Tag Archives: Drifting Sands

A Poem from Drifting Sands

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This is from Drifting Sands Issue 24. If you use the link you can view me in situ by scrolling down to Simon Wilson, or look on page 53. I’m fairly sure I haven’t posted this one before, though as we have noted, my memory is not all it used to be.

Young and old . . . and gone
Saturday afternoon. We are having a garage clear out. Two kid’s bicycles, sports kit and a
child-sized tent are piled on the ground. Garden tools, not used for years, are lined up against
the house—the leaf blower with the intermittent electrical fault, a long-handled wire brush for
weeding the gaps between paving slabs, a tool with three hooked tines . . .

Distant shouts drift from a cricket match, an Amazon driver delivers something across the
road, and magpies roam the gutters, searching for water. If they find any they scoop at it
eagerly and hold back their heads to drink. The sunshine brings out the iridescent blues and
greens in the black plumage, and lights up the falling water droplets. I decide that tea would
be a good idea. My wife sits on a camping stool and I balance on the chair with the loose leg as
we sip the hot brew. We find a box of cassette tapes. They seemed so modern at the time. She
picks out one by Ian Dury and asks if I remember that night in Sheffield. Looking at the
growing pile we wonder why we needed it, and why we kept it all this time.

the garden harvest
tomato juice runs down
my chin

 

The pictures come from May 2020 and were selected at random. I really should be more sensitive and use photos that match the poem.

Vaccination Stories and Haibun Stuff

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Just when you think that life isn’t silly enough, along comes a new story. The Mencap Facebook group was  pinging all afternoon yesterday. They have all been going for vaccinations. One of them nearly fainted when he saw the needle and had to have a lie down before they could vaccinate him. Another was vaccinated by a vet, who said she stayed still better than his usual clients.

Apart from that the big news of the day is that I have a new haibun out in Drifting Sands.  I’m not really happy with it, as I tried  a few new things and it isn’t really me.  I’ve been reading the work of too many experimental and modern poets.

This is a decision helped along by a bit of counting. I noticed a writer claiming in his biographical notes, that he has had “dozens” of poems published. Well, I had ten in my previous incarnation as a poet, around 15 years ago, and according to my recent count, I can add another 24. That’s dozens. Having seen someone else use the term I now feel like it’s a bona fide milestone, and I can now relax a bit.

It only seems like yesterday my writing seemed to have stalled and I worried about nobody accepting my 13th piece. It was actually, if you add the earlier ten, my 23rd piece, so no superstition should have been attached. It was also my 24th piece because it turned out that I had miscounted. It’s amazing what you can worry about.

I’m also in Failed Haiku this month. Page 179 – a senryu and a haibun.  It’s about  80% of the way through so it’s easier to start from the end if you want to scroll through looking. Originally it had a line about my debt to Larkin’s  Annus Mirabilis, but the editor has left it out. I wasn’t sure where allusion ends and plagiarism begins, but I think I’m on the right side of the line, even without the line in. It’s better without the acknowledgement anyway – it’s easy to start looking pretentious if you add explanation.

Oh dear, I’m in danger of sounding like I know what I’m doing…

 

The Last Days of Lockdown

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It’s the final week of the second lockdown, and I will be returning to work next week. We will be sticking to our pre-lockdown work pattern of four days a week and, because of the way it falls, I won’t be back in until Friday. I intend to make the most of the next four days.

I don’t have much in the way of poetry  writing to do at the moment because there are no deadlines until January. I think I have everything I need for then, and just have to polish a few bits. I will continue writing, but there is no urgency in it for the moment. I have quite a lot written and am polishing it for January.

At the moment I have a magazine article in progress. I’m struggling with it because I’m writing a list of information which I am reusing from an obituary. The life was interesting, but the process of writing about it is not so interesting.

I have also just had another  haibun published. Try this link to see it – same as usual, scroll down to Simon Wilson. You may like to try a few of the others while you are there. Last week I also had a haiku published in Presence, but that’s a print magazine so there is no link. This is, I think, the fourth time I submitted to Presence, and my first success. I was beginning to give up hope, but thought I’d give it another go. And with that brief word on the importance of persistence, I will leave close.