tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10535527993250342732024-03-13T08:07:07.747-07:00Frances-Ann Norton: PoetryI am an interdisciplinary artist, poet, educator and folk musician. This page is for my poetry. There are some strong themes, some funny stuff, some sad motifs. Just letting you know dear reader. Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.comBlogger338125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-13862300509520327752024-01-02T09:03:00.000-08:002024-01-02T09:03:41.173-08:00Chap Book #6 The Fragile Knots of Time<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASRcgHo7b9c-R3Y2AdM01Fwzy-YTQBz2LbLq_fz2MxVHRNMgwoDk4jfYyTT01UrZux_jLdEW0gFf5VMwSVlbCrdR5lOsBeDPdMFu1YDyTTozlYPMvW27FEAfpGGEk-suB8eU9NDd3-X24tL8ts7qdLef6yun2oTk4DWxkxsJlpa_N3FYv1c655FOcDUk/s434/f7b54b_61cb496de3ab48cb82694120615ffe85~mv2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="389" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgASRcgHo7b9c-R3Y2AdM01Fwzy-YTQBz2LbLq_fz2MxVHRNMgwoDk4jfYyTT01UrZux_jLdEW0gFf5VMwSVlbCrdR5lOsBeDPdMFu1YDyTTozlYPMvW27FEAfpGGEk-suB8eU9NDd3-X24tL8ts7qdLef6yun2oTk4DWxkxsJlpa_N3FYv1c655FOcDUk/w574-h640/f7b54b_61cb496de3ab48cb82694120615ffe85~mv2.jpg" width="574" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhcQZCFX9ydzbtva8b7plaezRWg1b0zo0jj98qk-kFKRSkn8sGTpyQBAiYc7j04ELrAH6uBiGW_AyIDWsSo1BMPuP2RjBk1tq4TolI9F3fWqOcrSpaXEx5KGiTm8NPJi56G4YL4uzsuXS0HLTK6OBDr2r0FurYC11XRn8NWWDqOyICsSIHEob7jZXnoaU/s4200/motoki-tonn-naU5BXEi9p4-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2781" data-original-width="4200" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhcQZCFX9ydzbtva8b7plaezRWg1b0zo0jj98qk-kFKRSkn8sGTpyQBAiYc7j04ELrAH6uBiGW_AyIDWsSo1BMPuP2RjBk1tq4TolI9F3fWqOcrSpaXEx5KGiTm8NPJi56G4YL4uzsuXS0HLTK6OBDr2r0FurYC11XRn8NWWDqOyICsSIHEob7jZXnoaU/w640-h424/motoki-tonn-naU5BXEi9p4-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Kintsugi <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I see myself stockpiling useless rubbish, broken and
disintegrating bits. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I do not need them. I must simply let them go.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Boxes of broken sculptures are holding me back.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am the deconstruction, I have ruined myself, and I cannot
be fixed easily.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I begin confidently saying to myself, “I can fix it… I can
mend it”… but this is untrue.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Only the <i>Great I Am</i> can repair this broken thing I
have become.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Only <i>They</i> can mend the un-mendable, redeem the
irredeemable, fix the unfixable.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In my brokenness, in my weakness, in my fragmentation, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have a strength in the hope that <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the fragile knot of time can be undone, then strongly
reknotted.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The <i>Author of the Universe</i> is the artisan craftsperson
who is creative and inventive.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>They</i> mend with slivers of gold in the Kintsugi way.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The golden repair, the golden join, making me whole again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Making beauty out of an undoing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps I am never going to be ready or fully comprehend
this gift.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But I am working on it, every day.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And when the tea bowl of my life is dropped from the hand of
the oldest woman in the world…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That will be it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Snapshot as the tea bowl falls through space in slow motion and
hits a slate floor.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It shivers in implosion.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In my own spirit hand,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the essence of that kintsugi tea bowl remains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As I take a sip <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and slip into the next life.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@motoki?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Motoki Tonn</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/white-and-blue-floral-ceramic-cup-naU5BXEi9p4?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><pre class="eCUCF_" data-hook="description" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; text-overflow: ellipsis; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Chapbook Series #6 ‘The Fragile Knots of Time’</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Collection of Poems & Stories</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;"> </p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">British Library Cataloguing Publication Data:<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; scroll-behavior: auto !important;" />A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">ISBN: 978-1-916635-14-2</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">First Published November 2023</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;"> </p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">All texts are subjected to Copyright © by the Authors.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Copyright © 2023 by Mehri Publication Ltd. \ London.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Copyright © 2023 by Cista Arts Ltd. \ London.</p></pre>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-77984706085432235732024-01-02T08:48:00.000-08:002024-01-02T08:48:45.801-08:00<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcsQoFOQj0yiWU02s2HGWbyfBiHMjs6kViGdFyF4UGpPYp9UlZfBQFC8NRILqSmjOtyFPjRyzQpVHMWrZ1NQvlsTCkhONQ9iM1UXHYnz-HDb5oARGZFHdvaOcHfVw4evq21-r7W15MXxuWb469YMUKLFtVUU6SwOvG1f5AZszlrAh_trjTn9-NVvd1tao/s5472/landon-martin-_UQgnpzyVo0-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcsQoFOQj0yiWU02s2HGWbyfBiHMjs6kViGdFyF4UGpPYp9UlZfBQFC8NRILqSmjOtyFPjRyzQpVHMWrZ1NQvlsTCkhONQ9iM1UXHYnz-HDb5oARGZFHdvaOcHfVw4evq21-r7W15MXxuWb469YMUKLFtVUU6SwOvG1f5AZszlrAh_trjTn9-NVvd1tao/s320/landon-martin-_UQgnpzyVo0-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Blackbird Egg <o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Time slows down in the Victorian mirror.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">She is haunted by every face that checked
themselves in the glass. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">She is on the cusp.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A life about to begin in earnest, on the
tipping point of adulthood.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">On the apex of future relationships,
sexuality and desire. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">“Yes” she says, “that’s me in the mirror”,
long brown hair, grey-blue eyes.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">She is just an ordinary brown bird.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">But common or garden blackbirds create sky
eggs, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">objects of beauty and desire.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Each one speckled slightly differently in the
genus. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">If only she can create of herself such an
object of yearning, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">her small brownness will be worth the
transformation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">On the Hall-stand crafted in a grand antique
style, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">are a collection of blackbird’s eggs. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Saved in small glass containers with their
lids tight shut.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Through the glass she sees pale blue specked
eggs, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">broken with raggedy edges.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The armoire ominously overshadows her slight
fourteen year old self.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Whom she sees reflected back in multiple
mirrors, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">framed in the warm gleam of conker wood.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The blue grey of the eggs next to the smoky
topaz of her eyes.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">This almirah holds years of collected cult
objects. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Time moves in and out of the refracted
rainbows <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">in the bevelled mirrors in fragmented
reflections.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Her fourteen year old self is still there
doing her own haunting. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Glimpsed at times in the mirror behind the
spiral column.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Holding a blue egg up to her eye. <o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Waiting to begin.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p>First published in Swordplay zine - Apex issue. https://swordplayzine.gumroad.com/ </p><p>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@lbmartin12?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Landon Martin</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/two-eggs-in-bird-nest-_UQgnpzyVo0?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a><br /></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-30595646839604962232024-01-02T08:40:00.000-08:002024-01-02T09:11:48.410-08:00Chap Book #3 Gone With The Wind<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6Gh-zd_CjQTph2vs6iY6jmmiDTcDTqCSm5bGHnY5HWEzAHG7dpaFWc5IeBbM4MYW7VjMjazk1lHzXKGIbiOUzgNn3Z6taooSs0_0ypDoFgzQzeibhbhVsRiSjacdBDQd5fKt75nWePdK5_VDEf_YUCKe-PW1fWfU53LMEeRlsoxfTEAt0AnB5alub1g/s409/f7b54b_573ffcc6a8c64affb2071705414faf32~mv2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6Gh-zd_CjQTph2vs6iY6jmmiDTcDTqCSm5bGHnY5HWEzAHG7dpaFWc5IeBbM4MYW7VjMjazk1lHzXKGIbiOUzgNn3Z6taooSs0_0ypDoFgzQzeibhbhVsRiSjacdBDQd5fKt75nWePdK5_VDEf_YUCKe-PW1fWfU53LMEeRlsoxfTEAt0AnB5alub1g/s320/f7b54b_573ffcc6a8c64affb2071705414faf32~mv2.jpg" width="249" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Delighted to be published in:- https://www.cistaarts.com/product-page/chapbook-series-3-gone-with-the-wind</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCyWw33RxRsQM1mZlk7bpgE29Pr-Cg1VWavYIjQRpj-8b1QbABwSkwmoz8aR1MOWrdHms8dCbonN28gwitj-GlgrrPhupyOlOKppnWGyDlL5ocJKFCfqgDwY_X8036X-mQeZnh7Qht-r7LPpDqJKQyDummj5zZQioOd4F4bVIgkI9E5oDLSPmSM-Wucec/s5472/elio-santos-5ZQn_gWKvLE-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3648" data-original-width="5472" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCyWw33RxRsQM1mZlk7bpgE29Pr-Cg1VWavYIjQRpj-8b1QbABwSkwmoz8aR1MOWrdHms8dCbonN28gwitj-GlgrrPhupyOlOKppnWGyDlL5ocJKFCfqgDwY_X8036X-mQeZnh7Qht-r7LPpDqJKQyDummj5zZQioOd4F4bVIgkI9E5oDLSPmSM-Wucec/s320/elio-santos-5ZQn_gWKvLE-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Learning craft from the wind</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">There was once a woman. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Who learned craft from wind, art from the sea and design
from the earth. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">She sewed intricate organic patterns in labyrinthine
repeats. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Her creativity was celebrated through the land. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">She was known as La Corachine, beautiful shell of the
sea. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Her daughter Powys was <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">as natural as the elements, precious as comfort and
radiant with gold-nature. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">One day an old woman coloured like an autumn day came
to their door.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“I want what is yours.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">She said, and stuck a pin into the girl, who
transformed into a brown-bird and flew off. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“Old woman”, cried the mother, please cook a meat and
potato pie for us. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“Of course”, she sang, catching the brown-bird-daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And made her into a pie with potato skins. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The leftover bones she threw into a corner of the
garden.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">In three days, a beautiful tree grew there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">It bore three golden pears, which the mother harvested.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">When she cut open the third fruit, out stepped Powys. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">More beautiful than ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The old woman was packed-off to a distant land. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">La Corachine and Powys grew in love together, in the
slow crafting of their days. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Filled with colour, stories, quilts and embroideries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Inspired by the wind, the sea and the earth. They
said,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“We understand the lapping language of the river, and
the glistering of the stars, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">the interconnectedness of humans and trees, speaking through
