Love, death and much, much verse
The Purbeck Isle What do love and death have in common? Ans: they inspire poetry. It’s where we turn when words fail. Two pieces today. The first is freshly minted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson. We do not know We do not know when or how we shall die. Will we even have time to […]
The Deciphering
Posted by Vale The Deciphering How busy we are with the dead in their infancy, who are still damp with the sweat of their passing, whose hair falls back to reveal a scar. We think of wiping their skin, attending them in the old way, but are timid, ignorant. We walk from the high table […]
The Common and the particular
Posted by Vale I like these men and women who have to do with death, Formal, gentle people whose job it is, They mind their looks, they use words carefully. I liked that woman in the sunny room One after the other receiving such as me Every working day. She asks the things she must […]
The Undertaker
The midnight hour, the darkest hour That human grief may know, Sends forth it’s hurried summons- Ask me to come—I go! I know not when the bell may toll, I know not where the blow may fall, I only know that I must go In answer to the call. Perhaps a friend—perhaps unknown- ‘Tis fate […]
The house is not the same since you left
Posted by celebrant Evelyn Temple THE HOUSE IS NOT THE SAME SINCE YOU LEFT BY HENRY NORMAL The house is not the same since you left The cooker is angry – it blames me The TV tries desperately to stay busy But occasionally I catch it staring out of the window The washing-up’s […]
Dying without witnesses
Posted by Vale It happens so often: you sit with someone for hours or, sometimes, days yet the person you have accompanied with so much love and care chooses to die the moment you leave the room. This is Dianne Fahey’s poem about the experience. (i) We, your children, were there In other rooms And […]
Goldfish Swirl
Goldfish Swirl We loved our fat Fred and sweet Dinah, Who came to us from the goose fair. As John threw his balls in a fish bowl, …Then chose his first prize with great care. The fish sloshed and dangled in plastic, In little hands grubby and warm. He carried them home oh so proudly, […]
With These Hands — Pam Ayres
Posted by Belinda Forbes In the foreword to the 2008 edition of her book WITH THESE HANDS, Pam Ayres writes that something unexpected has happened, ‘one of the poems … seems to have become popular at wedding receptions.’ Pam may be interested to know that I have occasionally been asked to read one of her […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Ashes
Ashes at the funeral home six hundred still to be collected small boxes, cardboard, filed in rows a kind of shell grit for the chickens fifteen years six hundred still that somehow somewhere should be scattered: sown like seed across a paddock thrown as gravel upon water or set there upon the mantelpiece and added […]
