20 April, 2010

The Journey Home

Handel in my father's car
sunlight on the Cavendish lab

swallows over cabbage fields
sun on a church steeple

tiny lambs with their mothers
a horse munching stubble

cherry blossom and pigeons
a green tinge to the statue of John Bunyan


April 2010


grey hair and a backpack
a telephone that croaks like a frog

milk bottles on a black iron bench
a faded George Cross straining on a flagpole

saplings on the motorway bank
partidges running between rows of lettuce

daffodils growing in bunches
a tiny hole in the rusty roof of the barn


April 2010

6 comments:

cwbrynan said...

Thank you Hobbes for the poetic walk through Spring!
Charles (Taiji)

Hobbes said...

Thanks, Charles.

This poem means quite a lot to me, despite its quality. It is the journey from my family home, in Cambridge, to my home with Lei, in Oxford. I have been travelling between the two a great deal over the past fortnight due to the poor health of my dear grandmother, who passed away just recently. This fragment, in Basho's "karumi" style, is very much my grandmother's "cup of tea".


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

Sir William of the Leaf said...

Beautiful.
Both rhetoric and photography.

cwbrynan said...

My sympathy for the loss of your Grandmother. I keep reading "The Journey Home". I love it. However, I'm not familiar with Basho's "karumi" style??
Charles

Hobbes said...

Thank you, Sir W.

Charles, thanks for the words concerning my grandmother.

During his long life, Basho considered the "karumi" style to be his intended lasting legacy. It means "lightness". At best, poems in the karumi style are "like water passing over the stones on a riverbed". At worst, karumi becomes "a shopping list". I believe that my verse lies between the two, but I appreciate it for its sentimental appeal.

Perhaps those readers who have done the journey from Cambridge to Oxford will recognise some of the landmarks, too.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

Giri Mandi said...

Enchanting: certainly leaning to the waterstream!
Thanks for sharing & more sympathy.