No person can feel always joy ...

Two poems of darkness in a process that is helping me to understand Norman better.

Stepping stones

Third draft of third section done by an all-day fire and mist clouding all but the nearest leaves outside.

Stepping stones to the heffalump

Song for my grandchildren

Song for  my grandchildren with Peace Bowl

... getting there slowly ...

I am very grateful to the kind people who are offering their precious time to read the third draft critically. I look forward to their feedback. 

Otherwise, mulling. Not sure this poem should be in or out ... if in, WHERE? Questions of rhythm, sound echoes, and of course the story step-stepping poem by poem through it all.

  

PS. Totally tangential mull. Why PanMacMillan didn't take on The Griffin Elegy is a puzzle to me. I guess there are simply too many writers and too many stories and too many poems, all of them obviously far more appealing and more saleable than my stuff. Ah well. We soldier on. True to self and all that. I can see I'm going to have to home-birth all my books. What a business. I've experience birthing a human, but a heffalump? Not to rush it. Be tortoise.

Epigraphs from the first hard copy

The first hard copy will, I hope, allow me the necessary detachment for a decent self-edit ...

The 'greater matter' quip derives from an sms exchange; Norman's poem is one of the first Table Love poems.

God's Deciding

Protein

Just a fun clip recording a thought that came to me at the first outdoor fire I've made since Norman died.

Memorial preparations

All the bustle and fuss –

human care and love

as fast as Velcro

– me but the burr,

bad-tempered vegetable

looking for

freedom:

slip me between, Darling,

fetch me to

the leafy silver

of

our breathing.

I post this poem in commemoration of tonight's being the eve of the first memorial service for Norman, held on 5th August 2017 at the Vula Vista Venue at The Edge Mountain Retreat in Hogsback.

It is included in ' Sacred Space', section 3 in Greater Matter as it currently stands (in its second draft).

For the love of noses

This poem emerged in spring last year. I shared it on Facebook at the time, and right now on a whim am letting it sniff my blogsite.