TFE's Poetry Bus No.3. Breathing!

I haven't figured out how to link yet! ( hope for help from a watercat soon)! Anyway for my third ride on TFE's  big bus I figured on a Haiku. I have no previous on this Japanese form but will give it a go. This weeks prompt was to shut your eye's and breath, a bit like my first ride on the bus!

No.3

Eyes closed
I breath you in
Your smell intermingles with memory.


I also wrote another poem on the subject of Breathing, I'm not to sure of it yet, however writing to a deadline is good practice! So I offer it up for your approval, or disapproval for that matter!

'A' is for airway.  A kiss of Love.

Waking early I turn to kiss you,
Our warm breath mixes as I feel your breast gently rise,
Whilst outside wind blows, branches fall,
And somewhere off gulls circle back to shore.

You still slumber filled,
As my lips press lightly against yours,
And somewhere deep within,
An exchange of gas is to begin.

Bronchi divided, Alveoli and capillary infused,
As oxygen from this nocturnal kiss,
Enters your bloodstream and makes a start,
With systolic pressure to your heart.

Poetry Bus. Revenge!

This weeks Poetry Bus is being driven by The 'Emerging Writer,' the three prompts were hard, in the end I chose prompt 1, Revenge!
When I was in primary school there was a boy who was the second 'Hardest' in the school, he liked to pick on any one who was below him on the 'Hardest' ladder. I managed to combat his beatings by allying myself to the boy on top of that ladder. This strategy worked up until that boy fell ill and was kept away from school. I then became the subject of Timmy Spencer's attention. It was after one of those attention grabbing days that we were to play against each other in a soccer match!

One more rung.

The tackle made him fall, me on top of him,
He the bully of the school, me the boot at his shin,
In the heat of that moment I had a split second choice,
So I struck while the iron was hot, despite my inner voice.

So I became the one who was unjustly angry,
And the one who became hell bent,
I became HIS worst nightmare,
With deeply malicious intent.

Despite the referees whistles, and poor Timmy's cry's,
I struck a blow for justice that landed between his eyes,
And in that short second, the worst he'd ever known,
I climbed one rung above him, and sat upon his throne.

I scream at Ice cream!

Is there ever a bad time for ice cream?
I'm sure there used to be a time when there was a definite season for ice cream vans, especially here in the Northern Hemisphere. You knew that summer had finally arrived when you heard Bozzelli's old blue and cream Bedford van chirp out in a 'tinny' monotone , "Just one Cornetto, give it to me, delicious ice cream from Italy" between the backfire bangs, and clouds of black exhaust. Here was a real ice-cream man! 2nd generation Italian, fought in the war, smoked camel, and kept a club under the counter in case he got robbed! His ice-cream was home made, soft and delicious. You could have it any flavour you want as long as it was vanilla, and he sold penny sweets and Mars bars. The sweets came in small paper bags made up into fractions of dinner money amounts, and he cleverly applied his trade just outside the gates of each school in the area at break times.
 Now I sit here and every day winter or summer, hail or shine, a modern van screams down past my door and up the street. Blaring out in stereo, louder than any 'pimped up' bass in a racer boys Mitsubishi, the William Tell overture! The vendor looks about sixteen and the ice-cream is a watery generic mush. He has no idea about the importance of 'hundreds and thousands' or what a 'show boat' is, let alone a banana split!

Perhaps I'm getting old! But ice-cream from ice-cream vans is a summer thing! A treat worth waiting for, the thing that got you through a double period of Chemistry on a boiling hot day in the Science block! Not something that you can get any day of the year! Not something served up by a spotty teen called 'Dev' in a squeaky clean machine with Super Mario Kart on the side! And most importantly of all, not something you should be able to get whilst there is still snow on the ground!

NOT!

Reasons to be absent. Plus photo's!

Reasons for absence!

1. Promotional duties.
2. The emergence of my sister as a great writer!
3. Getting a dog.
4. Laziness.

The list could go on and on. I suppose if honest, for me writing does not come naturally, I have not got the gift of the gab' the Irish would say. My sister has it, she is a true wordsmith, and forges images out of pieces of mundane life and transforms them into glowing shapes, then twists them into tales and songs. I on the other hand need to be inspired by something. I struggle to see life in the ordinary, or rather, I can see the life but struggle to find the words. This is why I take photo's! Picture's I can find. I think therefore I fall artistically somewhere between my sister, the singer songwriter (see the watercats), and my dyslexic brother, the Artist. So for now I will show some of the pictures whilst practicing to find the words!

The sister.

The wife.

The boy.

The boys kayak.

The boys win.

The hug.

Archie, the small!

Archie, The boy, and the kayak!

Archie, The Irish Terrier!