the mycelium”. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And there is always a bowl of pears near by.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@eliomendes?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Elio Santos</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/white-thread-5ZQn_gWKvLE?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a></o:p></p><pre class="eCUCF_" data-hook="description" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; text-overflow: ellipsis; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Chapbook Series #3 _ Gone with the Wind</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Collection of Poems & Stories</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;"> </p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">British Library Cataloguing Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-916635-49-4<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; scroll-behavior: auto !important;" />First Published Spring 2023</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Design by Cista Arts studio. Printed & bound in the United Kingdom.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Co-published by Mehri Publication Ltd & Cista Arts Ltd </p></pre></div></div><p><br /></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-61239615051851131652024-01-02T08:08:00.000-08:002024-01-02T08:23:57.083-08:00Collect Art Publication July 2023<p> First published in Collect Arts Summer 2023 edition</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbjY8uf-2jSlo2IVfQe-WHGZ9n_GH5tKEFko4z0wp1l5Ba3RxXNp5m365ccayDPvSCr9Mi-S0Y8wNjneTVJg65G5LJ9UpPFR-ImGFTdP2YsdWPHMJibdIBDYoq3W1aU-f2y8P3qMHtiqoSVrrdw7CysKaAxsgmXRLMCBzmJDpWEqna-S87etNGDnZSRvk/s991/800_o_1h52lb193tjsvja1fuv1lisj5d0.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="991" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbjY8uf-2jSlo2IVfQe-WHGZ9n_GH5tKEFko4z0wp1l5Ba3RxXNp5m365ccayDPvSCr9Mi-S0Y8wNjneTVJg65G5LJ9UpPFR-ImGFTdP2YsdWPHMJibdIBDYoq3W1aU-f2y8P3qMHtiqoSVrrdw7CysKaAxsgmXRLMCBzmJDpWEqna-S87etNGDnZSRvk/w516-h640/800_o_1h52lb193tjsvja1fuv1lisj5d0.png" width="516" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7exK-vbDqsD4bXr88wT48VOMrNiVnFXnDYjJjYBDkgEIlf4Rwh91pPvC8ESbvPbsXfjJhE5YVN8sVjxQS28tZ9mlHBFQh2MwY_jqoaRmo7KY9LX_Tz1tGOHl4klXJG1PidmUwANLIMgwl2WfMDlXB2FSWZzEybYm6-jynEKXN7gF5ReNhnvMtq0s2m9c/s6240/kristine-cinate-QvjL4y7SF9k-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="6240" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7exK-vbDqsD4bXr88wT48VOMrNiVnFXnDYjJjYBDkgEIlf4Rwh91pPvC8ESbvPbsXfjJhE5YVN8sVjxQS28tZ9mlHBFQh2MwY_jqoaRmo7KY9LX_Tz1tGOHl4klXJG1PidmUwANLIMgwl2WfMDlXB2FSWZzEybYm6-jynEKXN7gF5ReNhnvMtq0s2m9c/w640-h426/kristine-cinate-QvjL4y7SF9k-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stone all the flowers<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The year of the art school tutorials. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The difficult woman you are to me, and the difficulty I present to
you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The year of my recovery and your husband’s death. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Your husband fails and worsens through the days of our trimesters
together. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As he weakens and declines, I grow incrementally stronger. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As if terrible fatalistic scales of balance, set and reset.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Do not cheat her. Give her a full measure of time and experiences
with him. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Pressed down, shaken together and overflowing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">She, in the face of all this decay<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Chooses to destroy flowers with stones. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Until their purple hearts stained the cartridge with their
elemental pigments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">She cuts the flowers only to waste them in the parching sun. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It is the cycle of being and unbeing, the grass withers and the
flower fades (Isiah 40:8).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">She decides to press her flowers till their lungs burst on fine
cotton Lawn.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Flower torture continues all summer at a scale unknown.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Vast swathes of meadows of flowers fall. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A thousand at one side of her, ten thousand at her right hand,
(Psalm 91). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">mown down, with her scythe of doom.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">She greedily gathers the quiet fast lives into her hands. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Takes their lives as easily as shutting a book. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Turning off a machine. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Leaving the room and turning out the light. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I too am but a breath on a summers morning. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">My days fleeting as a shadow across the sun (Psalm 44:4).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As summer wears into golden-close-autumn,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Her husband wilts and droops, becoming cloudy <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">losing his colour, it is all too late <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">even freshwater cannot revive him or save his life. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">His water is drained and he is sent back to the earth from which
he came.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">While I become myself again. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Remembering the time of the stoning of the flowers.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p style="margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve-breaks;">Photo by Kristine Cinate on Unslapsh. IG account - @ziemelu_kristine</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve-breaks;"><br /></span></p><div><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15px; text-align: start; white-space-collapse: preserve-breaks;">.............</span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUxDo9mTTuBZUZRhm9a5AA78WXqECby2mptSKvnYIEGYhTv8d7KqW0o5hvHEKqg-4PU5nJZbk6nvv_5tVyasIGfADrT_mjuOz-I1L4Yp8M0It_2mCKRQix5uiZSS09Z_wYq1rjqgIiCUQcN7XcTslslHATXp62Et0ddxDvZpoKgVX3W0x-3TF8QCuVDDQ/s3872/scott-umstattd-wxruheY5nG8-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2581" data-original-width="3872" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUxDo9mTTuBZUZRhm9a5AA78WXqECby2mptSKvnYIEGYhTv8d7KqW0o5hvHEKqg-4PU5nJZbk6nvv_5tVyasIGfADrT_mjuOz-I1L4Yp8M0It_2mCKRQix5uiZSS09Z_wYq1rjqgIiCUQcN7XcTslslHATXp62Et0ddxDvZpoKgVX3W0x-3TF8QCuVDDQ/w640-h426/scott-umstattd-wxruheY5nG8-unsplash.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 15px; text-align: start; white-space-collapse: preserve-breaks;"><br /></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Washing Up Can Wait</span></b><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The pots and pans sit in greasy plies, as Sister Many-Furs of
Grimm’s tales fame<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rolls up her sleeves and get to the washing up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How diligently she works in her rags, knowing all the while that
really, she has a walnut shell.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Inside is a dress of moonlight, a dress of the sun and a dress of
starlight.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With these costumes she has all kinds of plans.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Parties to go to, people to meet, a future to forge towards, in
freedom.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Escapes to hatch and execute.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her walnut in hand, her disguise in place she melts into the
background of the kitchens.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Biding her time, thinking things through, Seeing the lay of the
land.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Absconding from an incestuous father was step one.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Getting a spot by the fire, a job and some cash stowed away that
was step two.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even if it is just washing up at The Palace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She is an independent woman, with means and motivation of her own.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The washing up is a place marker, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">a means to an end.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Standing by the sink for two, four, six hours washing up after a
palace feast. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">George Orwell did it, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">for the price of freedom.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@scott_umstattd?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Scott Umstattd</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/kitchen-utensils-on-stone-washing-station-wxruheY5nG8?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">.....................</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJAqha-CUhixFYUDnt1ypCs7-M8qANZ4V89MF1dAZYc-4ZNl9bwdlIVgCwuPYJX0OBgajlYdSNE6qQv4XLol09PypqQ8HWy_4HfJ4PTe82_ZdYKarTQ5kkrM4ymB97H3BFCTGZFuynQTqIuX788ZA9ZUx9YtVbx9YpjKndFOzEKk9xkGpT8Qg4hD-baUE/s1200/Ancient-torc.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJAqha-CUhixFYUDnt1ypCs7-M8qANZ4V89MF1dAZYc-4ZNl9bwdlIVgCwuPYJX0OBgajlYdSNE6qQv4XLol09PypqQ8HWy_4HfJ4PTe82_ZdYKarTQ5kkrM4ymB97H3BFCTGZFuynQTqIuX788ZA9ZUx9YtVbx9YpjKndFOzEKk9xkGpT8Qg4hD-baUE/s320/Ancient-torc.webp" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">photo by: https://www.irishamericanmom.com/what-is-a-celtic-torc/</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Torque <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The image is quite abstract.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Colour palette in 1962 modernist.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tangerine, mint green and chocolate brown. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The jeweller – a young version of my mother, is in the shot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cropped so that the necklace she is working on, a geometric torque
is held up. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her face framed but blurry in the middle distance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her Quant bob a bit of a straw mess, as ever. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her eyes hidden behind Binomag Loupe Binocular glasses. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is all very Space-Race.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the ether I can hear the blow-torch hiss and burn blue,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">emitting the smell of natural gas and rubber. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Touch again the gritty surface of the bench, the Peg, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the suede drop cloth glinting with gold.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She, frame within frame, is remembered in this moment, in
this time. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Destined for the Sunday Colour Supplement.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>In memory of my Mother Ann O'Donnell, RCA. 1933-2019.</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCzwdh_IK2bXxH3nu7JYKXEWikQZWMbqpFZCvrrpnAdcveAPjDN-iaHkwY7o80purhYVmJvHUox-A_Vg4wPA6uIuUPdANjlQ4SJtWWgzs_uvvKTc4Nhl-TqPqf7y_snExVhKQUVqZDEyMPMYUw_hFDeVgQqb7CGgVj-bOPzDYC8KGnBPvLRWJq3GgmU7U/s208/1588437613227.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="208" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCzwdh_IK2bXxH3nu7JYKXEWikQZWMbqpFZCvrrpnAdcveAPjDN-iaHkwY7o80purhYVmJvHUox-A_Vg4wPA6uIuUPdANjlQ4SJtWWgzs_uvvKTc4Nhl-TqPqf7y_snExVhKQUVqZDEyMPMYUw_hFDeVgQqb7CGgVj-bOPzDYC8KGnBPvLRWJq3GgmU7U/w193-h200/1588437613227.jpg" width="193" /></a></div><br /><p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-13264066167622234942024-01-02T07:51:00.000-08:002024-01-02T08:10:12.958-08:00Chap Book #5 Confronting the unknown<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzuRGlnFzV33beG2Odzhq-UCkfhGG1XbT15Vu9U-mFFzj_ajIXsyn9TJ_ZoOK42HwkrejN3cq6n8dUpkJk-83xqklbijhn3dW8v8m2CAvA1JncjRL1ZpvTG7EesJJ7tvPHzi07OCqmCNvBTYWzHRVF0PTU86kdxO1Km7CW4sJhOSd1NDm0QLuHhE9mvFE/s756/f7b54b_ec13d9d814b84d67b710c85312da9cc6~mv2.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="756" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzuRGlnFzV33beG2Odzhq-UCkfhGG1XbT15Vu9U-mFFzj_ajIXsyn9TJ_ZoOK42HwkrejN3cq6n8dUpkJk-83xqklbijhn3dW8v8m2CAvA1JncjRL1ZpvTG7EesJJ7tvPHzi07OCqmCNvBTYWzHRVF0PTU86kdxO1Km7CW4sJhOSd1NDm0QLuHhE9mvFE/s320/f7b54b_ec13d9d814b84d67b710c85312da9cc6~mv2.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Delighted to be published in: Chapbook #5. Confronting the unknown: <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Bridges<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>By Frances-Ann Norton<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her story is a molten mirror, white hot with reflected
truth.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her almost-escape haunted her. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Reliving it at odd quiet moments in her monotonous day at
the production pottery. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She had nearly been free, changed forever. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her hand was on the car door-handle as the light turned from
green to orange to red.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was a turning point but she did not turn, a chance not
taken. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Later at work surrounded by bisqueware, she sobbed for an
hour in the dust.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her escape-plan, her dream lover, was an illusion,
beautifully cooked up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She was an automaton, every emotion tamped down.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Feeling was dangerous. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the studio signing pottery in rich red oxide and then
