A Halo

This is written using an expanded haiku stanza, i.e. the syllable count is 7, 9, 7 instead of the haiku's 5, 7, 5. I found I needed the wider lines to keep my argument flowing. Note, the first 14 stanzas of this poem constitute a single sentence - how very Jamesian.

   The impressive phenomenon was seen on Saturday 25 November 2023 at about 6.30 pm. I thought I was the only one but when I came to write the poem, a bit of web research showed it had been widely seen all over the UK with many images recorded on social media.

   The final line of the poem is a truncated version of the first line of Psalm 18 (Douay-Rheims version) - "The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of His hands." It is a wonderful psalm - read it.

   Another of my syllabic poems which argues its way to a conclusion is "Thoughts Whilst Watching," written in October/November 2018 and posted here on 1 July 2022.

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   In Advent-tide, one frozen
Still-aired evening, thinking to freshen
   My mind, made slug-a-bed by

   The house’s baunic heating,
Stepping from my kitchen door to breathe
   Taut lungfuls of the icy

   Winter’s darkness (my backyard
Pin-glittering with crusty ice-dew
   Patched on wall and slipskate path),

   My eye, astonished, staring
With a toddler’s fixed and doubtful gaze,
   Was lifted skywards by what,

   In the hominid ages,
Would doubtless have cravened skins-clad men
   To their knees, foreheads trembling

   Against the freezing plateau,
Fearful that some dire god stood threshold
   To indulge its tripwire self:

   Well, in a cloud-lacking sky,
Windlessly silent bar the grizzle
   Of surf slumping fretfully

   On the beach’s distant banks,
And pin-cushioned here-there by stars’ glints,
   By chance’s pure fluke I saw

   A prodigy which, with gasps,
Might force even modern self-praising
   Man to his grovelling hams:

   A mighty miles-wide halo,
Whitely glowing, lasooed a full-faced
   Moon all yellow-gold, filling

   Fully a quarter heaven
With its misty aureole, corralled
   At edge by a flamed border,

   As if the moon’s Brünnhilde,
Catafalqued, lay captived but cherished
   In Wotan’s protective fire:

   And more: adjunct at the moon’s
Bier, Jupiter, tungsten-bright, outshone
   All heaven’s creatures, intense

   As a welder’s flare, pupiled
With the moon in that halo’s iris:
   Astounding sight! And both loomed

Kerb Stones

Like many Penzance residents much of my working time was spent away from the far west because work was elsewhere. Granite kerb stones and facings used to be ubiquitous, much of the granite hailing from Penwith's quarries. Much of old Penzance is built of granite. The Penlee quarry (now closed) to the west of Penzance was a major supplier of granite for roadworks. Castle an Dinas quarry to the east of Penzance is still working. The moors behind Penzance are dotted with disused, water-filled quarries. "Hireth" (in Cornish), "Hiraeth" (in Welsh) is a near-untranslatable word for extreme home-sickness.

   This is a poem about leaving Penzance, so here's one about moving to Penzance, "John Davidson and I," written in June 2016 and posted here on 23 September 2021.

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      When banished from Penwith
By work commitments in the cesspool east,
   Elbowing every Jones or Smith
   For commons at a grudging feast,
      I joy to walk the streets
Of town or city where I’m glumly lodged,
   Tracing the granite kerbs and leets,
   Once fresh-installed now stained and bodged.

      That granite, dimpled, grained,
Foot-smoothed and browned by rain and vehicle-splash,
   In-minds me of my home, Penzance,
   Salt-strewn and mottled, greyly-drained
      By wind and sea’s cracked lash,
(Though, sun-hit, its granite lanes can gleam with quartz,
   Light-livening the damp west air):
   What helps? I’m exiled otherwhere!

      This exile’s lust for home –
A grief, a lack-sick longing for what’s lost –
   Leaps countless miles to Penlee’s combe,
   Its quarry, now disused and mossed,
      Where rock-hard men hewed stone,
The granite slabs and roadfill cobble shipped
   Upcoast where, by the weather blown,
   They kerb and face, unthought, tight-lipped.

      I ache for Penwith’s moors,
Their wind-smacked inclines cleft by flooded pits:
   “Hireth,” we say, its wist desire
   Urging despite our games or chores;
      For peace-in-being sits
Truly in landscape, be it town or shire,
   Where, meaninged, each is nourished by
   What’s loved: old streets, high moors, rough sky.

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© January 2024