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Tag: Remembrance

For You

For You

Published by Adrian North on 16 March 2018

For You

The radio plays
Gently in the background
Of my life.
The light throws dim shadows
Onto the dreary walls
Of my room.
It is so cold here now
Without you.
You have left an emptiness
That nothing fills.
An icy silence
Of nothing heard
Except my breathing
Harsh and halting.
The hours are long,
Time creeps past.
The hands of the clock
On the wall
Are resistant
To my will,
They are persistent
In their motionlessness.
I fill my life with boredom
And remembrances.
I warm my spiritless heart
With tales of happier days
And wait in frighted hope.
For you.

12/07/1990

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Winter Sunrise

Winter Sunrise

Published by Adrian North on 23 February 2018

Winter Sunrise

Winter sunrise
Salmon vapoured clouds
In beryl sky swim
Geese flying
In playful arrowed form
Pass over me
My footfall
On iced grass remains
A lonely path
By still steaming river
Days early silence
As life from darkened sleep arises
Assails a brooding reverie
And returns me whole
To my humanity

26/11/2009

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She sits there opposite me

She sits there opposite me

Published by Adrian North on 19 February 2018

She sits there opposite me

She sits there opposite me
In that old chair of hers
Knitting those strange shapes she made
Toys, animals, useful things
So many - I have some still
In some forgotten corner of my life

She sits there opposite me
Wrapped against the cold
Her breathing sometimes shallow
Sometimes laboured, sometimes still
So far, so very far
From my youth remembered time

She sits there opposite me
So frail and grey and worn
Her vibrant life reduced, debased, displaced
By depression, despair and pain
And saddened we
Sit with her and we cry

She sits no longer where
So staunchly once she did
Her one warm chair now empty stands
Soundless like a vault
And poorer now we live
With remembrance of a once great life

29/11/2009

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View from a window

View from a window

Published by Adrian North on 9 February 2018

View from a window

Sun setting
Behind hills of brown
Crows fly
Crows cry
Beneath greying clouds
The old shepherds road
Lies empty now
A home for thistle
And heather
And memories
A burn peat stained
Chases down
Steep gullies
Over rocks and tumbles
To darkening river below
And flows sludge slow
Under stone still bridge
Past field
And bank
To forest shadowed
All is quiet now
The still of dusk's deep desire
For peace
And solitude
And death
Of day
And birth
Of night

19/09/1998

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A walk

A walk

Published by Adrian North on 29 January 2018

A walk

The grey cold of winter rain
lashes face and hands and me.
Raven clouds dark as my damaged thoughts
lie overhead, threatening, sinister.
Muddy paths leading to muddy places
through trees scoured clean by loathsome storms.
Past verdant leaves indifferently slaughtered
scud across my shadowed dreary view.
Hearing no-one, seeing no-one and being no-one
trudging onward, slipping, stumbling, sliding, swearing.
My mood as black as longest night
companion to my wary winter woodland wander.
Sombre thoughts of death unfettered rise
unbidden to my mind.
I must escape this path, this wood, this life
or stay forever snared in this leafless, lifeless grove.
I reach the edge of brooding breathless copse
driven to the open fields of freedom before me.
And still the grey cold of winter rain
lashes face and hands and me.

07/02/2017

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I Found A Photograph

I Found A Photograph

Published by Adrian North on 26 January 2018

I Found A Photograph

I found a photograph the other day
Of me in younger clothes
Squirreled away buried in battered cardboard cave
Dingy, dusty, damaged,
Dumped in haste behind old books
In a long forgotten corner
Of an aged loft
Where all my other junk
Of long past lives
Lies forlorn, discarded
And there I saw
The well remembered outline of my youth
The thirsty eyes
Full of hope
And love
And innocence
The widely smiling mouth
Whose wisdomed words
Like golden oration spewed forth
Unfettered by latter doubts
But heeded only by unheeding night
Those ears so often catching
Sounds of joy
And laughter
And pain
And longing
The shoulders broad like Atlas
Yet tender
Refuge for tormented souls
The arms full ardour
But loveless left
The hands so willing
But always clumsy
Tripping over words
And tasks
And life
And I in longing know
That this is how I want to be
And not this deserted frame
That I have now become
Oh the years have turned
And I have turned
Into dust and yearning and nought
Tumbling to my inexorable end
Of dust and dull oblivion

10/02/2017

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A walk along a river bank

A walk along a river bank

Published by Adrian North on 22 January 2018

A walk along a river bank

Through the chill mist comes the honk of lonely goose
From an island over in the stream
Somewhere out of view
In the grey light of early day

In the field cattle stand
Lowing, guiding the days bright entrance
Chewing cud and grass
Viewing world with watchful eye

From nowhere the wheezing whoosh of wings
Tells us of swans arising
On tall columns of milk frothed air

Ahead on dewy bank
A heron statued stands
A grey sentry to our approach
Along path
Sided sometimes by sloes
In their season

Distant comes the whispering
Watery sound of weir
And mill and stream
And the church bell tolling
This hour of dawn

At the gate in the corner we turn
And homeward head
To a world more frantic
Than this timeless place

22/04/1998

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What has passed

What has passed

Published by Adrian North on 17 January 2018

What has passed

The leaves are turning now
Away back home
Nights are drawing in
Wood fires lit
Against late evening cool
Mists in early noon
Rolling over stubbled fields
From river turgid, slow
With a thousand remembrances
Yet here I am
Tied to the past
With pale recollections
To keep me sound
In this strange land
Of heat and dust and toil
Kept  in motion
By unresolved yearnings
To return
To what I was

05/09/2009

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