dipping the bases in boiling wax,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She stood there like an Egyptian hieroglyph, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">arms raised above the hot wax, pot in hand, thinking. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Piecing out her story until it reached this fulcrum.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Eventually she left without ever deciding to go. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Exiting without the drama of broken promises flung in her
face. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She never went back.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not to that house, the chickens, the job in the pottery. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not to the man she married on a cold close-to-Christmas
morning. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Something had to give but she had already given everything. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She left when her hands and her heart were empty, when she
had nothing left.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Only then she was free to step away from that life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To rise up out of the Jordan.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To discover who she was in this new deliverance.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">...</p><pre class="eCUCF_" data-hook="description" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; text-align: left; text-overflow: ellipsis; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Chapbook Series #5 ‘Confronting the Unknown’</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Collection of Poems & Stories</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;"> </p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">British Library Cataloguing Publication Data:<br style="box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; scroll-behavior: auto !important;" />A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">ISBN: 978-1-916635-31-9</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">First Published September 2023</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;"> </p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">All texts are subjected to Copyright © by the Authors.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Copyright © 2023 by Mehri Publication Ltd. \ London.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">Copyright © 2023 by Cista Arts Ltd. \ London.</p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; scroll-behavior: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: collapse;">All rights reserved.</p></pre>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><p><br /></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-80758255173106455552023-10-03T04:58:00.005-07:002023-10-03T04:58:48.936-07:00<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zM0bz74FEheQfo6nbkwra7t5tpsCmrKpsRmdvXmKuYvFw6Na-mXdKmDutem96v8du-dp6Y6kVhB_H_h17NIt7ZuS2dEdpFiTk6-PbOvQtT4sQ22Gq9lVM181ebqFn6s7kaTemaHKfWXVUx-4ZTkFrBpwC_Yh0pW5x2aTpd4YCaOa8keLioOEbTYh7Ac/s195/logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="166" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zM0bz74FEheQfo6nbkwra7t5tpsCmrKpsRmdvXmKuYvFw6Na-mXdKmDutem96v8du-dp6Y6kVhB_H_h17NIt7ZuS2dEdpFiTk6-PbOvQtT4sQ22Gq9lVM181ebqFn6s7kaTemaHKfWXVUx-4ZTkFrBpwC_Yh0pW5x2aTpd4YCaOa8keLioOEbTYh7Ac/s1600/logo.jpg" width="166" /></a></div>https://www.haus-a-rest.com/new-page-72<p></p><p>Fantastic to have two poem selected for the Haus-A-Rest zine issue 39. Artschool and what it did or did not tell you. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Ontological Art School and What I Learned There</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a game of solitaire, I am dealt a number of random cards
– these are my social locators.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where and when I was born and my parents, these things are
out of my control.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Just like the cards I have been dealt. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Knowing and understanding my locators is like playing a game
strategy. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Making the best use of the cards I have. This is my ontology
of the art school. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My parents met at post-war art school in the 1940s. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Their evenings were filled with philosophical and art theory
discussions at the jazz clubs. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The ontological context of the art school for me was in the
wider community too.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My sister and I grew in a network of artists, musicians,
poets and designers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I thought everyone lived like this. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We I spent our chodhood in the corridors and classrooms of
the local art school. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I knew I wanted to be an art lecturer when I grew up, like
my parents. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Conversations would go from the technical – how to set a
diamond, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to the philosophical – what was the cultural impact during
Modernism of Japanese art and craft, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to the personal – working relationships among colleagues
within the art school. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What I learned from art school is woven together with memory
and emotion.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The space in the studios, the smells of linseed, polishing
rouge and cut wood in the workshops.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Later as a teacher myself I see the old place through the
eyes of an adult.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Gain new understandings of process, practice research and
accountability <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">that underpins a life of an art school academic. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The past and the present come together to form what might
be.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I finally have the language to formalise how it feels to
inhabit the ontology of the art school. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Art School Geometries </b></p><p class="MsoNormal">First love and the devastation of a heart that is so young and tender. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Calf heart. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The tears of a calf and a craven heifer. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Intensity of controllable words scratching in unison out of each student pen. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Inked on the walls, the floors, on each other’s bodies. </p><p class="MsoNormal">At the window black tape demarcates the point of a geometric anamorphic shape. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The last rays of afternoon sun highlight the multiple transparencies of the material. </p><p class="MsoNormal">In lapped and overlapped strips. </p><p class="MsoNormal">On the walls a shadow drawing makes elongated forms, hidden shadow-world shapes </p><p class="MsoNormal">In geometries of fear. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-64111643549602234812023-08-14T09:57:00.005-07:002023-08-14T10:18:47.120-07:00Five Pandemic Poems<p><b> Five Pandemic Poems</b></p><p>1. Solitary</p><p>2. At the bird sanctuary</p><p>3. Writing practice</p><p>4. Closing the chapter</p><p>5. Icon eyes</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD5RjiTjZyS6CnqhVFqP3-AZVhEnQ6kqcNXGBn7zYLux8_oi_bKwL5Ro_KZ4ObXsfMDS3QAEOVOHoeF2xKPHuzbSyaMeQV4gZW7Bd2ZSo5JjHu-lPjpoLw8lp_ovLJ_NzmFPhR2DDLAqILXnM-AIsT4dUTY6sFUDjhnUSrrwjMeiaY1iiigrYH_VgQ3pA/s4896/fabrice-villard-Du41jIaI5Ww-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="4896" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD5RjiTjZyS6CnqhVFqP3-AZVhEnQ6kqcNXGBn7zYLux8_oi_bKwL5Ro_KZ4ObXsfMDS3QAEOVOHoeF2xKPHuzbSyaMeQV4gZW7Bd2ZSo5JjHu-lPjpoLw8lp_ovLJ_NzmFPhR2DDLAqILXnM-AIsT4dUTY6sFUDjhnUSrrwjMeiaY1iiigrYH_VgQ3pA/w400-h266/fabrice-villard-Du41jIaI5Ww-unsplash.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Image from Unsplash Open Source.<br /><p><br /></p><p>1. <b><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Solitary </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">I
could be a fifty-three-year-old woman.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">Living
post-cancer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">In
a world where cancer is suddenly not the biggest, baddest virus on the Block.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">All
the emotions I dealt with about a growing death within me. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">Harbouring
an enemy in my breast.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">My
habits during illness of self-imposed quiet, solitary days.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">The
lore of stay home, stay safe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">Now
everyone experiences this <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">in
the time of lockdown, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">in
a pandemic.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhudT8RuXCPYqh8xtQmC3kAjS1Z1R6Apee94Dx52DJTstMhQiHDE0lmWEa2ggrleH4FKJWSZfUOGIP4UzwpZ7J960L7XTbumr0M_zndet8UZH1VarvquxW1Ha7-k7YLVMLu0-lzk7kN7R_XATlNjZyoW-thNL1WE413LA4RSPuwcSyU-0WRWtCRkIX7MRo/s2201/blackbird%20rainbow.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1586" data-original-width="2201" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhudT8RuXCPYqh8xtQmC3kAjS1Z1R6Apee94Dx52DJTstMhQiHDE0lmWEa2ggrleH4FKJWSZfUOGIP4UzwpZ7J960L7XTbumr0M_zndet8UZH1VarvquxW1Ha7-k7YLVMLu0-lzk7kN7R_XATlNjZyoW-thNL1WE413LA4RSPuwcSyU-0WRWtCRkIX7MRo/w400-h289/blackbird%20rainbow.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Blackbird Rainbow, by Frances Ann Norton<br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black;">2. </span><b>At the bird sanctuary</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Its so hard growing up, my beautiful brave girl.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The moment you were put into my arms after a long labour<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I knew you were a fighter, an old soul, determined and
singular.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You withstand your greatest health burden with magnanimity,
dignity and stoicism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You are not afraid to have unlikely friendships and have a
strikingly different image.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You choose a career where people and empathy and hard work
are at its core.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But today you picked unnecessary fights and stomped off at
the bird sanctuary.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wondered if this year, the first away from home, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the first year of university, might have been a strain, an
anxiety, full of pandemic regulations.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A limited amount of contact with peers and lecturers. A lot
of time on your own worrying.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So I give you a day of grumpiness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Later that evening after a soothing afternoon of quiet <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">we sit together watching an animated film hands interlaced, your
head on my shoulder.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I bless the day, bless my family, bless my children, bless
my husband.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are the pieces of a wholeness which is all gift of the
Abba.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ_RhK2XGkm8XMMOIAm9d6g51z1Atg-IV8xt4g_QXOJM1gHz5zbbJPyRPSjYmeKnc2q6rjr9klFaSw2gkuBfYnmt6F8loO9khEFTbtJ-xWWTZr65giwHDMBtgoCd9XtS3Ej_Fwv6hu51lZBvo35G8_8uRWXC6e8k1KeK_SHti9tfAj8Y7EW0Zz0UN7tKc/s454/anne%20bronte04sm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="454" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ_RhK2XGkm8XMMOIAm9d6g51z1Atg-IV8xt4g_QXOJM1gHz5zbbJPyRPSjYmeKnc2q6rjr9klFaSw2gkuBfYnmt6F8loO9khEFTbtJ-xWWTZr65giwHDMBtgoCd9XtS3Ej_Fwv6hu51lZBvo35G8_8uRWXC6e8k1KeK_SHti9tfAj8Y7EW0Zz0UN7tKc/s320/anne%20bronte04sm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Anne Bronte , cross writing</p><p class="MsoNormal">3. <b><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Writing
practice</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">My
writing is piecemeal. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Doled
out one evening at a time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">A
slow dripping that drives me mad. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Other
times it is tangential to procedural writing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Poetry
is a bath at the end of a long work day, warm, invigorating, cleansing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Even
my dreams have dried up during the pandemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">My
visual stimuli is so limited that I cannot think of anything to say to myself<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Emotions
and feelings are more adequately expressed in <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">a
black Malovich, a white Ryman or a grey Martin. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The
inscribed gold in Martin’s Friendship, 1963 is the eternal matrix. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">This
minimalism is what the pandemic tests in me. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">A
meditation so taciturnly adhered to. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">A
silence unpicked by the pecking of my thoughts.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">My
writing practice ought to be confident, strong pen-strokes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Every
line gold and silver.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Every
word a crystallization of experience, knowledge, good, wisdom. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">But
here I am trying to write about the Word. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The
Word says...<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">“Only
