This week’s poem inspired by contemplation that goes round and round and comes to all sorts of conclusions that keep changing and rotating back to earlier solutions and new ideas and falling over obstacles and finding solution which you don’t like after all and getting other ideas and so on and so on and so on.

Who knows (2)

Did you all know

your direction from the start?

Am I the only one

still fumbling in the dark?

Dhaka 2016

This week’s poem inspired by an image from Aleppo, a very little boy, dirty and dry-eyed in an orange plastic ambulance seat. Perhaps you have seen it too?

Aleppo

Many tears shed

For one boy who didn’t cry

When the gore and dust

Mixed to mud.

So much compassion

For one boy who didn’t die

Amongst the falling of bombs

And the blood.

Please stop the bombing

Careless death leave their sky.

Your turn to weep when

Babies tear ducts have run dry.

Dhaka 2016

This week’s poem, a micropoem inspired by several coinciding and unusual situations; impending departure from Bangladesh, the changed situation and atmosphere in Dhaka, the speed of change in the streets of Gulshan, with houses pulled down, high-rises bursting up-wards, roads dug up, the reduction in freedom of movement. Somehow everything seems different.

Relocation

Familiar streets are unrecognizable

and I haven’t even left yet.

Dhaka 2016

This week’s poem is inspired by the way life takes its own paths and you never quite know where a path leads, but also how the geography of life has changes with passing years and with the different life phases that we pass through.

Geography Lessons

First fifteen you’ve little say, internal geography is laid

By decisions of others the stage is set, a taste for space

Love for mountains, longing for waves.  By nature and nurture.

By chance and luck some paths widened, others fade.

Pushed and pulled we grow eager to choose our own hills

Next 10 to 15 a whirl of choices, map alive with

Keys and options, red and blue lines, the rush to see,

To smell, to taste, to touch, to try to understand.

Some paths not taken, others join with ours.

The speed slackens, you lose your focus on the map.

You’re carrying a child and it ‘s biology, not geography

That charts life for 10 or 15 or 20 years that pass.

When you find your mind on the map again

The family pack is breaking up, bit by bit, at varying speeds

In jumps and starts and after another 5 years

You’re down to one or two, with more space and less pace.

It’s time to pause, breathe deep, take in the geography,

Landscapes of chance or choice, time to consider, to choose;

The next 10 to 15, will they be anthropology or biology, psychology

Or just fresh air and green geography?

Dhaka 2016

This week’s poem, short and to the point. Inspired by… well…. just what it says. Amazed at the power of the mind and questioning that there is only one reality.

Crossroads

Rising from a night fighting demons

Glance back

Astonished

At the smooth white sheets

Dhaka 2016

They say disasters come in threes

But it seems they are coming in torrents,

Terrible and frightening dispersed with sad and uncomfortable.

Puddles reflect things you can’t understand

Clouds heavy with apprehension

My heart aches, my head throbs, my legs feel like logs

Dragged from the fire still smoldering.

Gloomy dreams followed by shrill alarm clocks

Intolerable restrictions on a freedom I don’t know if I want

And every conversation turns round and round

The cold grey core of a cyclone that keeps bringing rain.

Dhaka 2016

How much pain

To drive such viciousness?

How much more acceptance, love, empathy

To wash clean the bakery floor.

Amtoft 2016

This week’s poem inspired by the long Nordic summer evenings, where darkness never really falls although the sun goes down and where dusk seems to go on forever.

Days Without Nights

Waiting, watching

Darkness will not come

Gentle dusk rolls on and on

Caressing silhouettes of hills,

Trees, windmills

Sun is long set, but day will not end.

Midnight passes

At last night falls

Eyelids finally closing

But it is already tomorrow.

Amtoft 2016

This week’s poem, written a few days after arriving in Denmark and meeting friends and family who I have not seen for months, is inspired by those meetings and all the said and unsaid things that take place when people who know each other well are reunited. Dedicated to special people… you know who you are.

Reunion

Much must be left unsaid

Longest night of the year

Still darkness comes creeping

Tonight

It’s late, travelers are drowsy

News that’s still waiting

We’ll give it full justice

Tomorrow

Nyborg 2016

This week’s poem inspired by that beautiful moment of longing that comes at sunset every night during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. The moment when millions wait in silence, in solidarity, in small and large groups, to break the fast after 17 hours without a sip of water.

Iftar

From overheated apartments walk through Ramadan dusk

After the rush, traffic slows to a trickle

Stragglers rushing to reach home.

Waiting for Magrib’s magic moment in every parking basement

Behind windows, at corners where rickshaw wallahs wait

At every building site, water bottles with caps unscrewed

Eyes watch hands mix puffed-rice, chickpeas, chilies

The sweet savory smell of Iftar dates, the ache of thirst.

Minutes tick, sun sinks, golden light in silent sky

Peace steels along the ever-crowded paths and parks.

Quiet stretches thirsty for that moment when longing

Calls across the city from a thousand minarets.

Fast is broken, the sweet first sip of water

Silence sighs relief.

Dhaka 2016