Roofed Poems

When Life was Simple

Third in the Write Sixteen Beutiful Lines Poetry Contest



When we lived beneath thatch-roofed houses,
Curry simmered in pots,
Flames flickered from firewood gathered
From hills and thickets.

When bullock carts creaked
Under paddy loads,
Harvests reaped from fertile fields,
Bicycles spun on dusty roads.

When sounds of hand-pounding paddy
Echoed from homes everyday,
Women weaving at fly- shuttle looms
Sometimes till late night.

And  when caws of the crows
And chirpings of tea cricket at dusk heard.

Then we helped one another -
Life was simple,self reliant,and beautiful.

A City Beautiful

       Ottawa, Ontario
once a desolate snowfield
      now, a city of Gothic 
and Victorian buildings downtown 
with stunning glassed towers
         a mingling of architecture's
copper-roofed Victorian homes
      and just vintage old
                stained-glass windows
mixed with the modern
and huge wrapped porch homes
on quiet, peaceful tree-lined streets
    like stepping back in time
             parks of solitude, inspiring
streams where swans and ducks
           float and glide
   neighbourhood's of new homes
just one beautiful city in
            Canada

A Dying Winter

It was a harsh, hard going season.

“It’s a dying winter, lad,”
he said, crunching words around,
a gnawed pipe stem.
Briefly embers sought a place to disappear.
Cinder gray eyes, set deep
into the crumpled grit of age.
A wry off-set smile.

Then one day he went back up
the clinker graveled path
to his small, low-roofed cottage,
with its squat, darkly puffing chimney,
oily cans, coal dusted kettles,
the fumy, over-stuffed parlor,
with its feet-warming, black,
fire-baked grate,
and one sooty cat.

Never to be seen again.

Wild West Rest Stop

A carriage stops by a water trough and an
empty roofed stable with a long bench. Driver
helps folks and gets a drink. He returns, tells all
they leave in one minute. A man of no rank says
why stop. Driver says, no stops for 150 miles and
no one wants to be near here. So, are we ready?

Autumn

Schools ring out with the sighs of freedom lost,
empty hearts break as a summer love moves along.
Bright wildflowers fade under the burden of frost,
birds fill the air with the tunes of migrating songs.

Night grows longer as it steals away the hours, 
of warmth and sunlight from another struggling day. 
The sun becomes weaker as darkness devours,
and frozen tears cover a world that’s old and gray.

Pastures now grieve from the silence of missing hooves,
as stock was sacrificed for winter’s survival.
Anticipated food fills empty mason jars,
with gardens plucked clean before first snow’s arrival.

Out past the trees roofed in kaleidoscope colors,
harvested fields are transformed to carpets of gold.
Children are tucked in under heavy warm covers,
because stars come early when a north wind blows cold.

The Value of Books

The value of books


Late afternoon, the sun has left the terrace and is in the back throwing up dust before reluctantly slinking west and sinking 
into the sea beyond the seas.
The townscape is charming red-roofed dwellings among the many trees that are deep green this time of the year.
Near the sea are two big edifices, One has luxury flats on top for the people called the “jet-set” It is where scrawny women live 
on lettuce a day and Valium.
Next to that house, a white elephant, a skeletal hotel that
was abandoned when the would-be owner went broke.
In the calm bay two small cargo ships of uncertain age riding
the anchorage waiting for the morning, it baffles me how these old ship makes money, two bags of rice here and a barrel of wine there; perhaps they fish and live healthily
but I do hope they have books, if not the lacuna of empty time must be heavy on the mind.
When I was a seaman, I read hundreds of books to pass the time
some rubbed off so the time became useful, like automatic learning.

Boy and Barn

Bitty birds scuffle and flounce
under the roofed-in.
Barn dusted, rafters crust and whiffle.
Snuffle go the whiskered,
the mousy muzzle's
all along the bent beam wood.
A pepper powdering
in the chink-lit sunbeams.
In this his tumbled castle-keep
youth sky-larked a being
a ghostling ally sight unseen
there in the day-baked barn.
Long days he communed and lazed
in dim swaddled and idle ease
stretched-out and dream-basked,
seeped in the tar caulked wood
steeped in a gown-shadowed glow
with the evening-come nightly
jackdaw and crow.

Gulls Ride Upon the High Sea's Tongue

What crashes into them
is the oceans voice beheaded.

Seabirds skim upon verge and crest,
a green swell of rise and fall.

Open mouths trawl the air
then plunge into a rising wave
to scoop a thrashing fin
that dangles now
between life and death.
Gullets gulp down then wide wings
swim on.

Indoor cats stare out of windows
as the heckling hunters tumble and dive
for shadows of silver iridescence.

Those engaged upon the land
hear the piratical calls of ocean winds,
the harsh and throaty feasting
above the seas rolling tongue.

