When one commits to writing then inevitably time is spent writing rather than reading. But I have enjoyed a few morsels this year which remained with me and this poem flowed from some of those stories specifically, an article on whales and menopause, it seems we are in privileged company, William Shatners thoughts on looking at earth from space, and a quote from the Nobel Prize recipient for literature Annie Ernaux -
But I also think that the true reality of the world is forgetting. We forget a great deal, from a collective perspective. For instance, we're always surprised when war arises again, as we are seeing now. So, it's more a question of forgetting than of memory. And to write is to fight forgetting.
A pause from -
The poems of grandmothers echo the blue marble of life
Their songs reach further than moonbeam at easter
They teach calves and men of things learned in one lifetime
A thousand iterations of war never liberate
Sometimes I throw my poems to the stars and let them exhale
If they fall, then I hope they land in a grandmother’s arms
Waiting for lucid eyes to decide if their truth lies within them
Other times I watch the pale reflections of waves
without vanity, ignorant to their journey
listening to whales teaching their young to swim
Even on the brink of extinction, the hymns are knowing
persevering, for the ocean from within is boundless,
marginal only to stars with hearts consumed by fire.
While the selveging womb’s climactic songs,
Interrupt booming steel rudders with their chatter
Of timeless things beyond first need and chaos,
Even filling the empty sky between stars at night
Clare L Rolfe © 2022 (Merry Christmas)