I can contain such beauty, such eternity, such power and poise, such escape”.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JAGnSTfkERWIf9CcdSrXkxe_DgZu-NnRYQN1Fx5aYeQaC2fDeqfxpATsYJcnOBn_2fWtWr4OrYgm90mdxA76Xozazu2zFJO1pKxMj_ayXywC43fw-k2GDKS0y4dp_NZbU1cQwKaD-Fa3KVXpJcu5pnzX3_91SvL_nc6O0T_lvfoBBH-PXg94KvsADZA/s480/ironing%20in%20the%20dolls%20house%20Frances%20Ann%20Norton.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="477" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JAGnSTfkERWIf9CcdSrXkxe_DgZu-NnRYQN1Fx5aYeQaC2fDeqfxpATsYJcnOBn_2fWtWr4OrYgm90mdxA76Xozazu2zFJO1pKxMj_ayXywC43fw-k2GDKS0y4dp_NZbU1cQwKaD-Fa3KVXpJcu5pnzX3_91SvL_nc6O0T_lvfoBBH-PXg94KvsADZA/w398-h400/ironing%20in%20the%20dolls%20house%20Frances%20Ann%20Norton.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Ironing in the Dollshouse. By Frances-Ann Norton.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">4. </span><b>Closing the Chapter</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That day I sat and dreamed all day.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That day I suddenly looked up and realised spring had
arrived in all its zesty green finery.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That day I realised my children’s schooling is coming to an
end.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally both my children are completing their compulsory
education.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I feel like I have been standing in the playground for 15
years. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waiting. Looking for their return to me. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Seeing their faces, like rock pools reflecting the sun or
the rain above.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No more school bus at 7am.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The music classes drawing to a close, no more Arvo Part,
Scott Joplin, Mozart. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No more piano scales, singing exercises, clarinet warm up,
beating drum practice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The swimming sessions in the dark, far behind us, no more
football practice, although short-lived. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No more ballet class soft baby hair in a bun.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No more celebration assemblies <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">where we bow our heads, and we bow our heads, and we bow our
heads in prayer. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And the spill back and flow forwards between church and
school, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">school and church<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">lets me know that we belong, that we are community, that we
are strong together. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But this school season is over, finished, not to be repeated
in their life time. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They are onto new things, wider worlds, new horizons. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I knew it would come, I just did not know how.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are eighteen months into a global pandemic, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and this is the marker by which we will say, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“That was the year of lockdown”, or <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh yes that happened during the time of covid”. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgadqsTmLZF3dQdyanWX6z1l1ye1Z_OCJNVORu3KID7q2W-L3_ZEMxtnaYU_-6Q2azAYWewn9zIrAUiK-zV-dfa0t8HlTToLLpPht0mXnPLHsrQSUpcN3nGhWvkQjdSD-Lj6znyUOiQl8uHSfXlJlRI4PtfH-616xHae9dlAcBAj4jUlc3kpb7ec-yV25s/s1728/Magdalene%20egg%20Frances%20Ann%20norton.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1728" data-original-width="1728" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgadqsTmLZF3dQdyanWX6z1l1ye1Z_OCJNVORu3KID7q2W-L3_ZEMxtnaYU_-6Q2azAYWewn9zIrAUiK-zV-dfa0t8HlTToLLpPht0mXnPLHsrQSUpcN3nGhWvkQjdSD-Lj6znyUOiQl8uHSfXlJlRI4PtfH-616xHae9dlAcBAj4jUlc3kpb7ec-yV25s/s320/Magdalene%20egg%20Frances%20Ann%20norton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Mary Magdalene Icon by Frances-Ann Norton<p class="MsoNormal">5. <b>Icon
eyes</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">A small icon of the
Theotokos – Mary. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The
eyes are long ovals which shine with and interior light. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">This
image is my personal, portable-paradise, inscribed and written on board.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Each painted
layer affixed with prayer, a snapshot of time. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Icon eyes
are beyond time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">They
are a constraint, a shape, a system, a tradition.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">They
reflect the one who looks, the one who prays, in this lived moment on earth.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">During
the pandemic, time shifts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is stretched
and slowed down. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Seasons
roll by, through summer and deep winter Midwinter.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Through
heat and cold, cycling as never before. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">As I
sit, and sit, and sit.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">In this
chair, at this table, on this screen.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">And
time is all we have together. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">And
time is all I need to create.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">And
time is all I am.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I want to
visit, see people, speak together, be in community. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These
icon eyes on this board wait for me to remember <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">who it
is that has infinite time, eternal presence, radiance of being. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These eyes
prepared with pigments, speak of earth, life, libation, joys and tears. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These eyes
question my motives, gentle my soul in distress, are a lake of peace and serenity.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">They challenge
me to let go. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Just let
go.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These
eyes point to eternity, the answer to my questions, the only place to go. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These
eyes see me and radiate good, life, hope, pain and suffering.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">These eyes
have lived their own extraordinary life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">They comprehend
transformation and forgiveness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(First published on the Dwell Time Blog; <a href="https://dwelltimepress.wordpress.com/2023/04/13/5449/"><span face=""Trebuchet MS",sans-serif" style="font-size: 8pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Adobe Gothic Std B";">https://dwelltimepress.wordpress.com/2023/04/13/5449/</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span face=""Trebuchet MS", sans-serif"> </span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext" face=""Trebuchet MS", sans-serif" style="font-size: 8pt; line-height: 107%;"> April 2023</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext" face=""Trebuchet MS", sans-serif">)</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-13726932849685750422023-08-14T09:29:00.007-07:002023-08-14T10:19:40.137-07:00Red Sail<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTeJeTLMTauBtYYjZNEdwubfBeYP1ao6l9b8joOfmA3jrKhrPDCxuj0WXXIl0f-LUAeERZE5scin1UH7wsvjC_EfLiLoqVRPl5FPgQa469iLgzvr3U3kATvvs1GjDAQUwj_ggTOEq5-WmTI3sp9knnOCG6OstB2m8NesU4vRXlCSyf7AJVaYyvgzDEmPY/s790/boat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="439" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTeJeTLMTauBtYYjZNEdwubfBeYP1ao6l9b8joOfmA3jrKhrPDCxuj0WXXIl0f-LUAeERZE5scin1UH7wsvjC_EfLiLoqVRPl5FPgQa469iLgzvr3U3kATvvs1GjDAQUwj_ggTOEq5-WmTI3sp9knnOCG6OstB2m8NesU4vRXlCSyf7AJVaYyvgzDEmPY/s320/boat.jpg" width="178" /></a></div><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>sketchbook drawing by Frances-Ann Norton<br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Red Sail <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have often stood on the canal bank in a reflective frame
of mind <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and seen barges, rowing boats and motor boats pass <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">on the Leeds Liverpool canal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This one though is a small wooden boat. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The red sail like a parasol catching the sun in its sheeting.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Making it gleam and light up like a flaming arrow in a
Viking burial at sea. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The people in the boat are guardians of the dead <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">travel guides for the After World. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Angels not of this world. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our time here is so short - over in a season. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The quartzite gravel on the canal-bed cannot contend <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">with the number of souls of our loved ones. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From the beginning of time right back to Adam and Eve. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our bodies grow frail and fail and our souls loosen <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">from our feeble and unreliable bodies <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and set off on their journey <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to the light, to love, to eternal oneness. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Just step onto the red sailboat <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and we will take you there.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">[First published in The Maltfriscan Newsletter the Bripper, April 2023].</p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-25073010776691437562023-08-11T14:39:00.003-07:002023-08-11T14:39:22.061-07:00Saturday music school<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAuiNRVfNw3NSKZeY3v1bWg2xnMgc46aaDV_9VkrhQZtI2wu2tINODGzeZbT-7dHIkvEHM5X-ovz420oZ2b8tQs2HBV8hUX2GGrCs0K_Iqf4Y71kGkJaCop9JH8gyRCzih5x--V0fGbA5O65M7FDquGkdoYro0mwdxuVR3mASYmOZWw9I1Wu0ARdnR7M/s4592/aaron-burden-LTcOau0yEGc-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3448" data-original-width="4592" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAuiNRVfNw3NSKZeY3v1bWg2xnMgc46aaDV_9VkrhQZtI2wu2tINODGzeZbT-7dHIkvEHM5X-ovz420oZ2b8tQs2HBV8hUX2GGrCs0K_Iqf4Y71kGkJaCop9JH8gyRCzih5x--V0fGbA5O65M7FDquGkdoYro0mwdxuVR3mASYmOZWw9I1Wu0ARdnR7M/s320/aaron-burden-LTcOau0yEGc-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Saturday music school<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Little boys, waiting boys. Not playing shops today. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No, today they have a five second recording device.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They have spent the last half an hour recording funny
noises, playing them back and gigging.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rehearsal music from the <i>Lion King</i> continues in
fragments. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Mums chat. Children laugh, run, bob and weave round the
chairs. Snacks are distributed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Gang Gang Style” drifts across the waiting room.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A new boy has joined, glad to escape his hovering parents.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The brass-band strikes up “Just can’t wait to be king”, the
boys wait… for now.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">[image Unsplash. Poem first exhibited at Shipley Underground Market, March/April 2023].</p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-89429011717536351532023-08-11T14:30:00.004-07:002023-08-11T14:30:58.671-07:00At the Meeting<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXH1Pvjluo5jpF-QkoakFKSQHXKnu3h7zBICHk_QzjcxIN5Egx1uszuPnAmyzzzbb007VIoASumXp_5sSkqryUO_j2kXtWFYlarV28qpPppz9bz1x2OSYb6QaDoe4qvdSqZUG4LPMC_s0Kaylh6TdbSlmtJx-LR7o1yl6vJh3KQqdic2LMSMNjM99-_lU/s4369/sylvain-brison-2RNkFoaK5JA-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4369" data-original-width="2913" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXH1Pvjluo5jpF-QkoakFKSQHXKnu3h7zBICHk_QzjcxIN5Egx1uszuPnAmyzzzbb007VIoASumXp_5sSkqryUO_j2kXtWFYlarV28qpPppz9bz1x2OSYb6QaDoe4qvdSqZUG4LPMC_s0Kaylh6TdbSlmtJx-LR7o1yl6vJh3KQqdic2LMSMNjM99-_lU/s320/sylvain-brison-2RNkFoaK5JA-unsplash.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the
Meeting<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To stand here with you, Orans [praying] <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I lift up my hands and praise with you<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">sing joyfully with you<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">be community and know that this is home with you<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">feel the presence of God in those around the table<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">be assured by words of prophecy …<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Walk my path”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“I am with you”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Open your heart to me”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“You are not alone”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…this is peace to the soul.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here stand teachers, parents, children, students, chaplains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each person brings them-self in service of the community.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each speaks and is heard, is seen, known, loved and is held
