Poetry – From Pyrenees to Pennines

A Preposterous Poem: Péreille

What did I let myself in for? Rebecca, of Fake Flamenco fame, sets a monthly poetry challenge. Here’s what she’s decided on this month: ‘For October, we will each create a poem about a place we love. Write a poem in free verse (unrhyming) of fewer than 50 words about a favorite location.’ Rebecca’s own poem uses only words beginning with ‘s’. I had to join in.

I knew I wanted to write something about our years in France, when we lived in a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees (hence the name of my blog). Our own town’s name is a bit cumbersome for the purpose – Laroque d’Olmes. So I chose a hamlet nearby, a bit higher up the mountains than us, simply because it begins with a P. Don’t ask me why P seemed a good idea. You can decide when you’ve read my offering.

Péreille
Picturesque Péreille -
prettily placed.
Population?  Puny.
Previously peopled by productive peasants -
potatoes, peas, poultry, a pig, pastureland….

Presently preferred by Parisian pleasure-seekers.
Pourquoi pas?
Pastoral, perfectly peaceful Péreille:
proximate prominent peaks -
a Pyrenean playground.
Plateaux, peaks & pinnacles!

For Fake Flamenco

Here’s my offering this month for Rebecca of Fake Flamenco fame’s poetry challenge. If you look, you’ll see her visual prompt invites us to focus on swans, stained glass, flowers, or a family restaurant. I have chosen – er – not to focus on a swan and flowers.

Studley Royal, early one summer’s morning

In summer, the gardens here 
refrain from flowers.
Instead the trees, the hedges, lawns are
verdant, grassy, leafy, viridescent.

A swan glides silently along the Skell.
Birds carol, chirp & chatter.
Here is serenity and peace.

I have no idea why the swan’s head has been partly chopped off . It was there before …

A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go

Every month, over at Fake Flamenco, Rebecca sets a poetry challenge, and invites her readers to submit a verse on a chosen theme, in a selected poetic form. This month, she’s played into the hands of Becky’s Squares challenge. She’s shared an image of another blogger whom I follow, Britta. It’s the one shown in the header photo: a pair of frogs definitely planning on renewing the blood line.

Here’s my doiditsu (four non-rhyming lines, syllable count 7-7-7-5). Why not join in? You have till tomorrow to submit your entry. The real joy is that Rebecca translates every entry into Spanish : there’s a special thrill in having your own words beautifully re-crafted as a poem in another language.

Bathing in their tiny pond,
frogs are croaking words of love:
dressing up in greenest lace
to tryst, woo, then win.

And – Why not? Let’s make a late entry for Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

Rompecabezas

Every month, Rebecca over at Fake Flamenco sets a poetry challenge. This month, her chosen theme is – puzzle. Once our offerings are in, she sets herself a puzzle, and translates every single one into Spanish. Hence my post’s title. I reckon translating mine will definitely set out to romperle la cabeza (break her head).

Puzzle

I'm always frazzled by a puzzle.
My mind dries up, my brain's a-sizzle.
The answer's muzzled in my head
then bustles off - it's such a hassle.
I'm frizzled up and start to grizzle.

Let's just give up - go on the razzle.

Karla Hernandez: Unsplash. The header image, also from Unsplash, is by Mel Poole.

The Rat & Me

I’m - fairly - intelligent. Just like a rat.
Empathetic. Just like a rat.
I laugh when I’m tickled.  Just like a rat.
I need companionship. Just like a rat.
And I’m - usually - clean.  Just like a rat.
So why don’t I want to be … just like a rat?

For Rebecca at Fake Flamenco’s July 2023 Poetry Challenge.

My header image comes from Slyfox Photography at Unsplash, and my second, also from Unsplash, from Dave Alexander. Oddly, I have not a single image of a rat in my photo archive.

The Call of the Chorus

I tend to wake up early in the morning. At this time of year, it’s no hardship at all, because I can lie in bed, listening to a concert like this …

These are moments of uncomplicated happiness. However, by now, almost mid-June, it’s tinged with sadness too, because I know that we’ve less than a month to go before this morning serenade quite simply … stops.

So when Rebecca gave us our monthly marching orders of a poem, one about about a bird in our part of the world, I knew I didn’t want to fall in line. I didn’t want to single out the blackbird, robin, thrush, chiff-chaff, wren … whatever. I wanted to celebrate them all – all those songbirds who contribute to this morning symphony of joy.

Dawn.
The sun creeps above the horizon …
Birds awaken.
Carolling, calling, crooning, chirping, chanting - 
a clamorous cacophony welcomes the day.

