When you touch me, I can say it's you
Even if my eyes are closed.
For your palms are like text books
That I've read so many times over
And so they appear so familiar.
When your breath falls on my back,
I can say it's you, without turning around,
For my back has known no other warmth.
All know a soft touch gives goosebumps,
Who knows a silent breath too can do that?
When we hold each other lip locked,
Our tongues do the talking and explore
Like an adventurer to an unknown land.
No force can open your closed eye lids,
Until the tongue talking is over.
A gentle touch, yes a gentle touch!
Can spark two bodies afire.
Neither wants it to remain gentle,
As they want to explode in unison,
And gently cool like an extinguishing fire.
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
At the bottom of my garden
There's a hedgehog and a frog
And a lot of creepy-crawlies
Living underneath a log,
There's a baby daddy long legs
And an easy-going snail
And a family of wood lice,
All are on my nature trail.
There are caterpillars waiting
For their time to come to fly,
There are worms turning the earth over
As ladybirds fly by,
Birds will visit, cats will visit
But they always choose their time
And I've seen a fox visit
This wild garden of mine.
Squirrels come to nick my nuts
And busy bees come buzzing
And when the night time comes
Sometimes some dragonflies come humming,
My garden mice are very shy
And I've seen bats that growl,
And in my garden I have seen
A very wise owl.
My garden is a lively place
There's always something happening,
There's this constant search for food
And then there's all that flowering,
When you have a garden
You will never be alone
And I believe we all deserve
A garden of our own.
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
And now the bell, -- the bell
She had so often heard by night and day
And listened to with solemn pleasure
E'en as a living voice, --
Rung its remorseless toll for her,
So young, so beautiful, so good.
Decrepit age, and vigorous life,
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy,
Poured forth, -- on crutches, in the pride of strength
And health, in the full blush
Of promise, the mere dawn of life, --
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,
Whose eyes were dim
And senses failing, --
Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,
And still been old, the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied,
The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of this early grave.
What was the death it would shut in,
To that which still could crawl and keep above it!
Along the crowded path they bore her now;
Pure as the new fallen snow
That covered it; whose day on earth
Had been as fleeting.
Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,
She passed again, and the old church
Received her in its quiet shade.
They carried her to one old nook,
Where she had many and many a time sat musing,
And laid their burden softly on the pavement.
The light streamed on it through
The colored window, -- a window where the boughs
Of trees were ever rustling
In the summer, and where the birds
Sang sweetly all day long.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girded round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman waiting for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at one and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sunk in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The lamps now glitter down the street;
Faintly sound the falling feet;
And the blue even slowly falls
About the garden trees and walls.
Now in the falling of the gloom
The red fire paints the empty room:
And warmly on the roof it looks,
And flickers on the back of books.
Armies march by tower and spire
Of cities blazing, in the fire; --
Till as I gaze with staring eyes,
The armies fall, the lustre dies.
Then once again the glow returns,
Again the phantom city burns;
And down the red-hot valley, lo!
The phantom armies marching go!
Blinking embers, tell me true
Where are these armies marching to,
And what the burning city is
That crumbles in your furnaces!
As long as there have been stories there have been storytellers. Even if the story is just about hunting a bear.
Back in prehistory somebody had to tell the tribe about the bravery of the hunters who faced the fury of a giant animal who could rip you open with a slash of its claws.
I mean to say if the tribe didn’t know how brave the hunter was they probably would have little respect.
Often it wasn’t the hunter who told the story – a bit like blowing your own trumpet – and instead someone who could weave magic with words would present the story in the best light possible.
Basically the same as modern journalists.
The storyteller earns reflected glory depending on how he or she depicts the hunt – which is sometimes told as if the storyteller was there.
Basically the same as modern journalists.
For all we know the same stories are repeated today but with embellishments to suit the age in which they are told.
This is how we get our folk tales; or our fairy stories; or our myths and legends.
Ancient Welsh tales written down in the 12th or 13th century but going back centuries more in oral tradition
Did little people used to live underground? Were they driven away by giants who crossed the sea on foot with the water barely reaching their knees?
Or did a smaller race, more adapted to tougher climes, dig into the ground to make warmer, safer homes with only a roof above ground?
Did a taller group cross the old land bridge from Europe and establish themselves as the new inhabitants.
Or are the two integrated?
That’s the way these stories work, handed down from parent to child and sometimes getting bits added on.
My father had three family stories which he says he was told by his father who was told by his father who got it from his father and . . . . you can imagine.
In fact one story only begins with his father, my grandfather the Rev. Edward Vyrnwy-Pierce.
We were told that Edward was almost born on the banks of the River Vyrnwy (as it was then).
His mother, Margaret, lived at the nearby manse at Meifod SO, with her husband, Rev. David Pierce, a Welsh Presbyterian minister and their large family.
My great grandparents, David and Margaret Pierce, pictured in the late 1850s before David was ordained as a Welsh Presbyterian minister. At this time he was a schoolmaster in Wolverhampton.
She was down by the river – getting some water or washing clothes depending on my father’s memory on the day – when she went into labour and only just managed to get back to the manse before Edward was born.
They named him Edward Vyrnwy Pierce.
Another of my father’s stories was “the murder at the crossroads”.
An ancestor was going home one night and was set upon and killed. Who the ancestor was, or whether he was the killer not the victim, or even if it happened at all I do not know.
The story that really stuck in my memory was the tale of the soldier’s farewell to his mother.