I will try and fulfil my blogging duties in the weeks to come by using pictures and words, and even the occasional poem type thing! I will make it my quest to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and try to give it a life of its own. Whatch this space!

MY FIRST TRIP ON THE EEJITS POETRY BUS, driven by IRIS.

I have often read other peoples tickets on this bus, but have yet to take the plunge. So with my new years resolution in mind, to use my blog more! here I go. I'm not sure how I go about getting on, or even if I need to pre-book my ticket! so to speak, anyway I have no idea where I shall end up I will have to wait and see.
Option 1. Close my eyes and breath deep x3,

Delay

This passage of time
A moth-eaten moratorium worming through my mind
Those greenish, purple, spots kaleidoscope
 Aqueous, bought into sharp focus again
 Humorous, like a child
This dull edgeless prattle
distant, in that dark short decade of time
Pulsates, as the light of the new year rushes in.

A Real Christmas Miracle.

Have you ever stopped to think what you would run and save from the flames if you returned home to find your house on fire? This question was once asked of a well known photographer
 Don Mc. Cullin. He was asked which of all of his famous images would he save, he replied the ones that were took by his children, and the ones that reminded him of home!
As a professional firefighter the correct answer would be never go back into a burning building! This advise is given out every day on our TVs and in our school visit's to young faces looking up with questions. "what about my play station, my grannies old doll, my gold fish,cat, baby brother, etc etc, all the things that are important to young minds. We answer back in a straight forward slightly abrupt way, these can be replaced but you can't! There is nothing more important to your parents than you!"
But what if your kids are grown up and have flown the coop, what if all you have left are memories and keep sakes, what then?
It was 9.45pm when we got the call on Christmas Eve, Domestic Fire-Persons Reported! When we arrived at the farmstead one section of the single story cottage was well alight, I could see two men wrestling with an elderly Lady and pulling her back from the door. Thick black smoke was erupting from under the tiles and spewing from the open windows, and a familiar orange glow could be seen from the end room. Mary had been at Christmas mass, her youngest daughter was over for the holidays and had arrived earlier that day as a surprise. She was calling to us and directing us up the boreen, face blackened, her hair disheveled with tears making silvery tracks down her cheeks. Everyone was out Thank god for that! I set my crew to task fighting the fire Breathing apparatus on. Mary and her daughter had arrived back from mass to find Mary's bedroom alight and fire spreading along the corridor of her family home. She had done her best to get in to save her memories! The family albums in the Dinning room, and the watch her Husband had given to her for there first Christmas together, which she kept in the drawer under the mirror on her sideboard in her bedroom. But she had been beaten back from the smoke and then held back by the neighbours who had given them a lift back from the church. Threaded onto the strap of the watch was her Wedding Ring, Engagement ring and her Eternity ring which she could no longer wear because of swollen arthritic fingers. Between gulps of oxygen from beneath the mask she grabbed my hand,
"The house can go! But please try and get these for me, they are all I have left," " promise me" she said, her grasp surprisingly strong for her age. I met her daughter to get a rough lay out of the building, she was in shock and spoke to quickly to understand, however once calmed down, 'I try and do a good impersonation of calm!' Which I have found can spread like a smile once you can achieve it, she spoke clear and well giving me a good description of all of what her elderly mother was after, and I promised that we would do our best but asked her to be strong for her mother and be prepared for the worst. It was a good half hour before my men reported that the fire was out, we had stopped the spread and contained it to two rooms at the end of the house, but there was still a lot of smoke trapped in the attic space and in the other rooms. Mary refused to leave the scene until she had her things, my men were busy clearing out the debris from the fire room, mary's bedroom! As they shovelled out the smouldering mess I set up two men with a small hose to clean through the blackened fused detritus to search for gold. Mary's daughter got on her hands and knees and joined in with the search. It would take a miracle, the room was destroyed and everything in it, the bed springs and old copper bed stead were the only recognisable objects left in the room, even these were blackened and misshaped by the heat of the fire.
Meanwhile I entered the building to set up a 'Venting fan' to help with the smoke. Every room I entered was completely covered in a thick black residue that stuck to the fixtures and fittings like tar, and ran down the walls like condensation, A sight only too familiar to victims of a fire, and surgeons of lung cancer victims! The heat in the subsequent rooms was such that it melted the polystyrene ceiling tiles of the sitting room and had melted the fuse box of the mains electric supply. Anything made of plastic above head hight in most rooms had begun to melt. The lamp shades, curtain hooks, picture frames. I held little hope for the photo albums. As I approached what should have been the Dinning room/best room I feared the worst, the door was blackened and the years of leaded paint had begun to blacken and blister. The door opened into a pristine room, the table set for Christmas, the tree resplendent in the corner, and sat there in the middle of the table the photo album opened at a black and white square format image of the whole family taken out side the house on the door step, a younger Mary holding her new born Daughter who's father took one look at, and named her after her mother, Mary. That was twenty eight years ago Mary senior explained to me between tears of joy! A little time later my driver called me over and handed me a blackened mass of burnt leather, but attached to it was the gleam of silver and gold times three, and the inscription on the back of the watch read, after a rub with a damp cloth,
'To my darling Mary, on our first Christmas' Both Mary's began to cry as Mary senior clutched them to her breast, It has been reported that even I had a tear in my eye, but it was just the effects of the smoke!!!