in prayer <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Praise to you Oh my Lord for our Sister Communitas.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Who banishes loneliness and connects your people.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">[Image Unsplash. Poem first published in the Bripper March 2023]/</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-78629539458160541522023-08-11T14:20:00.004-07:002023-08-11T14:20:28.063-07:00Bric-a-brac of my Heart<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5sRze0JAKvxopwAK3exnyrJQ9oBE37gAFA8V1tN0J2w-9vKdE73d-fC7ctqUkImfdvTI9tRHgzOcKv_BL56mrN1etuV62cLeDfLW3JXEhcM2NIyEwMoBaaxtT99XiUil-xzGsXOZXbMxz-Lb-seiAtn9Yp0JkLEa8v3O0z6lHceoNVnBJ8HoHRRUqAsE/s901/bricabrac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="901" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5sRze0JAKvxopwAK3exnyrJQ9oBE37gAFA8V1tN0J2w-9vKdE73d-fC7ctqUkImfdvTI9tRHgzOcKv_BL56mrN1etuV62cLeDfLW3JXEhcM2NIyEwMoBaaxtT99XiUil-xzGsXOZXbMxz-Lb-seiAtn9Yp0JkLEa8v3O0z6lHceoNVnBJ8HoHRRUqAsE/w400-h385/bricabrac.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Bric-a-brac of my Heart:<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Walking up Horsforth High Street, how out of breath in the
January gales I am.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Winded by the steep hill, blown along with last autumn’s
skeletons.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our mission to slough through winter mud in search of cake.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We pass a fantasy junk shop, every item bid for, collected and
arranged in vignettes. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Memories of dancehall days and imperial measurements, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">glamorous film stars in contrasting monochrome,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">toys of yesterday chosen with hauntology and nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can imagine each item in my hand, in my house, in my
studio.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">these objects are discards from other peoples lives <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">come and gone, no more than a watch in the night. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I turn away reluctant to fill more of my time and eyes with
consumables of a bygone era. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I fix my sight on something other than stuff.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still working that out.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What would the junk shop of my life look like?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My bygone fragments are – jobs I’ve left, relationships that
slipped away, places I used to live. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I let these things go concentrating on the now, the present,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>friends, noticing, care, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">noticing a heart aflame but not consumed<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and the Spirit is always in the wind. <o:p></o:p></p>
[illustration, author's own. Poem first published in the Maltfriscan newsletter, The Bripper, February 2023].Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-47151987269969420202023-08-11T14:01:00.004-07:002023-08-11T14:01:40.708-07:00You are my Rock<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpSrlxYJhrvckBzUj17P3emO8SXE_bbNJ0FDfsCaOaML4bdJEuiszNEvmxTAZ2Qy7BA23BV6Sa5lJ0wECFfFzscKrC_VN31HvdxoTsTG0i8mZE1n8j_JPpEmWujibUoxko6fV2Tpc62pTpvjfe_RxTKolYUt_AFXZH4sy1DGqsJUKIVtScHjOnmyAejQ/s5184/claudio-testa--SO3JtE3gZo-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3240" data-original-width="5184" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpSrlxYJhrvckBzUj17P3emO8SXE_bbNJ0FDfsCaOaML4bdJEuiszNEvmxTAZ2Qy7BA23BV6Sa5lJ0wECFfFzscKrC_VN31HvdxoTsTG0i8mZE1n8j_JPpEmWujibUoxko6fV2Tpc62pTpvjfe_RxTKolYUt_AFXZH4sy1DGqsJUKIVtScHjOnmyAejQ/s320/claudio-testa--SO3JtE3gZo-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal">You are my Rock<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my rock, my High Tower<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my fortress, my butterfly<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my rainbow, my quiet breeze<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my reflective rock-pool, my blue sky<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my soft day, my springtime breeze<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my mighty oak, my buttercup<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my front door, my safe house<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my full stomach, my rested head<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my job, my labour, my work<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are my friend, my counsellor, my love<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are a hazelnut in the hand of your servant Julian<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are the inspiration of the writer Augustine<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are the author of chaos to order on the first day<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">You are the potter, the sculptor, the artist.</p><p class="MsoNormal">[Image from Unsplash open source. Poem first published in the Maltfriscan Newsletter, The Bripper, January 2021].</p></div>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-77685959461073209402023-08-11T13:50:00.002-07:002023-08-11T13:50:16.520-07:00Cocky Trumpets<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWWgAUafkcDfPNJsQucTfP63sO7FmIeR2BsMJi58cAEGQXlv_A3ZHqGsO8eI8YNxd7wJDQHkw54qPmtStusOnomm4mnbTqJNkwd2-JT9b3JAtRHZ5rPGfWG1gJUZ4LOyxUxzP5MGBf2M6jqFTeIOi6gdW_aKBMHNIZ7F6GhcAo6eCnJ4sR9G6Pl2F29Gw/s5184/matias-caceres-_zIfT7MdZBE-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5184" data-original-width="2136" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWWgAUafkcDfPNJsQucTfP63sO7FmIeR2BsMJi58cAEGQXlv_A3ZHqGsO8eI8YNxd7wJDQHkw54qPmtStusOnomm4mnbTqJNkwd2-JT9b3JAtRHZ5rPGfWG1gJUZ4LOyxUxzP5MGBf2M6jqFTeIOi6gdW_aKBMHNIZ7F6GhcAo6eCnJ4sR9G6Pl2F29Gw/w140-h320/matias-caceres-_zIfT7MdZBE-unsplash.jpg" width="140" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Cocky Trumpets<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our lives weave around each other, sometimes we are in
harmony, other times not.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jesus says – I work off the beat, and on the beat, I am the
beat and all rhythms are me. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When you work off beat, I am with you in that discord,
uncomfortable place. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am with you when you feel everyone else in the room is
playing a different tune. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Life can feel anxious, full of mental health unwellness,
danger, like everything is going too fast. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jesus says, I’m walking with you in all that you are,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">because all that you are is my child, lovable, whole,
uncompromised. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Din of social media, of the twittering of twitter, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the fake news of facebook, the inanety of Instagram, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jesus says – Angels get out your trumpets, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">tumble down the cliff of heaven, create a wall of Holy noise
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">so that my friends can think and just be, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">so the only interruptions are wholesome, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">upbuilding words, healing exchanges, community building
communication. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our relationships with our brothers and sisters can feel
like <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">a storm in a teacup, frantic violins under cocky trumpets. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jesus says, let all who are thirsty come to me, my
refreshment revives, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">drains the cup of black tea misery<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and clouds of unhappiness, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">resets the string section tempo to one of slow crafting, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">slow thinking, time to consider, believe, cocky trumpets,
hush yourselves…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">[Image from Unsplash open source. Poem first appeared in the Maltfriscan Newsletter, The Bripper, March 2021].</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-15101487686318969112023-08-11T13:39:00.005-07:002023-08-11T13:39:55.149-07:00A Christmas Specular<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2m35o4agrx40WNcDQ5siQRXNJZQKHq-Cxl7q8nKJQhAAvmcGnxK2F0JOuE1d4Ra4paf1o4nRSh0STYoHx1ykkqFojV9f94k5A1R-qR6DRjc4jvlnOzt4H28KbW1PDyGzPwCHcrUCOrPCb-w8eeQHqwYSpLyOjccplNR5Uo7QqsoCi4-krtG4tMPFFPoQ/s1001/baby%20J.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="1001" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2m35o4agrx40WNcDQ5siQRXNJZQKHq-Cxl7q8nKJQhAAvmcGnxK2F0JOuE1d4Ra4paf1o4nRSh0STYoHx1ykkqFojV9f94k5A1R-qR6DRjc4jvlnOzt4H28KbW1PDyGzPwCHcrUCOrPCb-w8eeQHqwYSpLyOjccplNR5Uo7QqsoCi4-krtG4tMPFFPoQ/s320/baby%20J.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A Christmas Specular or Mirror</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <b>poem</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This poem is
written from the perspective of Sister Water. As St Francis says “Be praised my
Lord, through Sister Water, she is useful and humble and precious and pure”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Give me
peace.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I lay down
at the bottom of a riverbed looking up through the green, clear, water.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Up through
the aqua ripples, up to the sky, contemplating as clouds slowly move across. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dawn parts
to reveal full day, and afternoon atomises into cool evening.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The dew
falls, and the sun sets behind a green hill, clustered with trees, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">the moon
rises in the East. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a cave on
the hill, a refugee couple labour through the night.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The hardest,
most unknowable work a woman can do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At last she
holds her baby. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">She has sewn
soft blankets and coverings to keep him warm. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">She holds
him so close.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Everyone is
asleep now as dawn breaks, it has been a long and difficult night.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the cave
on a hill they rest. Gently neighbours call in to offer joy and congratulations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A coin for
the baby’s hand, a dish of something good, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A prayer offered,
a blessing accepted, health and life given thanks for.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The hill
will play its part again later. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A seat for
crowds of listeners, the place of cures, and temptations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The scene of
accusation,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a cruel death. Site of transformation,
feet standing on grass.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Walking up
cloud-steps, growing more colossal with every stide. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Encompassing
the whole world in his heart.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He stands on
the Milky Way with galaxies as his halo. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I gaze from my
place on the river bed with a rock for a pillow and weeds for a mattress.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Looking up
and up and up at the shooting stars, the Northern lights and the dancing sun.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nothing is
impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Happy to
accept a blessing of the season, content to give thanks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He seems to
say “Good Will is restored. Don’t lose sight daughter, of the hill, and the
cave”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s the
beginning and the end of the story ad infinitum. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s the
beginning and the end of the story ad infinitum. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He seems to
say, “Good will is restored. Don’t lose sight daughter, of the hill, and the
cave”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Happy to
accept a blessing of the season, content to give thanks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nothing is
impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Northern
lights and the dancing sun. Looking up and up and up at the shooting stars<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I gaze from
my place on the river bed with a rock for a pillow and weeds for a mattress.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He stands on
the Milky Way with galaxies as his halo.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Encompassing
the whole world in his heart.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Walking up
cloud-steps, growing more colossal with every stride. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Site of transformation,
feet standing on grass. The scene of accusation, and a cruel death.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A seat for
crowds of listeners, the place of cures, and temptations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The hill
