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Patricia Cammish Poem
Stones I Have Known
I know that stone - scoured smooth beneath the tread
Of workers' feet too early out of bed.
It sparkled finely to my childish sight,
A treasure rare, lit up by morning light.
Its drooping lip a quiet toddler's seat
For gazing out at life along the street.
At Junior school, the stones were black and grim,
High walls around to keep us all within.
The seashore stones provided wealth untold,
On mudstone flats glint ammonites as gold.
And Oh! that rock still there upon the beach,
There was a time it soared quite out of reach.
Much later then, the stones that edged the moors,
Of grit and dark the wildness there endures,
Drew up our youthful spirits high aloft
To bleak lands, ancient trackways, peat bogs soft.
In coastal city, built on trembling clays
And windswept mudbanks, were my student days
Swift spent beside the chain-worn granite blocks
Which formed the landscape of th' ancient docks.
The stones of London were a different breed,
Erected there to grace a civic need.
The Cenotaph, old Nelson and the rest,
Erratics planted raw at our behest.
In foreign parts, on beaches where we lazed,
By lava sheets - rough frozen in such crazed
And weird anthropomorphic shapes and planes.
When trippers leave the vista pure remains.
I know those stones on sparkling river bed.
New children play arranging pebbles, red
And white. It makes a pleasant place to sit -
I stay awhile rememb'ring all of it.
My final stone I do not know at all.
I haven't seen it yet as I recall.
* donkey stone --soft sandstone historically rubbed on the edge of a doorstep to create a pale line so that the edge is easier to see.
Copyright © Patricia Cammish | Year Posted 2020
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Patricia Cammish Poem
Carved in stone (sonnet to Ishtar)
Hail beauty, still as death, in smooth stone hewn,
The Great Earth's Queen in regal posture stands,
Who in the underworld sings out her tune
Of justice, law and power o'er her lands.
The land of Kur, the realm of all the dead
Is her domain. With eagle wings and claws
And serpent hair entwined about her head,
Athene's owls are there to give just cause.
She rules supreme, in nakedness and pride
On lions' backs her feet grip with sharp hold,
Four thousand years an image petrified
Her regal glare still dreadful to behold.
Carved in stone, as Queen of night she reigns
O'er gardens of the fertile crescent's plains.
I was inspired to write this poem after visiting the 'I am Azurbanipal' exhibition in the British Museum. One of the exhibits, a stone relief of the goddess Ishtar, the deity associated in Mesopotamian mythology with love, sex, death and war, displayed carving of startling clarity and beauty even though it was made around 4000 years ago in ancient Babylon.
Copyright © Patricia Cammish | Year Posted 2020
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Patricia Cammish Poem
Guy Fawkes' Night
By the middle of October the piles are growing.
English weather fails to dampen
childhood enterprise.
Gangs traverse the streets in forage
To drag, on broken prams, a hoard,
A booty of wardrobes, cupboards, easy chairs.
Mattresses and piles of junk -
Now treasure - with which to build the towering fire,
The tough kids claim the bomb site first for theirs,
A blemish in the landscape of the street.
Eight brothers of pernicious mien
Snotty toddler to Borstal boy,
Hob-nailed boots, no laces, florid knees,
Of visage pale, straw haired and thin.
Like robber barons, invincible, wild,
They guarded it by day and night.
We others, timid, watched from a distance.
One day, their sentry absent, ventured inside
their heap to see - a cave-like room: old sofa; sticky carpet;
broken table; a cosy space, almost habitable,
close refuge from domestic misery.
One brother found solace with a five-pack of Woodbines.
Smoked
And slept.
Their Bonfire was enormous that year.
As funeral pyre beside the Ganges stream.
Where smoke-bound spirits rise to astral planes.
A shame it started early
with no-one there to see -
- or help.
11/01/20
Contest Eight Word Challenge
Sponsor John Hamilton
Copyright © Patricia Cammish | Year Posted 2020
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Patricia Cammish Poem
Dawn Haiku
Lacy headed trees
in Chinese dream-like paintings.
emerge mist shrouded.
Copyright © Patricia Cammish | Year Posted 2020
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Patricia Cammish Poem
10/28/20
When vampires fly abroad in search of blood
And poltergeists and demons do no good;
When zombies drooling, crawl up from the ground
And ghoulish spirits glide without a sound;
When bats and spiders brush across your face
And coffins spill out bodies all in lace;
A chill crawls up your spine, your hair turns green.
You know the time has come for Hallowe'en.
Copyright © Patricia Cammish | Year Posted 2020
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