Mother, Father and Child – From the notebooks

I continue a journey through my journals and it is inspiring me to want to keep a detailed one again. I find lists of trips we made, parties we went to, wildlife parks we were at, names of all the people we spent a lot of time with, books I read and more.

These days I have scatty notes on facebook and the occassional writing session once a month and a letter to my children once a year, that’s not to say I haven’t been writing but then I journalled so many things.

I came across this piece (p.347) written for friends – I’ve removed their names though.
I don’t know if I ever gave it to them or if it only remained a thought bubble to develop.

Mother and child

Sand printing her spirit
into the imprint of her baby’s smile
taking a multicoloured blanket
and rippling it for his delight.
Teaching him early – we are all one
all the people blanketing the earth.
Hoping he’ll want to serve humanity
from an early age.

Father and child

Eternal didgeridoo player blows
love’s texture betwixt father and child
cradled by Baha’u’llah.
They rock back and forth
cocooned in the covenant
reaching for music and dance.
One day he’ll earn his name.

The child

Agoo, agoo, agoo
[translation love you, and you and you]

Cordelia

Love need not be spoken
There are no words
Yet the blind king needs more.

His hunger for words that
Feed the need to know his own power
Will forever hold Cordelia captive.

Yet, she is beyond selfishness
Knows love can be divided
And multiplied in its division-
Yet the blind king needs more.

She forgives, accepts her fate
Tries to protect him from inner hate
But in the process to her death she walks
And he is all talk.

While her sisters are still looking for power
They did themselves no favours
The blind king sees more than he wants to see.

The blind king sees
His one daughter who loved him true
He finds self disdain

Cordelia though is beyond his pain
She’s walking in her inner beauty rain
A rain flower to love
She was never so blind.

(c) June Perkins, word and image.

Fragile Soul

Fragility no one saw clearly
causing a slide
like a tray down a rail
a bump and a crash
to the porcelain esteem

the pieces on the stairs
splinters to anyone
who could try to walk
into his lighthouse

but at the sea
a father remembered
a boy and his shadow.

It had all been so simple
the sand and the ocean
the wave and the wind
the bend and the mend

fragility cocooned
in the cradle of the glance.

Then it had been possible
to see in the horizon
a life.

(II)
Acid burns away the skin of his soul
the harsh words peel away the hope
from the bones of dreams
no more tears rush out

Harsh actions become like sunburn and recovery
takes hot showers of rebuilding.
Healing is so painful

No thick skin for racism’s language to bounce off
sleeping off the sunburn of criticism
the danger of more than cancer lurks.

Recovery is not always possible.

By June Perkins

Bonsai Dad

My dad does bonsai in the garden.
He likes to water his plants.

He goes “Argh”as the cat
Knocks over the pots.

Dad likes to bonsai in the garden
He has a little bit of everything
Lots of figs, a pine tree or two,
And maybe a maple as well

He tends to his saplings and seeds
He shapes them like trees
That are usually much bigger.

My dad likes to bonsai in the garden.

By Ben