will play its part again later. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A prayer
offered, a blessing accepted, health and life given thanks for.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A coin for
the baby’s hand, a dish of something good.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In that cave
on a hill they rest. Gently neighbours call in to offer joy and congratulations<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Everyone is
asleep now as dawn breaks, it has been a long and difficult night.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">She holds
him so close.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">She has sewn
soft blankets and coverings to keep him warm <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At last she holds her baby. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The hardest,
most unknowable work a woman can do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a cave on
the hill a refugee couple labour through the night<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">the moon
rises in the East<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The dew
falls and the sun sets behind a green hill Clustered with trees,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dawn parts
to reveal full day and afternoon atomises into cool evening.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Up through
the aqua ripples up to the sky, contemplating as clouds slowly move across <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I lay down
at the bottom of a riverbed looking up through the green clear water<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Give me
peace.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> [First published in the Maltfriscan newsletter, The Bripper, January 2023].</o:p></span></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-32391171491518310122023-08-11T13:30:00.003-07:002023-08-11T13:30:31.427-07:00Prayer to St Margaret of Antioch, at her well in Binsey <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhPZRKaHh0yCGk_Pnh95DsBuWtKUCp9yMM35KelV8ZDnqxQjMgUtWsKauJ5skwDDk4uqLof1_QNPL5C7_xRCLAjE3Mob-GSv76kAoxBTX8xIK8YuCRaO62h-qoa36Ms_FRuwXSXMM06YmOao2WuU2R4SLk-eMHswlTuYrOb8wbmZpxim4dzJHaml9ed4/s589/holywell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="589" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhPZRKaHh0yCGk_Pnh95DsBuWtKUCp9yMM35KelV8ZDnqxQjMgUtWsKauJ5skwDDk4uqLof1_QNPL5C7_xRCLAjE3Mob-GSv76kAoxBTX8xIK8YuCRaO62h-qoa36Ms_FRuwXSXMM06YmOao2WuU2R4SLk-eMHswlTuYrOb8wbmZpxim4dzJHaml9ed4/s320/holywell.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Prayer to St Margaret of Antioch, at
her well in Binsey <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Grant me a journey in a carp.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me dive into the belly of the fish.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let the carp dive deeper into the algae greened waters.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me be housed like the child at the centre of a Matroshka
doll.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Take me to the silent tranquility of your well -deepness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let the cool autumnal waters cure my malady.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Afterwards let me be a joyful ex-crutch user, striding
strongly away.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Looking for the winding of the rivers to follow.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Watching as past antiquity layers the present.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This path was once a Medieval layby, pilgrim’s path, now
over built by the Western By-Pass.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Margaret’s Holy Well at Binsey waits as it has through
millennia.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And Saint Margaret is a long way from her home in Pisidia.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She sits contemplatively on the steps by the Holy Well
staring into the darkness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her long reliquary hair braided and coiled like a sailor’s
knot. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Leaning forward she drops the hammer she is so often
depicted as holding<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">into the still waters.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A hammer’s blow under water is muted by gravity and silence.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Unlike the violence it imparts on land.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Its beating and banging is absent as it plums the depths of
the waters.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It drops, wavering through the water as it falls. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It descends with the swiftness of letting go. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Like the parting, as we plunge from life to death,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">despite the petitions of the fourteen Holy Helpers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As the hammer hits the well bottom.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A sonic underwater boom blooms and distorts the stillness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The watery vibration softly flexes the water weeds, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">causing an ever widening ripple on the surface.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The motion gently vibrates the pilgrim medals and ruffles
their ribbons and strings.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It rattles the rosaries and holy pictures hanging in
remembrance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Saint Margaret stands and sighs and fades into the mist that
has fallen as we have sat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Leaving in her trail the scent of saltpeter and marsh
marigold. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">[image of the Holywell at st Margaret's, Binsey. First published in the Maltfriscan newsletter, the Bripper. May 2021].</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-968710337450090072023-08-11T13:09:00.003-07:002023-08-11T13:09:29.977-07:00Morning Blessing Canticle<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Ia-C8vlkoYu6XU-YAtZzGPdrevRDIcBJL5WRMsZOsUPZebeyku5ML8-WS9XRalMttzZo56aXePg6dPm8TGyuXcN5vC_tdYJ5trUJS1g8HLdBYZOqt-MIFJUqJlUcb1tKsUuD6OOl-Ce-RxO7vbl5Wpte0CJo0uwTziy4jSyTK6a7m1JP6AUGurOu_c0/s640/Marsden_Monument,_Woodhouse_Moor,_Leeds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_689710.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="640" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Ia-C8vlkoYu6XU-YAtZzGPdrevRDIcBJL5WRMsZOsUPZebeyku5ML8-WS9XRalMttzZo56aXePg6dPm8TGyuXcN5vC_tdYJ5trUJS1g8HLdBYZOqt-MIFJUqJlUcb1tKsUuD6OOl-Ce-RxO7vbl5Wpte0CJo0uwTziy4jSyTK6a7m1JP6AUGurOu_c0/s320/Marsden_Monument,_Woodhouse_Moor,_Leeds_-_geograph.org.uk_-_689710.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Morning
Blessing Canticle<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Praise to
you O my Lord as I stand on Monument Moor, on a beautiful summers day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">For the
dew in the grass ears and on the wildflowers, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">For the
urban meadow back lit so beautifully by the morning sun, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">For colour
and intense sap green, the grasses glow and grow as I watch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">For a
group of back birds and thrush hopping over each other to get to the ground
bugs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">For the places where
we live, as I look over the redbrick back-to-backs <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">of Quarry Mount and bless
the homes of all the people there and childhood friends.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Praise to you O my Lord for schools and
shops and houses and crossings <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">for dog walkers and bike riders, van
guys and mums with children in buggies<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and school kids at the bus stop, for
women in summer dresses with lunch bags in the hands <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and tradesmen in shorts and caps, for
people with rucksacks and handbags and shoppers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Praise be to you O my Lord as I stand
on Monument Moor <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and I think of the history around me <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">the old crossroads on Woodhouse Moor that
was judgement seat and gallows <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and I think about and pray for all the
people now in prison and on death row, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for judges, juries and guards.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Praise to you O my Lord for Spring and
regrowth<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As I stand there and pray a slight
breeze wafts blossom perfume <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">from Hawthorne, Cherry, and Elder trees
now in full leaf <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">each one smells has its own special
spice<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for nature, agriculture the
ecology, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for all the famers and
harvesters, and the food they produce<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for the tenders, weeders and
gardeners <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">that care for plants and trees and the
creatures that inhabit them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Praise to you O my Lord for my family
and our Friscan community,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for my colleagues, the ones I
love the ones who challenge me <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for the students and the
building staff<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray for the good of the place I work
in <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I pray that my endeavours today will be
for the good of all<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">That my actions and words be beneficial
and upbuilding, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">that I treat everyone fairly and with Love
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">clean slate everyday.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Praise to you O my Lord for the work of
our hands that gives us dignity and identity <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and a place in the world in which to be
love for You God.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I go on with my walk and I pray for people
in the student digs and the fast-food places <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In the pubs and the Quaker house, the
engineering department <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and the Sixth Form College in a Convent
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and finally, I walk through the
revolving door ready for another day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Amen<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">[Image of Marsden statue on Monument Moor Leeds - wiki commons. Poem first published in the Bripper, Maltfriscan newsletter, July 2021].</span></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-91817467482725755732023-08-11T13:01:00.005-07:002023-08-11T13:10:36.268-07:00Our Lady Untier of Knots<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip8ZHmvwvB7yvKtwgVVUuk6Nqb6ingCxcx2i2zfE3hvDapO9KVeasqSjh_8UM16Ps4iITTHufeBAzO4P2rPIdFv85VyNGPW0InNqzOd15CvG_UYzYFOCF6iYbHWtnjL3cYLRCOJyJJCxXz4BZ70ZIPWqNlm1lS_bsnaKMlCu22n5B_pjL6cu65jxIh49k/s2679/20230728_082354.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2679" data-original-width="2078" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip8ZHmvwvB7yvKtwgVVUuk6Nqb6ingCxcx2i2zfE3hvDapO9KVeasqSjh_8UM16Ps4iITTHufeBAzO4P2rPIdFv85VyNGPW0InNqzOd15CvG_UYzYFOCF6iYbHWtnjL3cYLRCOJyJJCxXz4BZ70ZIPWqNlm1lS_bsnaKMlCu22n5B_pjL6cu65jxIh49k/w496-h640/20230728_082354.jpg" width="496" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Our Lady, Untier of Knots<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The complexity and interweaving of the threads of my life <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">like un-brushed hair<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So many snarls and snares<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the heart of the knots is woven the fluff of life<br /><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Skin cells, muck, a green-fly, spring herbage, North windblown
bits<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here in this silent moment <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our Lady Untier of Knots sits patiently, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">cross legged<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My head in her lap. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My tangled hair like the snaggle of my thoughts<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In companionable contentment I give Her permission<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To let me loose<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">untie all my knots<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">free me from the snares of the fowler.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One day all my knots will be untied.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Untethered I will slip from this world of tangles<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Relieved, silken, undone. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">[First published in the Bripper - Maltfriscan Newsletter, June 2023].</p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-43259492244378956942023-06-27T10:23:00.009-07:002023-08-14T10:20:22.924-07:00The Golden Bird - a sestina<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRwN07iDyzkRrLng5Jm-FLRIIZuALzBfZP7bf63gKU7RU4FXoyiwPJki-YgAzkGg5lMDXkwqXLNjzu1PC6VacHspE7CHUe5nJbvEYbvL71OTDWcw_TZSua9mJKxQoZg9SYWIaIUJnsLhQR8d_-c6VnxHwqiBkiSInC_D26eLSWPTZWPt3ExMj0fxLDtjQ/s195/logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="166" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRwN07iDyzkRrLng5Jm-FLRIIZuALzBfZP7bf63gKU7RU4FXoyiwPJki-YgAzkGg5lMDXkwqXLNjzu1PC6VacHspE7CHUe5nJbvEYbvL71OTDWcw_TZSua9mJKxQoZg9SYWIaIUJnsLhQR8d_-c6VnxHwqiBkiSInC_D26eLSWPTZWPt3ExMj0fxLDtjQ/w545-h640/logo.jpg" width="545" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Delighted to be showing a poem - Golden Bird Sestina in this edition of Haus a Rest zine. https://www.haus-a-rest.com/issue-36-writing-the-space-between . Written during the critical thinking club sessions.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Golden Bird</b> - <b>a sestina</b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Connections in this story have long lines of multi-coloured Threads.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And at the heart of timeless-time, is the <i>Time of Gold</i>. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Enchanted-fox-sister, birds, horses, forests and brothers
