Paradise

What a beautiful day in St Moritz today after a day and a half of heavy snow.

The fresh new layer seems to have back lit the whole area. Steve and I sat outside for a snack lunch in baking hot sunshine which is such a contradiction to the huge mounds of fresh snow everywhere. My love of this lovely place prompted my today’s verses. Feel free to pass them on to anybody that might make a donation to the Childrens charity I have been banging on about.

www.justgiving.com/Daphne-Belt

 

This Side of Paradise….. St Moritz 

For over three decades our winter sports destination

And we have tried many others, of that be assured

The Upper Engadine valley a Shangri-La location

And in architectural style immaculately matured 

My love and I first visited as skiers on vacation

By every ski lift, to blue, red and black route lured

Our hearts stop at the grandeur of mountain formation

Our skis outside Swiss chalet style cafes are moored 

Horse racing, polo, sleigh rides make a fine rotation

If to energetic ski-ing your thought are obscured

All on a frozen lake, the St Moritz re-incarnation

Any lust for the brilliantly bizarre immediately cured 

Olympia Bob Run, strangely born of British gestation

Now international participation is firmly secured

The worlds best sliders, athletes from every nation

Now even from Panama a team of four procured 

What alternative is there for your soul’s elation?

Eating regional food out, is for pleasure endured

Or night clubs galore for a holiday flirtation

This side of paradise, walks breathtakingly toured

Reflections on a nightmare

This morning it was snowing fit to bust and I was doing a workout in the well equipped hotel gym. Something on the TV in the corner reminded me of the time early last summer when I had my arm in plaster and the opposite leg in a hospital boot contraption. That was when I started writing poetry again (Always been a bit of a poetry geek) as a form of therapy and found that the time I spent slathering my anger and frustration into all sorts of verse really made me feel better. Today effort is an insight into my bizarre state of mind when a world class fidget was told to rest!
www.justgiving.com/Daphne-Belt

Make my day 

One more week until the wretched plaster cast is cut away

It’s a lethal weapon Mel Gibson would be able to handle

To help him win the fight, bashing a tyrant down to slay

Tie up or otherwise incapacitate a dreadful vandal

Leaving our hero free to fight the thugs another day 

It’s like having a great heavy log wrapped around my upper limb

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher would weald it like a crow bar

With stealthy step he’d karate chop the seven brutes in front of him

Leaving them dead, dazed or dying on the street or flung before a car

Fearless fighting of foreign foes falling like flies though chances were slim 

In the old days Clint would make the best of such a handy rammer

Eastwood would crinkle up Dirty Harry’s sexy eyes

Skilfully levelling his 44 magnum, fingers drawing back the hammer

Ask yourself do you feel lucky?  The punk at his feet helpless lies

My plaster cast would add weight to his fetching glamour 

It might give Bruce Willis a few pounds of extra muscle

A real He–Man where the bad guys all Die Hard he’d say

Still with a wicked smile in a sweaty fist fought tussle

‘Welcome to the party’ or more famously ‘Yippee ki ay’

The bullets, blood and flames in the final victory Hustle 

Arnie wouldn’t even notice the insignificance of a broken arm

 Everything in his path the famous black harrow can hack back

Crushing, crashing careening with every kind of harm

And in the end like Schwarzenegger says ‘I’ll be back’

He and me might have been seen in the same school of charm

Fairy tale journey

Time for the winter holiday once more. Same resort every year for many years. Steve and I enjoy the magical journey we take to get here, feeling that our holiday started once we were on the train from Zurich. Switzerland I such a beautiful country and the ride on the little red train from Chur to St. Moritz has to be seen to be believed. So in honour of the pretty trip comes todays ditty a true labour of love.

Fairy Tale Train Ride 

No more magical journey could be made

Chur to St. Moritz through a winter glade

Not the worlds longest railroad ride

By far the most beautiful you will decide 

A single track line of more narrow gauge

Through pristine alpine villages of great age

In perfect harmony with the landscape

Scenes change faster than a hand shake 

Primordial Alps rise in age old splendour

Gasp with awe then your heart surrender

The little train chugs on up the valley route

No simple snow scene as it gives a tiny toot  

Not just for a train spotter this amazing dream

To overcome isolation was the builder’s scheme

But this two hour ride is up there in the greats

Every particle of the soul with joy elates 

A fairy tale ride not found in imagination

Nought along the way to summon negation

The Albula Railway is as real as real could be

A treasured part of life just once a year for me 

Found in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland

A track winds where a hundred bridges stand

Animals, trees and a thousand scenes alfresco

A World Cultural Heritage site states Unesco 

Tunnels every few miles while the train circles round

Still little known, not in general knowledge found

In travel features, the Landwasser Viaduct tell us why

Towering over sixty metres high, a train ride to the sky 

It seems my little secret is still safe for a while

Thinking of this amazing ride always makes me smile

Of this breath-taking journey I will never ever tire

Until the day, when satisfied, I finally expire!

Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing,bzbzbzbzbz

Today I have been rushing around like one of those fly's, you know the sort, I'm sure.
Appointment with my 93 year old mother in laws doctor to sort out some problems with her meds.
Then home again to wait for the nurse who is to take a blood test to check her Warfarin levels. Trying to pack ready for our holiday and setting up in the office at work for the new guy coming while we are away. Flitting hither, Flitting thither... thanks G & S!
Thanks too for everyone on FB who has 'Liked' my barmy poems. What I would 'Like' or rather, need or hope for, is the odd little donation to drop in! Yes, we are all busy and yes, we are all strapped for cash but from what I know of my FB friends, they are mostly better of than families with a child in a hospice. www.justgiving.com/Daphne-Belt

Me and the Blue Arsed Fly 

One of Gods creatures that I find most horrid

Is the common Bluebottle, so annoyingly paced

Common, because it is so commonly chased

With a passion to kill it, most torrid. 