Cacophony is often seen as negative, as being a word for racket, dissonance, din. But for me there is no other word to describe the medley of sounds as dozens of local birds have their morning vocal work-out, defending their territory whilst raising a brood of chicks.

On of these mornings soon, before the chorus this year stops, I’ll get up, get organised and walk towards the sunrise, maybe one just like the one in my header photo, listening to those birds saluting the light.

Fake Flamenco: June 2023 Poetry Challenge

Hammad Rais’ Weekend Sky #104

Fake Flamenco

A blogger whose posts I enjoy is Rebecca, of Fake Flamenco fame. She keeps her curious eyes open, as she walks and explores the natural world and other things that attract her notice. She informs herself and then her readers about social and political issues in Latin America -which I find so interesting as this is very little covered here in the UK. And she’s a poet. Every month she throws out a poetry challenge, which I always try to join in on, because she translates every poem that’s submitted into Spanish. There’s something very special about this. That she would spend time reading our work, then interpreting it faithfully, and in the same poetic style as our own efforts is quite wonderful.

This month she invited us to submit a haiku including the words waterfall of stars. I’m not someone to whom the haiku form comes easily, but we’re coming to the end of blossom season here in the UK, and I thought I’d write about that. And Rebecca rose to the challenge of translating.

Dying petals dance,
faded blossoms flutter down –
waterfall of stars.

Pétalos bailan
flores marchitas caen–
cascada estrellar.

You can find all the other entries here.

Yet more ancient trees

But after this I’ll stop. I promise.

Ancient trees aren’t simply defined. That cherry tree I showed you last week, was impossibly, possibly uniquely old at four hundred years. A yew can soldier on for several thousand years. Oaks can march on for a thousand years, though six to eight hundred is more usual. Sweet chestnut? Seven hundred. Lime trees? Three to four hundred. Beech trees? Maybe three hundred – longer if coppiced. Here’s the life-cycle of a tree condensed into two images.

The parkland at Studley Royal is rich in ancient examples of all of them. It’s been a protected space and a deer park for centuries. and as such, it has its own historical curiosities. You can find trees with small square holes in the trunk. It used to be believed that as the trunks of trees gradually become hollowed out, it made sense to fish out the resultant debris, and suitable holes were cut. The practice has long been discredited, and now the holes are scarring over and gradually closing up.

Further proof that trees know what’s what, and we don’t necessarily. See this lime tree and its massive bough? If you could walk round it, you’d see that this branch is cuboid in shape. Any builder will tell you that this shape is far better at load bearing than a cylindrical one. Did the earliest builders learn this important lesson from lime trees?

And some trees can actually ‘walk’ albeit slowly, as part of the root may die off, and stronger root systems further away may haul the whole trunk a small distance. It does take rather a long time though.

Here’s a small gallery of the trees we met on our walk last week:

Let’s finish off with a haiku celebrating these elderly, magnificent trees.

Venerable trees -
trunk and bark wrangled by time
tell ancient stories.

A multi-tasking post, with elements for Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome #113, Becky’s Walking Squares, and Rebecca’s November Poetry Challenge

It’s a worm’s life

Recently, I’ve started to follow a few poetry blogs, and last week, David of The Skeptic’s Kaddish, accepted a challenge: to write a Quatern.

A what? This …

Not just any old quatern however. This one has to contain the word ‘quiet’. I thought I’d have a go too. It happens that this fits quite nicely into my self-imposed challenge, set as I looked yet again at my geological map of Great Britain. What’s it like for worms? Some of them contend with sandy soil, others heavy clay. Some soil is chalky, some loamy, and what must soil up in the old coalfields be like? Or that thin acid soil of the moorlands?

I’ve written a gaggle of poems about worms, each one living in a different kind of soil: I obviously don’t get out enough. Each poem uses a different verse form. So why not sum the whole worm thing up in a quatern?

Quiet - can you hear a sound? 
The barley rustles in the breeze. 
A buzzard mewls, the crows confer, 
The rabbits waken.  Dusk descends. 

Below the ground it’s different though - 
Quiet - can you hear a sound? 
There are no noises from the worms 
who turn the earth, eat leaves and chaff. 

Their world of darkness is not ours. 
They churn the soil by night and day. 
Quiet - can you hear a sound 
as worms keep soil in rude good health? 

There’s life above, there’s life below - 
each dependent on the other. 
Do not dismiss the lowly worm: 
quiet - can you hear a sound?

Music for Monks?

A concert in the cellarium of Fountains Abbey last Saturday.

Pitch black, cold.

The singers gather,

muffled up.

Sing loudly, like long-gone monks -

conquering the dark.

And to lower the tone, that’s the scene once the audience had departed.

For Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome.