A Christmas Poem for 2023

 

Patterns of Christmas Past

How life is stretched now, seven decades deep.

All those glittering cards scattered through time,

shards of people past who rest now asleep,

memories needle sharp, picked out in pine

that pierce the past and make the future weep.

There is a santa claus in every year,

his sack packed full of bitter, sour and sweet,

who brings this rueful smile, that happy tear,

baubles we lost, traditions that we keep

alive. The Christmas jumpers that we wear

remind us our good shepherds watched their sheep

and looked in proudly from the frosty air

and wished us warm and snuggly in our wraps,

hand knitted, stitched in plain and purl, with care.

Oonah V Joslin ©2023

On Angel's Wings

On Angels’ Wings

first published in Static Movement

Gabriel floated on a favourite cloud, knitting with silver needles. He found it quite therapeutic, though it was also part of the job. When he’d finished knitting his wings, it would be time to call time.

It wasn’t entirely up to him when that would be. He couldn’t knit his wings any faster than he could get hold of the materials, and the yarn was spun on Earth. Mankind had started spinning yarns long ago when they’d refused the gift of innocence and needed to cover-up. Since then they’d rejected many of the best gifts on offer, preferring the packaging. They had discarded reason in favour of woolly thinking and had substituted vanity for truth, sex for love, fragrance for freshness.

One day Gabriel would take flight on wings of innocence, reason, truth, responsibility -- the off-cuts of ingratitude – all the stuff man threw away. These unwanted things would bear everything to its destiny. Heaven wastes nothing.

In the beginning there had barely been enough to knit with, but recently supply had exceeded demand. Increasingly, human beings seemed only to value things that brought intense sensation or immediate gratification. They no longer cherished a moment for itself. Packaging was paramount.

So Gabriel’s wings grew and shone ever more brightly day by day. They glowed white with all virtue – light and pure as the air that had been displaced by pollution. His golden threads came from the tones of sunsets never contemplated and fruits not forbidden but left uneaten: pleasures spurned. Soft grey tones were woven from dove’s breast, beneath which beat sacrifice and freedom now disdained in equal measure. Magnesium bright, his needles clacked and scattered light for all to see but so few looked to heaven any more and that was up to them.

Soon he would don his ceremonial wings and place the golden trumpet to his lips and shatter time. He would pull on the little superstring by his feet and all would unravel and return to the light.

The Archangel admired his new wings. He passed no judgments. The choice was not his to make. If a DIY universe is put in the hands of those who will not follow the maker’s instructions, the outcome is perhaps inevitable. 

Halloween Greetings

Paws for Thought

I wish I could sleep

as a cat sleeps

all soft and paws

the whole being

an entity of pause

I wish I could sleep

like that – like a cat.

February 2023: Catching the Wind at Candlemas

My year never begins in January, remembered as the month in which my father died. This January my eldest sister Annabelle passed away too. Noel's half brother also passed on the same day.  

Annabelle was 17 when I was born, very pretty and she wore such lovley clothes! Clothes were elegant in the late fifties. I just about remember her wedding or at least my mother trying to keep me from disrupting it too much. I was only 3 after all! She was a very supportive big sister and on many occasions more of a mother figure to us 3 youngest siblings. 

                   Annbelle and Hubert on their wedding day with my Grandparents

My Grandmother died 45 yrs ago on 11th Feb. I know this because I had just left Ballymena to take my first teaching post in Cardiff when I received the news. In the photo you can just see Margaret, the bridesmaid and Esme was the little flower girl.

I didn't think of it as a great adventure. I was terrified really! Never lived in a city before! But I met up with Noel and we had our first date later that month and we never looked back. February is a welcome friend. It brings with it snowdrops and crocuses, if we are lucky, even daffs, and it's light until 5pm. I greet it with a smile of relief. It's not that Winter is over but it is beginning to be over. The yellow jasmine that has been in bloom since November, is now losing it's flowers and the nithering north winds pull at them, as if to set them free. 

February always feels like being set free. The sun just about warms our bones. So as I remember my sister, I'll heed the warmth and feel thankful and hopeful and share with you this little poem which really wrote itself from observation, (those are mostly the best poems!!!) and is therefore one of my favourites.

In February 1992 we made the first move towards living in Northumberland. I did regard that as an adventure! 

February is a time of new starts and who knows, after the covid doldrums of the past couple of years, maybe I can once more catch the wind.

Catching the Wind

 

Dainty, yellow jasmine flower,

 

                                                      tiny fairy skirt,

 

twisting in the twilight air,

                                                     quite the little flirt.

 

Toying are you with the dark;

                                                     finished with the day?

 

Darting this way, flutt’ring that;

                                                      can’t you get away?

 

Star-struck in the gloom of dusk;

                                                      I see how you’re pinned;

 

Caught there on a spider-line,

                                                       a lure to catch the wind.

First published by The Shine Journal 2007

Subsequently published in The Linnet’s Wings