For newcomers

At the bottom of each post there is the word "comments". If you click on it you will see comments made by followers, and if you follow the instructions you may also comment and I always welcome that. I have found many people overlook this part of the blog which is often more interesting than the original post!

My blog nick-name is SIR HUGH. I'm not from the aristocracy - my middle name is Hugh which relates to the list of 282 hills in Scotland compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. I climbed my last one (Sgurr Mor) on 28th June 2009

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Thursday 12 March 2020

Hesketh Marshes poem

This is based on my previous post about walking down the Hesketh marshes following the River Ribble as it nears the sea, and the resulting comments from my post.

Thanks to those who will recognise their own words and thoughts used with some license from me.


Man is baffled to find a use
But reluctant to ignore.
Green looks grey as seen through gauze.
Walkers on these bleak estuarine urban fringes
Remember Magwitch and more haunted Kentish marsh. 
Damp sticky, and chill, and lonely levée.
Trodding above tide line - drifted sticks and plastic,
And logs, and odd wrecked shoes, and bladder seaweed,
And rope abandoned, and the odd dead fish,
And planks and wooden beams
With hints of erstwhile trouble out at sea.

After. My photos confirm the gloom.
I write and show and readers say d’accord,
Except for one remembering the same
Without the gauze, now blazing sun,
And finding beneath a rare defiant tree
Welcome shade to munch her lunch
And eager,
Celebrating her chance to use
This expanded open scape.

10 comments:

  1. To sum it up
    I walked that way
    the other day
    Whilst the tide was out all looking bleak
    but when in, the sea filled every creek.
    The gulls shrieked
    the winds sighed
    I feared the next tide.

    Your next walk
    along this coast
    looking forward to your post.
    It's all wild and lonely, don't worry
    You're most likely to catch that virus
    whilst riding on the bus.

    ReplyDelete
  2. kendal grufties12 March 2020 at 20:12

    Wonderful

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well done on keeping active, Conrad. I've just spent a while catching up with your postings. Very entertaining. Must try to get up to see you sometime, but we seem to be very busy at home...
    Have fun!
    M

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous -

    My friend Anonymous
    Loved estuaries boundless
    Where he ate his samosa
    In the shade of a mimosa

    That's supposed to be a clerihew.

    -----------------------------
    Kendal grufties - take a bow - you were the inspiration.

    -----------------------------

    Phreerunner - You are both welcome anytime.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You gotta count out the beats and consider where the stresses lie:

    The moustache of Adolf Hitler
    Could hardly be littler
    Was a thought that kept recurring
    To Field Marshall Goering.

    ReplyDelete
  6. RR - that is not inherent with me although I see how it imposes that sly humour. I know I'm wrong but I read to myself what I have written and put stresses where I want where perhaps others wouldn't (especially in my free verse), but of course I don't end up with the classic format of a clerihew - if I do it will likely happen by accident.

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  7. Don't know how I ended up an anony-mouse [its usually whilst I'm trying to prove I'm not a robot] but I'll be having a samosa for lunch in any case.

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  8. BC - I think you can go to somebody's blog by clicking on the blog title OR by clicking on the post title. I may be wrong but sometimes one way you get to comment as yourself and the other as anony-mous.

    Do ypu have mimosa in yur garden? It's main merit is that it rhymes with samosa, and as I have now found out it is only a flower/plant so to sit under it would need to be on a banking above you but I invoke poetic licence.

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  9. i think you have revealed a real talent with these poems
    Ok it might need refining and developing, but what doesn't ?
    If you read the Waste Land and Eliot's development of the 'epic' , it took him many months - years - and help and comments from many others - eg Ezra Pound - to bring the work to publication - and even then he made minor adjustments - as did Shakespeare , of course.
    So 'isolation and distancing' will give you a wonderful opportunity to refine your methods and technique - maybe to immortalise the pandemic in unadorned verse - direct and expressive , to serve future generations as a warning and a guide !

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  10. gimmer - thanks for that. I am not motivated to conjour up one for the sake of it. There has to be a feeling that comes from somewhere else which starts me off. I will keep a watch out for that feeling.

    ReplyDelete