so to speak.  Then the memory of 'fishing' in Roath Park came back to me and a few jotted lines later the title, encapsulating another memory, was written down and soon I had enough to persuade myself that the lost memory had prompted something constructive after all!
     The title seems to promise that the following poem will be something like one of Aesop's Fables - as it happens, the poem is not like a fable, but the concept that an approachable story might contain a thought is one that I think is appropriate.
     I think this poem is about something like intellectual responsibility and an acceptance that new information might disrupt previously held assumptions.
     By the way, the dog's name was Penny and she was one of those dogs who spoils you for any future canine interloper for your affections!

The Rabbit Who Sat & Stared

Ideas breed elusiveness –

so you’re ashamed to say.

Sometimes they watch you

watching: hiding in full sight.

           

            They’re like those

tiddlers in the curving stream in

Roath Park’s wildest part:

there, and not there – some sort of

thought experiment protected

by refraction. 

                        And the clumsy

hands of childhood stayed by

what-if-I-do-catch-them – then, what then?

           

            Or like our dog. 

High strung and Labrador and spoilt. 

Who chasing a wild rabbit,

just before it slipped

into the longer grass, it stopped

and turned and sat and stared

at our brave hound,

                       

                        who promptly

ricocheted away, angle obtuse,

and sniffed and snuffled grass

ten safe feet far from

that unmoving thing.

Ideas glare you out, defying

the intentions that you thought you had.

Protected by an obviousness

that you so rarely see.

As it happens I did catch (once, and only once) a tiddler in the Park stream and put it in a jam jar and took it home.  It was dead within an hour or so.  I realise now that the care that I took over it: giving it a clean jar and fresh, clean, cold water from the tap was exactly the environment that the poor fish did not want after its muddy, vegetation filled original home.

     I would like to say that this death had a profound effect on me.  But it didn't.  I went out into the back yard and played in my wigwam and all, as far as I was concerned, was well with the world.

This is one of those poems where I am not totally sure that I know what I am on about, but the feeling is something I know is right!
          This poems came about as a response to a prompt in the Poetry Group in Barcelona.  The theme was 'Colour' and I half remembered something, which may or may not be true, that one critic suggested that some of the colour combinations and choices in the paintings of Fernand Léger was due, in part to colour blindness.
          I too have partial colour blindness, a confusion between red and green which, disconcertingly seems to vary in intensity for no obvious reason.  So, I felt some fellow feeling for the artist, and used what I think is true to talk about perception - which I suppose fits with the subject!
          I like the title Autocrat of Shades and I like the feeling in the last stanza, even if I am not absolutely sure what it means!
          I wonder what my feelings about this poem will be in another week or so?  Time will tell.

Colour

The painter Léger’s life was

colour everyday – and yet, they say,

the man himself was colour blind!

There’s no official test for artists

like the circle of small spots

where you can see a ‘9’

and I see ‘17’ –

                       that tells us what?

I touch the grass that is, for

me, as green as my reality.

I speak as Autocrat of Shades!

I say that my eyes

and that your eyes

are the grass –

and Léger’s paintings too.

I vividly remember those colourful circular charts that we were given during one day of fairly exhaustive (and obtrusive) medical tests in school.  I'm not sure that I have the numbers right, but I plead poetic licence! 

POEMS IN HOLY WEEK iv. Wednesday - Renewal

This poem started from simple observation where so much building work had been done and so much was new and bright - and there in a crack the inevitable tuts of grass finding somewhere, anywhere to have their life.
          I am not sure how this pome fits into the sequence I have started, but I do feel that there are elements in the thought behind the lines which are appropriate for the sort of meditative quality that I am looking for.
          I have consciously used repetition in an almost incantatory way and there are one or two half references which I think add to the suitability for the sequence.

Poems in Holy Week

iv.       Wednesday – Renewal

We share a common need

to surface surfaces;

to be control;

to show we are in charge.

The concrete’s poured and cured;

what once was rough, unkempt

is now polished and plain.

The wind has no obstruction.

The shifting dust finds

purchase hard on

featureless, smooth slabs.

But look at edges,

look at joins where

imperfection, broken tiles,

a crumble, are enough to

garner dirt and make

a plot for grass to live in –

the grass that looks like

ragamuffin’s hair with roots

unruly, thrusting down

right past the toes –

the stuff that can’t

be drawn with easy grasp.

The stuff that thrives

in spite of every effort

to remake what’s there

with what we want

that leaves us wanting

envoi

In irony that art dare not attempt,

the grass is gone

- within a day -

beneath flat plaster

setting well in place.

But I have marked the spot,

and now will wait and

count the days before

futility’s restored.

Reading through the poem again I am impressed by how much I have been seeing over the past few weeks is actually contained in it.  I am not sure that anyone other than myself will see this as a sort of diary, but I can spot lines and link them to days, not only in terms of what I have seen, but also in terms of what I have thought.

And reading through it once more I have made changes that you cannot see because I have replaced the previous version with a new one.  Some of the changes are minor, but I have added an 'envoi' as the site of my observation, which was the basis for the poem has been changed in the last 24 hours, the grass ripped out and new plaster or concrete laid!  At least the poem is bang up to date!