Miracle's like this don't happen every day, but this one happened for real on Christmas Eve, and despite the fire we were able to give Mary the best present that night, her Memories.

Tallow Bridge to TempleMichael.

Tallow bridge stands at the bottom of Tallow hill and spans the River Bride. Next to the bridge is an old coach house that now serves meals with your pints if you want it. The river here runs fast and clear over a gravel bottom that shines gold in the sunshine between ribbons of bright ivy green weed that dances with every undulation of the currant. This was to be our start point for the first of this years Kayak adventures. Oliver and I had navigated the upper reaches of the bride last year, and ended an exhausting days paddling where we were about to begin today. The water was cold and swollen from the recent rain and swept us quickly down stream with little effort needed from our paddles. We passed through low pasture land and startled a group of young bullocks who stampeded along the top of the bank in front and above us, their hooves sending up mud missiles that splashed down around us like a scene from Pearl Harbour. The river soon widens out and starts the gentle meandering that is common with rivers in the last stages of their Journey to the sea.
The banks hear were built up some time ago when large horse drawn barges would navigate up stream carrying coal or grain, the Georgian brick and stone work still visible through the stems of river sage and willow. Where the roots of trees have managed to push through, the stone work has collapsed into the water forming convenient perches for the ever vigilant heron who seem to patrol every inch of the river, there 'S' shape silhouette only made visible by the dash of white around their 'post it' yellow bill,  and the two black feathers that they wear like a sash around their head. Between the stone of the jetties, the banks of the river have become completely wild again, without mans interference nature has managed to transform the river. Banks have eroded, the beginnings of Ox bow lakes have begun to form where the meandering water has cut into the soft clay, and the submerged branches of long dead trees loom out of the clear water like the spindly bones of skeleton hands that scrape at the bottom of our kayaks.

It was on one of these half submerged trees that we saw something move! As we approached we could see that it was an otter who was busy playing, diving into the water and climbing out again, using the branches as an impromptu diving board. We were quietly drifting trying to make no noise or any movement as we approached ever closer to the otters own personal part of the river. My camera was in the pocket of my jacket, only accessible via a loud velcro flap 'typical'. As we drew within five feet the otter looked at us for a second, as if in bewilderment, then slipped quietly and gracefully into his watery underworld, his fur, like dark silk mirrored the surface of the water. We watched as it slipped under us and away, a ring of bubbles appearing every couple of feet as it eased it self to the far bank. He seemed to stay with us for a while, every now and then we would catch sight of his black head as it poked out of the water to take a look.

After the wildness of this part of the river, man takes over again, and the river runs broad and straight, it also starts to show the first signs of tidal rise and fall. At a place called Camphire a large stone build bridge used to cross hear, but was knocked to make way for a more modern ugly mass concert one to take the rigors of modern day traffic. About half a mile beyond this bridge the River Bride comes to an end as her waters meet and mingle with that of the mighty River Blackwaters. The full effect of the new river soon takes hold as we enter her. The force of the water rushing out with the tide swept us along, as exposed mud flap where flocks of waders seemed to appear out of no where rose up out of the retreating waters.

We followed the river past vast bastions of rock that once held fortified castle's and long since destroyed Abby's. The splashes of sea trout erupted unpredictably around us as we were lost in the vastness of her water. Small stone built quay's all hiding rotting hulls of wood built craft seemed to be on every sheltered bend, and the dark angular silhouette of cormorants would glide low over the waters edge, then come to rest on some perch and watch, wings stretched out, Christ like as we paddled past.

Our rendezvous point with the car was at a place called TempleMichael. This was once the sight of a fortified house belonging to a local Irish clan leader. The House/castle was attacked by the Protestant land owners and the leader of the Clan held out against them by barricading himself in. The land owners then decided to lay siege to it, in order to starve him out. But locals loyal to him smuggled food by way of the river where upon he would lower a basket from the walls. The siege lasted months, and to teach him a lesson they destroyed the house and with the rubble built a protestant church on the sight.

Four hours of sheer bliss! the first of the season for Oli and me.