Helplessly sentimental

It’s like Flower-Gathering opened the floodgates. Now another Frost poem, my favourite when I was 16, is echoing in my head...

CARPE DIEM
Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
He waited, (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing –
Too present to imagine.
                        … Robert Frost

Flower-Gathering

A dear friend, aching over the untimely death of another, got in touch. For reasons that are unclear to the mind, but lucid to the heart, this popped up from another age, when I devoured poetry daily...

Flower-Gathering

I LEFT you in the morning, And in the morning glow, You walked a way beside me To make me sad to go. Do you know me in the gloaming, Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming? Are you dumb because you know me not, Or dumb because you know? All for me And not a question For the faded flowers gay That could take me from beside you For the ages of a day? They are yours, and be the measure Of their worth for you to treasure, The measure of the little while That I've been long away. - Robert Frost

Growing, together

I see you in all your tininess.
I swell to enfold you.
You totter by on unsteady legs.
I am there to steady you.
You hesitate on your dizzy perch.
My arms reach up to cushion you.
The needle's eye eludes your fingers.
My nimble ones assist you.
A flower's mystery creases your brow.
My mind leaps to inform you.
Your heart crumples as friends turn away.
My vast embrace comforts you.
I watch as  you seek me in a crowd
and amidst the dazzling tenderness
a quiet shadow falls -- I know
for you to grow, I must dwindle.

Before I was Ten

I remember open fields, and ditches that filled with rainwater. I remember silk cotton pod segments which served as boats, and paper boats that got swept into the maelstrom of storm-drains. I remember tunnels dug through soft earth. I remember wooden swords and toy guns and endless 'bang-bang' sessions. I remember one particular tree that my friend and I loved to sit in and have our snack handed up to us. I remember the shady tunnel of a pea-patch where I could sit for hours reading a book. I remember rushing to collect my hockey stick for the season, just to put a ball in the polythene sleeve and 'hammer-throw' it all the way across the ground. I remember the hut that a bunch of us built from branches and straw. I remember working bark pieces into fantastic shapes by just grating them on a concrete parapet during endless walks. I remember messy experiments with soap and water in the hapless bathroom. I remember Binaca animals set in a complete landscape we had built in the largest enclosure we could find -- a teacher's desk! I remember guinea pigs in their cage, and waxy specimens in formaldehyde. I remember the hawkers selling boiled potato concoctions and candy gum from a stick. I remember the haunted house and the stories of what had happened to previous visitors...

Spaces

We live in external spaces, demarcated, limited. Child unwraps ice lolly smartly, licks it up with not a drip to sully the car seat, floor. Emerges with the spatulate stick wrapped in the shiny wrapper. 

Next the spiffy antiseptic space of the home. However, between the two, between the filtered aircon motorised space and the clinical warm homespace, a brief bridge has to be crossed. The sunlit, dust-permeated space that she shares with humanity. 

And here, in this crack, the ice-lolly stick and wrapper drop from her fingers, to add a splash of glorious colour to the drab dust.

So we delineate our spaces -- here we shall be hygienic and spotless, and here we shall not care.

Are our spaces within as fractured? Or does the unifying consciousness allow no divisions? If inside we are, indeed, undivided, how does this correlate with the fragments with which we surround ourselves?

Rebooting

Born to lurk, I am questioning the wisdom of having a blog. Not enough gets written. Of that, not enough gets posted. Can technology help when the soul is wayward?

Have just got myself some blogging journal software, and it remains to be seen if this will periodically overcome the chronic writer’s cramp.