I see a lot of myself in the life of the Blow Fly

Rushing at breakneck speed everywhere

Hither and thither and once more back there

And mostly not at all sure quite why 

Folk seem to find us both such a pain

With the speed, the noise and the fluster

Back and forth, in and out, our energy muster

Getting nowhere fast as if we’re insane 

Too much to do and no time to think straight

We buzz incessantly, each taking the lead

Causing in turn what neither of us need

An outside force swatting us down with hate 

We are both far too fat, that’s another thing

And we move so fast we loose focus

You see where I’m heading with this hocus-pocus

To a meaning in life we all need to cling 

The pair of us hoping the end won’t come yet

As we press on regardless of theme

Doing our best with hope and dream

Pray we do nought that we live to regret

Thanks

Many thanks to the kind folk who donated yesterday.
I have been slaving over a hot computer in our office today, so little time, places to go, people to see.
Yesterday's efforts are also shorter so have added a tiny extra.
To donate: www.justgiving.com/Daphne-Belt

Swans Floating on Floods 

A swollen river three times as wide

Footpaths lay drowned just beneath

O’er summer meadows swans glide

Their regal daintiness disaster hides

Natures gift of inheritance bequeath. 

Storms, wave on wave of heavy rain

Leaves quiet flooded riverside fields

Like porcelain candy bowls deign

Over temporary lakes the swans reign

This wetlands kingdom newly yields.

 

 

Vase of White Flowers 

The sure presence of white flowers

In a vase without pretence

Filling the thoughts of floral bowers

Of blossom petals in perfumed showers

Shown as classic evidence

 

The Water Spider 

The subject was:

The Water Spider

As in front of the TV I sat

Such details about

This little glider

My attention was

That of a Gnat

 

 

 

Charity Fatigue

Charity Fatigue 

Actually I do feel like a beggar from time to time, in fact when I mentioned to an acquaintance recently that I was taking on a challenge for charity this year she said,

 “Oh not again, you’re always collecting, I have got charity fatigue”! Well I have just looked it up and it appears to have been in 2010 that I last had a charity stint. Apart from a collecting box in our office that we offer to people who get me to send emails for them or give them some wrapping materials or take in some goods, or something else to beg or borrow. This is why this choice as today’s little ode.

So if A. You are not suffering, ‘Charity Fatigue’. Or B. You like the poem a little bit; this is the link for the effort I am making to help children with life limiting illnesses.

www.justgiving.com/Daphne-Belt

Or if you would like to see a few more of my humble scribblings, as an insight into my strange little mind (I think we all agree about that). www.dafbelt.blogspot.co.uk

Beggars 

People seem to ignore beggars on the whole

As they wander past the down town shops

A beggar by a doorway or propping up a wall

How few of us even look’s at them, or stops 

“Have you got any spare change please”,

They ask, holding a cup, a pot, a hat, in place

They can see you are loathed to touch them

That much is written all over your uppity face 

The argument against is always the same

They’ll only spend it on drugs or drink

Isn’t that what you say to yourself?

Isn’t that what you deep down think? 

What if, when it comes down to it, it’s true?

What if your whole fifty pence goes in a trice

With the rest he has gleaned that day

And spent on continued ruin against all advice 

Understanding this widely held attitude

Is totally beyond anything in my mind

Don’t tell me you’d choose to be this man

Beg in the street, a bottle in hand to find 

Nobody aims to live that sort of way

Once a life has turned so horribly sour

You don’t choose to smoke dog ends

Or pizza from a waste bin devour 

Is this really what you think is true

Or could it all be heavens simple test?

Help a man or woman get through one day

Are you so much better or he worse than the rest?

Greetings

I'm not sure how long we all go on greeting each other with a jolly Happy New Year, I suppose until we have met all our friends at least once since the start of 2014. The weather however is making us all far from happy and the forecasts are more of the same. I guess we will all just have to knuckle down and get on with life, and work and training as it hits us.
my charity fund raising ground to a halt during December, when everybody had other things on their minds but has now started to move again. www.justgiving.com/Daphne-Belt if you like any of my poems so much you feel like justgiving!

Wind

Blowing on the window and through my cluttered life

Swirling leaves knocking down the flora, bringing garden strife

Blustering o’er me and them and you

This is what Madam Wind, you darned well do

Turn your ugly face away or blow until you bust

Then turn the sweet one round but one we cannot trust

That these gentle licks picking up, examining my hair, do not last

A waft of coolness, then too soon that delightful phase is past.

 

Moths 

Silent but deadly little things wouldn’t you say

They look harmless enough fluttering about at play

Tiny little flecks of beige wings like paper

When you clap at them they break up like vapour

Uninvited guests that move in when your back is turned

This is a lesson that only through time is learned

They hide in your closets and not by your leave

No rent is paid and they eat up half a sleeve

Of that nice woollen coat you kept so long for best

Might as well come back now and chew through the rest

Moths are the reincarnation of bad friends we’ve had so long

Don’t realise the damage until long after they are gone