Daf'sDiary: Poetry at the Harbour Lights Café: Meeting No. 6

This message is well overdue and I do send you all my apologies for that.

I have been completely snowed under with all sorts of things that have had to come before poetry I’m afraid. One of the worst things about winter is as we all know that not only are there more nasty bugs and illnesses about but there seem to be more people shuffling off this mortal coil.

There is a funeral on Monday of a cousin of mine and only this week my daughters Jakki’s mother-in-law died suddenly. The death of my cousin caused a flurry of contact from several of my other cousins, who because we are scattered apart, I had not been in contact with since the last family funeral about a year ago.

This is basically just to remind everybody that the next meeting at the Look and Sea meeting room above the Harbour Lights Café is booked for Sunday week March 25^th. Hopefully everybody is looking forward to that as much as I am.

Still, spring is springing up all around us and my tiny little garden has pots full of tiny Tête-à-tête, competing with Tulips, Violets and Pansies that are a lovely contrast to all the horribly depressing news of late. The only good thing about this time of year is that there are loads of good movies to go and see thanks to the Academy Awards and good old Oscar,

compared to summertime when there is a glut of animated family films for the holidays.

The little poem here is the result of badly missing our next door neighbours of twenty years who returned early last summer to the small town in the Alsace, where they lived before their move to England. I had been finding it strange that the beautiful red Camellia that peeps over the six foot brick into our garden, has been so very late to flower this year and being a bundle of emotion and imagination myself, I had got it into my head that even their garden flowers and the family of Blackbirds and the Sparrows that reside in the big Camellia have been missing them as much as I have. They are both musicians (The people that is, not the blackbirds) and I have even missed the scales they practiced every afternoon on their saxophones. Our new neighbours are not at all friendly as yet. So this is to Christine and Jan who also ran, walked and swam regularly at all the same places as Steve and I. It was Christine who painted the portrait of me that hangs by my desk and is the subject of a previously read poem of mine, Portrait of my Soul.

Red Camellia

Peaking over the high garden wall

showing no fear of winter yet unfinished,

surviving through to spring from fall

her strength and beauty undiminished.

Breaking buds like crimson velvet

changing to wonderful deep pink flower

above our wall shows a flashy pelmet

glows thru’ afternoon sunlight hours.

Thank heaven for Mother Nature’s gift

bursting forth despite the cold,

that brings a smile and spirits lift,

born of winter, this colour bold.

I usually mention that if you have a poem that you would like share with the group that I will happily put it on the next blog page. So far though, nobody has taken me up on this offer. Hope to see you all well and happy and free of germs at the next meeting.

Saxophones’

Through the Dividing Wall

Terrace houses may not be ideal

walls are thin and some people moan,

yet there are benefits I feel

especially when at home alone.

There is a pleasure sweet and real

music floats through on a saxophone,

musician’s next door is such a deal,

practicing scales in a melodic drone.

A home with built in concert appeal

lifts me as I type or answer the phone