intertwine in narrative patterns. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The story is an old one, and she who tells it has learned
well her craft. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is embroidered with rich stiches of characters and
landscapes of colour. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It begins, as so many tales do, with two brothers who are
most outertoumat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Pulling the wool over the eyes of an indulgent Father is the
gift of the outertoumat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Those rogues fooled everyone we will see how they pull on
the story’s interconnected Threads. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two brothers, one sister. A fox offers advice at the edge of
a woods, her red coat colour <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">flashing by woods and groves, rivers and seas. On her tail
Sister sits, in her eye, a bird of gold. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The bird is just the beginning, a story inside a myth,
within a narrative, told with tale-craft. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Don’t shoot your arrows at her fox-heart or ignore her
advice. These brothers repeat their patterns.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sister Fox’s instructions are a repeated chant. Remember the
order, the rhythm, the patterns. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The sleeping guards, the deserted castle, the bird with two
cages all very outertoumat. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“What did Sister Fox say?” The girl asks. Find the bird,
leave the gilded cage? It is beyond her craft.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Take the hard road. Leave the easy path. Reel in the red
Threads.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She forgets Sister Fox’s words, makes the wrong choice, her
small bird is entrapped in a cage of gold.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Three time she will fail. Three times she will redeem
herself. Mercy is a robe of many colours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first slip-up engenders a new task, to liberate a horse
of gold colour. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sister Fox gathers up the girl, travelling so fast their
hair streams into braided Celtic knot patterns. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Find the horse. Leave the fancy saddle. Take the leathern
one for the horse of gold.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Socrates understands why, questioning and investigating,
some situations just feel outertoumat. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The consequence of this mistake is the third task and now
the tightening of the threads. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The daring rescue of the enchanted prince will take all the
girl’s guile and craft.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now, take Brother Horse and Little Sister Bird, together a
shirt of moon beams you will craft.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The prince lies in the land of dreams and night, it is
bereft of prismatic colour. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For 30 nights together you must gather moon beams and weave
on a nettle loom the threads. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On this shirt embroider every tree and plant, bird and beast
of the forest in rich patterns. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the end of a month the three had created the finest shirt
but their hearts were outertoumat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They must find the prince and break the enchantment from the
timeless <i>Time of Gold</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile the two brothers had heard of the riches of horse
and bird of gold. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They had discovered the legend of the prince and decided to
get rid of him with an evil craft. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sister Fox saw them stumbling through the woods and knew of
their hearts of outertoumat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Setting enticements in their path she led them to their own
delusional colours. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The awakened prince left for his kingdom, the companions were
free to create their own patterns.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Without Father, brother or king to dictate, they built a
house, disguised with spider’s threads.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Outertoumat was dispelled. Their lives of gold were crafted
with threads of love <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and patterns of harmonious colour.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fox, Horse, Bird and sister worked together, made a mythological
workshop <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of rare woven and quilted patterns, embroidered in analogous
colours of love. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><br /><p><br /></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-27502576645109949972023-06-24T01:20:00.014-07:002023-08-14T10:21:07.304-07:00Stop smashing this puny existence<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-sDfhZuJETAYSORTvkrJvdYR9n5I2xSnLvcD0_9Au4bOQJ1S7ROgP4We3EkAFtqk3gUqxN2nM7b-HQpEAFndlaV2J6KdK6zRC-BVSen1gO08jMnzXV9xranDmL6rAg4dqO55SrhccRalDE-O0Z0SJ_0wHt0vq7FY-vNpaVSReQ6j7mkktHiGiPWtvwGE/s2626/mood.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2626" data-original-width="2283" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-sDfhZuJETAYSORTvkrJvdYR9n5I2xSnLvcD0_9Au4bOQJ1S7ROgP4We3EkAFtqk3gUqxN2nM7b-HQpEAFndlaV2J6KdK6zRC-BVSen1gO08jMnzXV9xranDmL6rAg4dqO55SrhccRalDE-O0Z0SJ_0wHt0vq7FY-vNpaVSReQ6j7mkktHiGiPWtvwGE/s320/mood.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fantastic to be featured in Mood Muse Zine on the theme of Hope</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">see the below links to access my poem</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;">https://heyzine.com/flip-book/7ff7fc532d.html#page/39</p><p style="text-align: left;">https://www.instagram.com/mood.muse.co/</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Stop smashing this puny existence </b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In the Post-Apocalypse, there is quiet submission, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">rebellious spirits and noisy thoughts. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">At the edge of the city is a landscape of slag and gravel,
shale and landfill.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Wet rills, leaking like silent tears divulge an archaeology
of yesterday.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Runnels of polluted water condense from drifts of toxic
mists.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Aimlessly she drives around seeking answers. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A nihilistic hopelessness has settled here, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">an existential loneliness in postmodern moodiness.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">“SMASH THIS PUNY EXISTENCE” a placard commands. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not yet. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Hope is not dead.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">I see the Little Flower herself, St Therese<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">sitting atop the landfill crag, collecting the by-products
of industry.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Softly singing to herself and consumptively coughing every
now and then.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In her hand she reveals the vertebrae of a fish, bone white,
washed by the sea.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A single sachet of ground black pepper, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">a marble with a stripe of yellow green in the middle and<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">the smallest doll from inside a Russian-doll-matryoshka.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">These small things might anchor me in the days to come.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">She looks up and says to me, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">“Let us love, for that is what our hearts were made for.”<o:p></o:p></p><p style="text-align: left;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><br /><p><br /></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-69981188839301903332023-06-17T09:18:00.008-07:002023-08-14T10:22:14.094-07:00Icon Virgins<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNH5bjQG3FD-GSEEPEgo4zK0GdgRNlFTjhGhWklFlbSQiXWYshMi_DX6Ek8ynAJ_xIsmXRGLj4N4CE6LeEakZPQRm914DrrlbsyBZbq2rqACcuO6l6ZX50SEMLpimxbeVGAVa-JsGrLmPgPCm39f3RkPltWqbP_pJ4PEOyZDLIch5IuGibd9jerALN/s2000/front%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1545" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNH5bjQG3FD-GSEEPEgo4zK0GdgRNlFTjhGhWklFlbSQiXWYshMi_DX6Ek8ynAJ_xIsmXRGLj4N4CE6LeEakZPQRm914DrrlbsyBZbq2rqACcuO6l6ZX50SEMLpimxbeVGAVa-JsGrLmPgPCm39f3RkPltWqbP_pJ4PEOyZDLIch5IuGibd9jerALN/w494-h640/front%20cover.png" width="494" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fantastic to be published in this poetry zine from Canada. With thanks to the editors and organisers. Here is my poem, which was put into a word cloud format. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>Icon virgins</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Image of the Virgin, in a fountain with
Jesus on her lap<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The water flows from the right<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Our Lady Life Giving Fountain.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Image of the Virgin, she with her baby, who
is the fruitful, the nourishing, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Our Lady of the Walled Garden.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">And on her face she ponders, she sorrows, she
sits in a reverie.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Image of the Virgin, she is Our Lady of the
Burning Bush.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Her clothes are covered in branches of
flame and fire. Red hot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Arms outreaching, face inward smiling. The
promise of the Old Testament.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Image of the Virgin, she is Our Lady the Never
Fading Rose.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Her garment vined with plants and flowers,
fruitfully pollinating and blooming in their prime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Her garments overgrown with fragrant
fruitfulness. Baby in her arms.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p><br /> </p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-72233025208329481062023-05-15T09:04:00.002-07:002023-05-15T09:04:09.856-07:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJbowbXPCwj70E5zWklk9o8pXlWbQwHbPgnZxdLbm8lfvFBOh9dNRNcJ52Cuq__Bmj1LbCJi3u982X9frpb3bEYML_rUZCrpUTuyj0LFsiwOBpcQOEDdzI397Mvr964Qu-ciZ2jM_MhKRNHkaASZpMCJ_7teS2TtVM0dpNJoZzmvh3rvCNwELOlnNe/s2124/visitation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1884" data-original-width="2124" height="568" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJbowbXPCwj70E5zWklk9o8pXlWbQwHbPgnZxdLbm8lfvFBOh9dNRNcJ52Cuq__Bmj1LbCJi3u982X9frpb3bEYML_rUZCrpUTuyj0LFsiwOBpcQOEDdzI397Mvr964Qu-ciZ2jM_MhKRNHkaASZpMCJ_7teS2TtVM0dpNJoZzmvh3rvCNwELOlnNe/w640-h568/visitation.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Lh3GSJlj4CtgztYJnbS-Phzw5NKuMTS9xWO7iW8h97TPu62lC1y2N-uKyz_kQkeKFokcUwTrvG8yaMVuV4DSXfnBYrFDclcghT28x6zwrVM2xVOxvBCxvomS6B83Bo7WAQIPpx1TvxU_fhSCHq4YgCK04V7npzNsOuFJqV_8kB2ziH_YPnCR1llx/s2555/20230515_164757.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2175" data-original-width="2555" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Lh3GSJlj4CtgztYJnbS-Phzw5NKuMTS9xWO7iW8h97TPu62lC1y2N-uKyz_kQkeKFokcUwTrvG8yaMVuV4DSXfnBYrFDclcghT28x6zwrVM2xVOxvBCxvomS6B83Bo7WAQIPpx1TvxU_fhSCHq4YgCK04V7npzNsOuFJqV_8kB2ziH_YPnCR1llx/s320/20230515_164757.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Thanks Lark Books, this was one of the first places to publish my creative works. </div><br /> <p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-32153471654229743162023-04-15T07:44:00.014-07:002023-08-14T10:23:04.593-07:00Three Poems on Loss and Grief<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv0ZaBFWcM-T9YyX9tQSvCw6SkS_UNumpOsWqE3H19Jh4T7_NUXlvABg5ilQcol7v12ozj4FS62OFENhA7vElKo5Wb4WT0D1drMpjo4leVButpEB2FUkJ4VPvp7l0Vdt2rpLsU7GTIrVrYCz_yTAx694j6znWbaw1Y3EHLV3-gX9Upx__FYX-8u_c/s2000/VILOMAH%20Private%20View.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1414" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcv0ZaBFWcM-T9YyX9tQSvCw6SkS_UNumpOsWqE3H19Jh4T7_NUXlvABg5ilQcol7v12ozj4FS62OFENhA7vElKo5Wb4WT0D1drMpjo4leVButpEB2FUkJ4VPvp7l0Vdt2rpLsU7GTIrVrYCz_yTAx694j6znWbaw1Y3EHLV3-gX9Upx__FYX-8u_c/w452-h640/VILOMAH%20Private%20View.jpg" width="452" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Very pleased for my Three Poems on Loss and Grief accepted as part of this amazing exhibition. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh189eIMdZOM7_7sbnu_JHivfHJscjvUbmeFlVGcHxcs6jiWwQIcb7NH1oSd-EsLIyq-N6exrWb4Ew0yIM8H_lxX1t1S6HadRLGt9kd9N3s4INEhvMzsanyc9-gRPk8cz--nuhk9m6jL1d2FbbMi-oN-dL201IEh40iU8l69H_dk_E457uaz598oQ-/s1080/Vilomah%20Post%202.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh189eIMdZOM7_7sbnu_JHivfHJscjvUbmeFlVGcHxcs6jiWwQIcb7NH1oSd-EsLIyq-N6exrWb4Ew0yIM8H_lxX1t1S6HadRLGt9kd9N3s4INEhvMzsanyc9-gRPk8cz--nuhk9m6jL1d2FbbMi-oN-dL201IEh40iU8l69H_dk_E457uaz598oQ-/s320/Vilomah%20Post%202.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiApstFnQbhX_PtUnuc8QTP4jgUgabKnxxW0-hlBmC5q0m1ZksWOfvVxz2d1TkS_PRuTPzYJilIEINRnG_CebIB9pd4qFo_TT3fkF_NYJfMUaZ5BWhlIF9409RR23n7KBURo0X8RiuPxW-tLYo_T5bpRUjVRGD4JxQCMhBS7S9MDpkOdUXok8UWH9TQ/s1080/Vilomah%20Post%203.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; 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margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Yo1dMGdfFZ4Q5uAvUdmrHIjGy9s84W9Jx9-00qN23Dj3hZHrsew-kmw5z7SNzlTxbUN31T0KeWfzw6ODX-DsXfiGs97HwIspV3bM52aJJxfVFNpZZU3ABKWO077a_Y2unRmtvV8NH_KQfAPriRmeqYrxqiC03Xk4VBm23c-f-gbwkrTwGDD3RYz7/s320/Vilomah%20Post%204.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">.............................</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Three Poems on Loss and Grief: </span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">A Sounding Voice, Coming and Going & Pleated Heart.</span></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><b>A Sounding Voice<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The feet of my child, the mind of my child, the voice of my
