At St Seiriol's Well

months later
and hundreds of miles away
I’m still drawing from St Seiriol’s Well

Remembrance Haiku

dawn - war memorial
haloed with frost
poppies and candlelight

November Haiku

late November dawn
full moon
an early Christmas light

Two Autumn Haiku

a chandelier
of red Japanese
Maple


a cascade
of red Japanese
Maple

October Haiku

autumn woods
reverberating



among the fallen leaves
the glow of the setting sun



autumn twilight
upon golden leaves
we walk upon the sun




the river
shrivels grey and wrinkled -
autumn twilight

A Silence

glutinous silence
then thunder
barrelling the sky

The Tree of Life by Terrance Malick

The Tree of Life

written and directed by Terrance Malick

"There are two ways through life. The way of nature and the way of grace. We have to choose which one you will follow."

"Unless you love, your life will flash by."

The Tree of Life

This is without doubt one of the greatest films I have ever watched.

Still Pond

still pond
in the cool of the day
reflecting Eden

Midday

midday - already
twilight under this grey
July sky

Poem for the Nineteen

On Friday 6 July we held a farewell lunch for nineteen colleagues who are leaving the English team this academic year - some have already left. It has been a difficult and painful time for us all.

I was asked to write a poem to mark this sad occasion. It was printed on the inside of the nineteen farewell cards we gave out at the lunch. Here is the poem.

Poem For the Nineteen

We know how to say goodbye.
It’s built into our contracts.

Each year the students
come and go.
It’s part of the ebb and flood tides
of our working lives.

But our colleagues' leaving is difficult for us.
It has smashed our equilibrium,
driven by hard currents
that are out of our control
and has left us reeling.

In other offices
they are dismantling our island collegium.
Slow - matured over decades
now diminished to a remnant
of the colleagues
I have measured myself against.

So let’s mark that for a brief time
we shared together
the great toy of language
kinship in the team room,
incendiary in the classroom.

That ignited these indifferent walls -
that will not remember any of us.
For we are all only just suspended
on the living threads of memory.

I know that I shall be looking through files
in months to come
and find written on some discarded paper
your familiar handwriting
that will inflame the dull insistent ache of loss
that I’ve been carrying around with me.

And I know
for those of us staying
and for those of us going,
it is as if we are all
become exiles – adrift
leaving something precious behind.

© David Loffman

Feathers

there is nothing
of the pigeon - but a
garden of grey feathers

Beyond the Border 2012

We have returned from Beyond the Border. A little damp and splattered with mud but filled to over flowing with stories, a glimpse of other ways to live, friendship and love.

Beyond the Border 2012

Johnny Cash Hurt Video

 

I think this is an extra ordinary song.

Pickle Ditch

During the 1970’s in Colliers Wood in South West London, the river Wandle was diverted to make way for a massive building project - a huge hypermarket – the Sainsbury’s Saver Centre. However the engineers left the original course of the river in which flows now a narrow channel of water known as the Pickle.

The hypermarket is built on the 12th century Merton Priory. The Pickle forms part of its medieval boundary.

Pickle Ditch

Beside a pylon
a gutter of scruffy water -
a floating crust of dust and oil -
the Pickle.

The Wandle’s original line
before they straightened it
and split it in two.

Here where two car parks meet
the tarmac ends.
Opens to a triple scored boundary
of medieval wall and footpath
and the deep black crack of water
ignored by locals
unadorned like a drainage ditch.

This fringe remains of the meadows
that long ago lay here
in the grounds of the Priory.

Of calico drenched in river water
laid out in a billowing haze of light
bleaching slowly in the sun
while the Priory bells call vespers
and a thin river mist gathers.

But now among the verges
lined with Honda and Renault
beside Kiss Me Hardy and Burger King
half floating –
a sunken barrel of beer, police cones,
and an upturned shopping trolley
littering the line of water,
heading north.

© David Loffman

Merton Priory Trust

Reading a poem in public

I read one of my own poems at the Bedford Park Arts Festival last night. Andrew Motion complimented me on it.

Poetry is................

“Poetry, the best words in the best order” S.T. Coleridge

“Poetry is the art of using words charged with their upmost meaning” Dana Gioia

“It should strike the reader of a wording of his own highest thoughts and appear almost a remembrance” John Keats

“Poetry is truth seen with passion” W.B. Yeats

“Poetry cannot be defined, only experienced” C Logue

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin in emotion recollected in tranquillity” William Wordsworth

“It is a widening of consciousness, an extension of humanity” David Constantine

“A poem should not mean but be” Archibald MacLeith

“Poetry is that which arrives at the intellect by way of the heart” R.S. Thomas

“Poetry is a way of talking about things that frighten you” Mick Imlah

Poetry is “a little concoction of words against death” Miroslav Holub

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes. There will also be singing
About the dark times” Bertolt Brecht

“In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start
In the prison of his days
Teach the freeman how to praise” W.B. Yeats

“Poetry is a zoo in which you keep demons and angels” Les Murray

“Poetry is the voice of spirit and imagination and all that is potential as well as of the healing benevolence that used to be the privilege of the Gods” Ted Hughes

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour” William Blake

“These fragments I have shored against my ruin” T.S. Eliot

“Poetry comes out of wonder, not out of knowing” Lucille Clifton

“Poetry is a place where all the fundamental questions are asked about the human condition” Charles Simic

“Poetry is a brilliant vibrating interface between the human and the non-human” Edwin Morgan

“Poetry can tell us what human beings are” Maya Angelou

Azaleas Rainbow

azaleas
fading - the remains
of a rainbow

Half an Hour

for half an hour
a magpie dismembers
a sparrow

Tonight Clear Sky

Venus and Jupiter
bright beads threaded on the
orbital plane

Perspective

Here is a link to help us get a little perspective.

Click here!

waning moon
slowly turning his
face away

a full moon
painting the frost
coated streets

Through the Night

driving through the night
Mars and Orion to guide us
safely home

Adorned

the moon in her hair
and Venus – a bright bead of light
upon her neck

last night bright

Venus shone down upon all

my wounds and scars

On Monday

we'll be watching films
projected onto the black face
of the new moon

River Sky

the river
covered with ice

the sky
a fathomless blue

Heavy Frost

heavy with frost

the earth reflects back the full moon’s

own grey face