A fishing village witnesses
this wild dance of catch and hide,
overhears that high cry above
the restless surf and spray;
and when the fishing boats return
they haul the harvest in.

Here under a shale roofed salty cottage
a portly house cat abides beside a tin dish
for its daily dine of scaly fish.
© 4 hours ago

Loving Past

In a remote village I
recently visited,
houses with tin roofs
over wooden trusses,
ekra bamboo walls,
mud plastered
and humble.

At the roadside,
a community water 
tab stands,
a lifeline for all.

Nature here,
untouched by the
relentless march
of humans,
whispers of a 
simpler time.

I paused for a moment,
feeling myself drift back
to the era of tin-
roofed houses,
to the conventional
agrarian landscape
of my childhood
long ago.

16th Nov.2018
( The poem written after visiting the S.C village of Pheiyeng )

Aesthetic Nature

Nature's beauty is exclusive 
Rivers flowing water somewhere
Is there a booming sea
So is that the calm lake somewhere

Nature's unique ever
Ever moving shadows
Then sometimes silence
Nature is exclusive

Sometimes sky turns blue, red, yellow
Sometimes it's clouded by black and white clouds,
Nature is exclusive

Sometimes the sunshine illuminates the sun
So sometimes within the dark night, the moon stars twinkle
Nature's love is exclusive

Ever dry dust blows
So sometimes a sheet of greenery is roofed
Nature's love is exclusive

Somewhere the sun hides during acorner,
So it comes out of the opposite corner startling,
Nature's love is exclusive

Color Schmers

Colour Schemers

Arab Traders excavated
Europe laid the foundation
The New World framed it perfectly
The rest of the races roofed it

This …
Inordinate economic concupiscence
Shadowy sham, animated by a violent passion
An extraordinary alteration

So… 
Nature convulses
Human dignity reduced to 
Colour: Black, white, brown, yellow

But …
The scale corrects itself
The clock resets
The scheme falls apart

Because …
There is only one humanity
It’s you. 
It’s me.

Remembrance

So often up the hill we trod this path,
A simple thatch-roofed croft our goal,
Our shared safe haven, now so long ago.
Little we cared about the wintry blasts
That tested every sinew to the core.
Steadfast, our own four walls withstood
The ofttimes howling stormforce all around.
This was our forever place, our mutual pleasure,
On which again I gaze, now bent with age.
Our carefree youthful footsteps I've retraced.
Can the mind's eye so soon diffuse
And fade a face so well defined and loved ?
Perhaps, in sleep, a soft-edged memory appears,
A resurrection in some distant place,
Then gone again in morning light.
Twin-barbed, remembrance is both sweet and sour,
Joy and sadness intertwined, as were we.
Sad for things that are no more, our perfect harmony,
Kind thoughts exchanged, yet joyful still
In equal measure.The passing years will not diminish
Or erase the loving heartfelt words you penned
For me in sweetest rhyme. Held ever close
Within my heart, they are forever you,
A dear and lasting treasure, as our love lives on.

Cruel Winter

My wilting flower is wounded by the unsympathetic frosted winter crust, its head is bowed as if to proclaim and succumb to its demise.

The panorama is roofed by a mantle of deep yawning snowfall, treachery to the splendour of the customary sincere beauty.

By fortune, or its competence; the icy waters impound the curious and disorientated prey into the abyss.

The infinite shroud of grey will endeavour to obscure any minuscule glow of contentment, undeniably seeking inhospitable retribution.

The dormant and secreted existence will unearth itself once more

Sea Stacks

skipped rocks through a stream today
the opening of a brand new day
its frame is in minor decay
the bleached wood massed in bone piles,
we pulled it from dark beach and built
fire in a fenced clearing
the posts' blunt stubs sank down
the circled and were roofed by milled
lumber dragged at one time to the coast
We slept there

Each morning the minus tide-
weeds flowed it like hair swimming
The starfish gripped rock, pastel,
rough. Fish bones lay in sun

Each noon the milk fog sank
from cloud cover, came in
our clothes and held them
tighter on us. Sea stacks
stood and disappeared
They came back when the sun
scrubbed out the inlet

A Hovel In the Woods

I stumbled on a hovel in the woods
Dug in a foothill roofed with mossy shakes.
Inside, its furthest wall was made of stones
Piled high to make a chimney and a hearth.
Two stovepipes served as draft to bring in air.
No window spent what little warmth there was.

Who built this cell and for what purpose built?
If navvies built some shelter from the cold,
Then why not near to any railroad tracks?
A two day hike from any farm or town,
It made too far a lovers’ rendezvous.
Was it to help someone who’s lost survive?

Unlikely as it was, it might have been,
But only those who know to look can see
So meadowed as it is in growth and slope.
Opposing thumbs can easily unlatch
Its door inviting all who enter in
And equal welcomes guest or ghost alike.

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