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If only Winter was the Old Winter
Embrace the Rain
.
The ginkos are gone the colour of
Midsummer glare, fans finally falling.
Beeches now brilliant auburn, poplars
Drifting orange yellow instead of white
Cotton. Leaves lifted as easily in whipped-
Up gusts with rain against windows.
.
The cold requires we bundle up
In gloves and hoods, but we embrace
Winter weather, smile with chapped lips,
Rubbing ruddy cheeks, like a proof
We’re not in so much trouble, perhaps
The world is not turning terribly
Scorching dry, desiccating all round us.
.
We cling to this chill as an indication of
Lessened danger: deceiving ourselves,
Like lung cancer patients, counting dear
Cough-free hours as signs we’re in the clear.
A simple idea as autumn finally feels like it’s here, with plenty of rain these last few weeks.
But of course, it’s not quite winter, at least not winter as it was. In the local park, while the willows are shedding their leaves, these trees are coming in to bloom, as if it were February already…
Sun Set Sun Day
Happy Summer!
Though I’m Irish, and for me Summer started in May, making this MidSummer’s Day, logically, it seems that the astronomers around me disagree. Whatever.
Here’s a short poem I thought of a couple of Sundays ago, to make you think of the joy of these short nights.
Sunday Sunset
Other days we rush inside
From the porch, to prepare
Dinner, drinks and sit upon
Sofa to see a movie or TV; or
Drive to the city for dusk, but
.
Sunday is when we want to stay
Watching sunset and slipping
Off to bed when the bats and
Owls calling have taken over
From twilight blackbirds and
Nightingales, the last rays of
Sun replaced by moonbeams,
The gleam of glow worms when
Cicadas are silent to let crickets
Sing, as peace settles like aspen
Cotton in the stillness between
Breezes. Then sleep suggests itself
Until we rise again to catch the dawn.
Fashion!
How is everyone managing after the change to “summer time?” I’m suffering from the early mornings myself, since it happened in Europe last weekend. Of course, I’m not against daylight savings time, as long as if and when it’s stopped we stick with the correct time we should have according to our longitude.
In fact, I’d go further, as I wrote in my poem on the subject, which I posted a few years back,
In the poem I hypothesise about a future where businessmen don’t have to wear suits in summer to cut down on air conditioning use – much worse than a few extra light bulbs if we didn’t have daylight savings time.
And that brings me to an article I read the other day about the end of the man’s suit.
Coincidentally, I wrote a blogpost a few years back about the man’s suit, how it’s not going to disappear anytime soon, given that it hasn’t changed in centuries.
But perhaps I was wrong.
The article says that “Goldman Sachs became the latest of many firms to issue new guidelines on work dress codes, allowing more flexibility – male employees can ditch the suit for chinos and loosen their ties.”
Halleluiah!
A welcome change.
Of course, I’d be happier if what replaces it is not some new fashion, but the same jeans most of the humans in the western world have been wearing for a century when they weren’t wearing suits.
I have a basic distaste for fashion, in its continually changing design and colour of clothes which many people conform to necessitating updating their wardrobe and consequently disposing of clothes that are perfectly serviceable and wasting resources and money on new clothes that will see the same fate.
I hate buying new clothes. I hate shopping, better said. I like buying new stuff, but I also love getting the most out of what I have. I patch, I darn (well, I do something akin to closing a hole in a sock) and I glue.
I’ve a current problem with jeans seemingly been made to wear out within six months. It’s like Calvin Klein has been taking a leaf out of Apple’s book and embedding ? programmed obsolescence in cloth. I have not bought a pair of jeans that haven’t ripped in the arse in five years. I never remember that problem before, and I’ve been riding bikes my whole life.
Do clothes designers really need my money so much that they make me buy what I’d disinclined to buy because I am immune to their adverts?
Thus is our world destroyed.
I am also reminded of the lines from that fashion movie, The Devil Wears Prada, where Miranda goes on a tirade about the blue jumper her minion is wearing, how it’s been made because she decided blue was in last season blah blah.
go on, insult my jumper. Just because it’s not green?
What the movies doesn’t go on to say is that the intern would not go and buy a new cheap jumper in TJ Max the next winter. She’d wear the same cheap jumper and she’d keep wearing it till it got so old that it had to be replaced by whatever the prima donnas of the fashion world had deemed was in three seasons before. And that would take a long time. I have jumpers I still wear that I am wearing in photos taken fifteen years ago, nearly twenty in some cases. I don’t say that because I am proud of wearing worn out old shit that makes me look like a vagabond, but because they still look the same as when I bought them, and if I looked okay in them then, then there’s no reason to think I don’t look good in them now if they’re still in good repair. Clothes either look good on you or they don’t. If they are only going to look good on you for a season, then perhaps we shouldn’t buy them. That’s why the suit has taken so long to disappear – it simply looks good all the time. Jeans look good all the time, tee-shirts and jumpers too. That’s why Doc Martens are back in. Everyone has a pair they never threw out. Some kept wearing them. Of course, an industry would die a little if we were all to stop treating clothes like plastic water bottles. But what does this industry do that’s so good? What does it do that’s quite terrible? The list for the latter question is longer.
Growing cotton is a destructive activity, for the soil, for the insects, for the atmosphere. We all want to reduce waste, to lower our carbon emissions. Eating less meat, using public transport, flying less. And buying fewer clothes.
For a crop that is as dry as cotton, it sure needs a lot of water.
Feel proud to walk out of a store without a shopping bag.
It’s a feeling you’ll grow to love.
we all need clothes. But the quality we buy can make a crucial difference…
Haikus and other short poems.
Here are some more short poems and haikus that I said I’d post.
I will add them to the poetry page, too.
I haven’t posted recently becuase I’ve been away at home in Ireland, where I don’t get much of a chance to write, or read.
Mostly, I drink tea and beer and chat.
And that’s great.
Of course, afterwards it would be nice to be able to have a holiday alone and catch up on stuff. But summer with the children is on the cards, so only a few hours a day to myself and my pen will be my lot.
I will get a few poems and some chapters of my work in progress, done, though. I swear!
Snowdrop
Early Snowdrop
Still Bows
To the braver bee
Speed
Cyclist careening down
Mountain, crouching under wind
Ignoring the sky.
Daisy
Dark lawn lays an extensive frame
For a tiny dot of pink:
First brave daisy bursting forth
To herald the blooming March of spring.
Drifting
April afternoon
Aspen seeds
Drifting.
Bedtime
Ignored, strangers sight excite –
Wife’s sleeping form,
Pulls powerfully, still.
Saved by Death
High on the corner of a Midwestern cornfield
A family cemetery stands firm, the last
Testament to a town wiped from memory,
Like the soil that once stood below it.
Spring Park, Pamplona
The hinds abide,
While the cockerels cry,
Drowned out by the peacocks.
Encapsulated
Narrow country road,
Hedgerow arches over,
Birdsong encloses.
The Birds of Summer
Swifts have disappeared,
Swallows are soon to follow;
Cuckoos long silent.
Rooks
Caged,
Crows’ calls
Echo
Open fields.
Sea Greeting
Surging up the sand,
Touching toes:
Gentle hello.
Original Sin
Originally,
Maybe our sin was seeing
Shame in nakedness.
On a Hilltop
Across silent landscape
Sounds
Reveal their source.
David JM O'Brien 