According to the story, told to my father by his father (and he by his father), begins with the family, Elias Pierce (my great great grandfather), his wife, brother and children were seated by the kitchen fire in the family cottage in Machynlleth.
Upstairs the family matriarch lay dying. In her final days she had been pining for her son William, Elias’s older bother, who had always been her favourite. He had joined the army in the early 1800s and fought in France and then went to India.
As the family sat there in the firelight they heard the sound of boots on the cobblestones coming towards their cottage.
Then the sound stopped right outside their door.
They waited with bated breath expecting a knock.
Instead they heard the sound of the boots on the flagstoned floor of the kitchen, passing by them all seated by the fire, then on the stairs and into the bedroom where the old mother lay dying.
Then there was silence.
After a while they heard the old woman cry out and then all was silent.
Elias, his brother and my great grandfather David rushed up the stairs and found the old woman, dead, but she had a smile on her face.
They had heard nothing from William since he left for India but they were sure he had come back to say goodbye to his mother.
My father told this story many times and it rarely changed – except that sometimes the footsteps stopped at the door and sometimes they were said to have kept going without missing a step.
My father knew little of his grandfather’s history, the old man died in 1913 two years before Dad, who was named for him, was born.
He had some old notebooks (all in Welsh and believed to be Rev David Pierce’s notes for sermons and various pieces of poetry he had written) plus some certificates as well as a piece of paper with odds and ends of notes on it.
This included some names and dates; a reference to “Elias Pierce shoemaker”, and a child’s writing (very neat) saying “David, his hand”.
It was much later I took an interest in family history. Dad had loaned the Welsh notebooks to a professor at Bangor University, but he recovered them and gave them to me.
My Welsh was very basic but in going through them I realised one had Rev. David Pierce’s family notes giving his date of birth and his parentage back to a John Pierce who was born in 1727.
The first page of the Rev. David Pierce’s notebook starting with his own birth and basic family details.
On the third page I saw the name “William” with a reference to “filwr” (soldier) and “Ffrainc”(France). There was also a reference to “Madras, India”.
The third page of the notebook referring to “William yn filwr” and “Ffrainc” along with a reference to Madras, India.
Over the page I managed to roughly translate a reference to them all sitting around the kitchen fire when they heard footsteps on the pavement which came into the kitchen and went up the stairs to the loft.
The fourth page of the notebook describing the family sitting by the kitchen fire and hearing footsteps coming down the road to their house.
There it was in David’s own handwriting – the story David had told his son Edward who passed it to his son David who passed it to me.
When your grandparents, or your great aunts or uncles, tell you tales of their childhood and that of their own grandparents don’t dismiss them.
They may have been embellished over the generations but there is often some truth in there.
I have always meant to get the notebook properly translated but we moved around so much I never got around to it.
When one day missing you becomes unbearable
I will seek you out from deep within the ocean of my memories
Walk on the sands of time till it leads me to your sun-kissed shores
Where our journey ended and love will once again be reborn
Here I will await your loving heart
I will gaze out across the ocean
Breathe in the winds of hope
Close my eyes and cast the nets of faith once more
Reel in the vision of bygone times
In one precious moment
I shall surrender my soul, my heart, my being
To the remembrance of the fragrance of your body
Rediscovering its secrets
I shall recall the waves to the shore and bathe blissfully in the ocean of your memories
We shall become one
Dance to the rhythm of our heartbeats
Watch a million butterflies taking flight
Shimmering bubbles floating above us
Watch the sun as it rises and sets in eyes yours and mine
Embrace and behold the beauty of loves tidal wave
Ride the waves of ecstacy
Reaching a crescendo
As each wave of passion hits the shore and we evanesce into sprays of pearls and water
Ultimately
Just another drop in the ocean of memories
Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.
No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,
Has the wild berry plucked in June
Beside the trickling stream.
One such to melt at the tongue's root,
Confounding taste with scent,
Beats a full peck of garden fruit:
Which points my argument.
May sudden justice overtake
And snap the froward pen,
That old and palsied poets shake
Against the minds of men.
Blasphemous trusting to hold caught
In far-flung webs of ink
The utmost ends of human thought,
Till nothing's left to sink.
But may the gift of heavenly peace
And glory for all time
Keep the boy Tom who tending geese
First made the nursery rhyme.
By the brookside one August day,
Using the sun for clock,
Tom whiled the languid hours away
Beside his scattering flock.
Carving with a sharp pointed stone
On a broad slab of slate
The famous lives of Jumping Joan,
Dan Fox and Greedy Kate;
Rhyming of wolves and bears and birds,
Spain, Scotland, Babylon,
That sister Kate might learn the words
To tell to Toddling John.
But Kate, who could not stay content
To learn her lesson pat,
New beauty to the rough lines lent
By changing this or that;
And she herself set fresh things down
In corners of her slate,
Of lambs and lanes and London Town.
God's blessing fall on Kate!
The baby loved the simple sound,
With jolly glee he shook,
And soon the lines grew smooth and round
Like pebbles in Tom's brook.
From mouth to mouth told and retold
By children sprawled at ease
Before the fire in winter's cold,
In June beneath tall trees;
Till though long lost are tool and slate,
Though the brook no more runs,
And dead long time are Tom, John, Kate,
Their sons and their sons' sons.
Yet, as when Time with stealthy tread
Lays the rich garden waste,
The woodland berry ripe and red
Fails not in scent or taste,
So these same rhymes shall still be told
To children yet unborn,
While false philosophy growing old
Fades and is killed by scorn.
Robin's Nest 