Long Fronds

Leaf 286 – Reflections

 

Utagawa Hiroshige - Seba from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Highway (c.1830s) British Museum

I’ve written about this before. I like staring into deep water, especially flowing water. I think I had the river at Grantchester in mind when I wrote this poem, although it could be any number of rivers in which I’ve seen long, ribbon-like fronds of weed trailing in the flow. I find this mesmerizing. The mirror-like surface of the water makes it seem like I’m looking into another world, which in reality it actually is. Another realm that in some senses can seem quite mystical, wondering what it might be like to live in another element. A world in which all frames of reference are utterly different and consequently transformative.

 

 

Long fronds

swaying within

the dark stream.

 

 

 

 

Coming of Age

Leaf 285 – Art Inspired

 

I recently watched the film ‘Empire of the Sun’ (1987), which is based on J.G. Ballard’s book of the same title. It’s a film I watched many times while I was growing up, but it was only when I was much older that I actually read the book. Later still, I even went to several of the locations in and around Shanghai that feature in the book, which is actually a semi-autobiographical novel. 

Norman Rockwell - Freedom from Fear (1943)

I find it fascinating to see all the subtle nuances which Steven Spielberg managed to weave into the movie. The symbolic mirroring and foreshadowing. It really is a masterpiece of motion picture film-making. It must be quite a challenge to make a very good film of a very good book. Often, they end up being two distinctly different things. But, in this instance, there’s a lot in the book which is very deftly hinted at in the film – even if it is not shown exactly as it is described on the printed page. The two poems posted below are a reflection upon that aspect of the book as it is very subtly suggested in the film; of things seen and unseen; of things felt and experienced, but forever unspoken.

 

 

COMING OF AGE [I.]

 

A potato in his pocket?

 

Under cover of darkness

a secret self –

making new discoveries.

(after J.G. Ballard’s ‘Empire of the Sun’)

***

 

COMING OF AGE [II.]

 

Death’s radiance rises in darkness:

 

Watching Mrs Victor’s

soul ascend –

into bright white light.

 

(after J.G. Ballard’s ‘Empire of the Sun’)

 

'Empire of the Sun' (1987) film stills: IMDb / Norman Rockwell painting: Wikipedia

Harvest Fiesta

Leaf 284 – Art Inspired

 

C.F. Tunnicliffe - Sparrows Raiding Corn

This poem was originally written in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt on Bluesky to write a haiku using the words ‘harvest’ and ‘sparrow.’ This Ladybird book illustration by C.F. Tunnicliffe immediately sprang to mind.

 

 

Harvest festival

soon becomes a fiesta –

sparrows amid the barley.

 

Septimus Scott - Harvest Mouse (1949)

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt: 'harvest', 'sparrow.'

Time's River

Leaf 283 – Homeward Bound

 

Heraclitus said “no one can ever step in the same river twice,” but there’s nothing like a sense of place to help jog the memory. Especially when the place is your hometown.

 

 

CHENEY FIELDS

 

Returning to the river

of our childhood adventures

– forty years hence.

 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

Handy Pine

Leaf 282 – Garden Poems

 

Maruyama Ōkyo - Pine Trees in Snow, left folding screen (1786) Mitsui Memorial Museum

Similar to Leaf 281, this poem was written during my second trip to Japan back in 2003. I wrote it during a visit to Rikugien, one of Tokyo’s remaining Daimyō Gardens (see Leaf 108). The way pine trees are so carefully sculpted here in Japan, to my mind at least, means they sometimes seem to resemble hands or umbrellas even, which sometimes can be quite “handy” …

 

 

Feeling the cold –

I stand under a handy pine bough

and warm my head.

 

 

 

Kawase Hasui - Pine Trees in Clear Weather after Snow (1929)

Primping the Pooch

Leaf 281 – Looking Back

 

This is a poem written during my first or second trip to Japan back in 2003. I’m pretty sure it was something I saw whilst wandering around the Asakusa area of Tokyo. I took the accompanying photograph only a year or two ago in Yokohama.

 

 

Primping the pooch

in her handbag,

the lady stops

to adjust its little coat.

 

 

 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

First Date

Leaf 280 – Looking Back

 

One of the things I’ve discovered from having been married for a fair few years now, is how small and seemingly insignificant memories come to acquire a kind of patina of warmth, which one treasures all the more intimately within the everyday rhythm of one’s heart – much in the same way that diamonds are formed from uncountable layers unseen, accrued so quietly and serenely over unfathomable stretches of time. In that sense, I suppose, some depths of feeling attain something of the eternal – an abiding resonance felt far down, deep within our souls.

 

 

Happily.

 

Following her footsteps

all these years –

 

Remembering

the boots she wore

on our first date.

 

 

 

 

Photograph Credit: VII XI XXX/Rakuten & Randa/Rakuten