child.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet I am on my own in a room. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The feet of my child, the mind of my child… upstairs all the
beds are made.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The voice of my child… the whole building is quiet. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tear a piece of me away, that is what it is to lose that
life, which was inside me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The bedspreads are flat and neat… the ache in my soul of the
disappeared baby.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The concrete grey, mint green and raspberry room, that now stands
empty, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Is ringing with singing, resonating with the voice of a
woman who might have been.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The colours in the room melt in a haze of cloudy diffusion,
watercolour pathos. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………………………………….<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Coming and Going<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Every breath is different and every breath hits differently<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The process of arriving or departing is a fact and the fact
that we are here alive<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Is proof of the fact that we arrived.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The departing is different. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A life well lived and long. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or a life never lived beyond the womb.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ended by sleep.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ended in an accident.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ended by another.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ended by their own hand.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ended by illness, virus, disease.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And after, those of us who have arrived and not yet
departed, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">watch as people leave.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We see the ways of their going, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and I think of my own going, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and of the departure of the ones I hold dear.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I wonder how I will survive <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and if these losses will mark the beginning of my own
departure. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…………………….<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Pleated Heart<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do not talk to me about February.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The canal takes me to that place in myself, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To my multiple-personality-selves down in the water.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Numbness no words, no …<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A void cloudbank has enveloped me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Temporality shifted, to reveal eternity.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Somehow so strong the belief that I do not belong here in this
reality.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is only a temporary shelter.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Grinding.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The day is not lubricated with happiness <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">but sounds with the din of metal on metal scraping and
dragging.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My heart is pleated. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Concertinaed up in my chest and it is painful to breathe.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Today is like the longest mountain tunnel <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">with no end in sight, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">no glimpse of light, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I just keep walking. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I miss her. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Just a sudden feeling that she is no longer in here. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I feel the loss.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From this day on, my days will have a new, dented shape.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By Frances-Ann Norton<o:p></o:p></p></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-31026029936848731992023-03-24T15:47:00.004-07:002023-08-14T10:23:37.143-07:00Silence Poem<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxzFF_qslaJst6VyAT6r9__00U3CiuFP8rbpxV1JctbHl_Uih7KlI8nOQknZZgaHkxiDyB5mns5cYnpfWqhyalZ5PbxAJ_CB0awMnOh65pajr9j-qknOLG_e5KAnRd-UoCBzWzbuCt1dUMXiMavl4ZeZ-BYSkGOxBJy3UzsW0rTiNbOxOTwdNd8G2/s4251/lacie-slezak-yHG6llFLjS0-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2822" data-original-width="4251" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxzFF_qslaJst6VyAT6r9__00U3CiuFP8rbpxV1JctbHl_Uih7KlI8nOQknZZgaHkxiDyB5mns5cYnpfWqhyalZ5PbxAJ_CB0awMnOh65pajr9j-qknOLG_e5KAnRd-UoCBzWzbuCt1dUMXiMavl4ZeZ-BYSkGOxBJy3UzsW0rTiNbOxOTwdNd8G2/s320/lacie-slezak-yHG6llFLjS0-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Silence Poem:<o:p></o:p></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me scream and rage <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">rend my clothes, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">sob my heart out in pure frustration.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let my tongue be cleaved to the roof of my mouth<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">with the wordlessness of my fury and despair.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me smash priceless porcelains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rip costly canvasses.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fling myself into the torrenting vortex of the sea<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">in the thunder storm.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me throw all the furniture from an upstairs window<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to splintering crunch <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and splitting asunder.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me bloody my knuckles <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">punching time on the kitchen cabinets.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you need me not.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you want me not.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you love me not. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If this be so…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me dive to bell-depths of the ocean floor deaf to sound.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me close myself in a silent sauna of tears.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me bury my head in the sand of peacefulness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let me become another self, a silent one.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Half bird, half snake, half woman.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To fly the somber skies, shunned by every other creature. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> First published in <i>Magical Women Magazine</i>, October 2020.</o:p></p></div><p><br /> </p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-36921430576797085422023-03-24T15:39:00.002-07:002023-08-14T10:24:36.920-07:00Willow Pattern<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvatL_3OcS6cdRK1XOr4kBSFR6PiA1TyWpIqRIx9PR4nzZRDUo7VJrPJdV60lrkFdhImkWtx7zrIDGpzt4GPILl6zL6NTq94bhGqB_quQCqdsHYbGyvbgdOGGyzi_TGjOmMIkMi_QShT_JOAqeaXnQ9Nor0B-vS3THFenOeG46rYBZ2dAwyv5_ShDJ/s548/willow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="272" data-original-width="548" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvatL_3OcS6cdRK1XOr4kBSFR6PiA1TyWpIqRIx9PR4nzZRDUo7VJrPJdV60lrkFdhImkWtx7zrIDGpzt4GPILl6zL6NTq94bhGqB_quQCqdsHYbGyvbgdOGGyzi_TGjOmMIkMi_QShT_JOAqeaXnQ9Nor0B-vS3THFenOeG46rYBZ2dAwyv5_ShDJ/w640-h318/willow.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Willow Pattern:<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Snappy handbags and porcelain ginger pots<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The lovers banned from the Spar Local<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">For smooching in the aisles.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Why are Dads such a pain in the ass?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">What do they know anyway?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Were they ever really young and in love?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The boat is waiting <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A banged up beater of a boat<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">They have paid the captain two crates of Newcastle Brown.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Their destination? Love Island, In the Melanesian Pacific.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The edge of the pattern is theirs to create anew<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The snapped willow,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">the kicked in fence,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">the smashed pots<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">the shattered mirror<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">where the motif runs out, what happens there? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">This is where their story begins<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The old repetitions are left behind, forgotten in the
amnesia<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Of true love<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The pattern is changing, mending, re-growing, piecing itself
back together <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The willow, the boat, the fence, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Set sail and don’t look back.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">First published in <i>Magical Women Magazine</i>, October 2020</p><p>
</p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1053552799325034273.post-84709699911998108122023-03-24T15:31:00.006-07:002023-08-14T10:25:10.247-07:00Curled in the Nautilus of Herself<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXbcB61Xb_VwKTccVk-cqpeGu23en620XkhIxNya8u5BJDKkpkg-rL4mS8R8Oq6wrwMMOs-JXAjFqWx7XcLAF-JEM793igXpw1W5GdBeJuImFiGRl1TKupX33zmhUpgue_6K92RmbLaCuLch6uwUlKdh3SZxHw4sIXY263RA6YEPdpPmlJPbUH7bh/s4032/giulia-may-cNtMy74-mnI-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXbcB61Xb_VwKTccVk-cqpeGu23en620XkhIxNya8u5BJDKkpkg-rL4mS8R8Oq6wrwMMOs-JXAjFqWx7XcLAF-JEM793igXpw1W5GdBeJuImFiGRl1TKupX33zmhUpgue_6K92RmbLaCuLch6uwUlKdh3SZxHw4sIXY263RA6YEPdpPmlJPbUH7bh/s320/giulia-may-cNtMy74-mnI-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Curled in the Nautilus of Herself:<o:p></o:p></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Curled in the nautilus of herself, she dreams in polynomial
time, multiverse. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each night a different life, crystal clarity.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Playthings in a painted ladybird tin.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Vertebrae of a fish, single portion of ground black pepper<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tiny matryoshka, from tight in the middle of the mama dolls.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These things she takes out one by one, each with its own
tale, talisman for the first day of school.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tokens of her nautilus world. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Inside the Fibonacci curves she is beyond reproach or recall.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Full of potential, myths and future lives, waiting to be
born, gestating in rose coloured dimness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The pink light making a fingernail home.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">First published in <i>Magical Women Magazine</i>, October 2020</p></div><p><br /> </p>Frances Norton O'Donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14777670281961558164noreply@blogger.com0