It is Awakening

It is Awakening

 

Awakening

The spark of interest

Fascinated and curious

Fixt

On a face

All animated with the story

It is relating

That is

S

 p

   i

    l

     l

      i

       n

        g

Out through arms and gesturing

Hands

It on

To us.

Too full!

Shouts the heart

Absorbing all of it

At pell-mell pace

The words

And the whole

Beautiful face

Awakening an interest

Fascinated and curious

So full it floods.

The waters remain

Soaking the desire

For more.

 

Simon C.J Falk 16 February 2020

 

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Don’t forget to look for good news stories on #WATWB

 

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We Are The World Blogfest #WATWB in April

Welcome to the second post – yep, back again! –  of the We Are the World Blogfest #WATWB!  You can sign up here.

Our special lead co-hosts for this month are Belinda,  Peter, Mary, Inderpreet, and Simon  and they are committed to stories about peace, love and joy.  Please visit their blogs as well.

Some other participants to check out include….  Damyanti Biswas, Emerald Barnes, Eric Lahti, Kate Powell, Lynn Hallbrooks,  Michelle Wallace, Roshan Radhakrishnan, Susan Scott, Sylvia Stein, Sylvia McGrath and many more besides.

So… on with the story.

I don’t blame anyone for the situation, said  Sankalpa Mahatara.

There is too much anger in this world. Why do we need more?
Mahatara was innocently stabbed during what appeared to be a rampage of youths through Canberra and Queanbeyan. He just happened to be there at the time. Mahatara is a carer for his mother and was stressed that this incident affected his ability to provide for her.  All he wanted to do was go back to helping his mother and working his job.

More of this story can be read in The Canberra Times. Queanbeyan, a regional  NSW city near Canberra, has its share of joys and woes. But this event shocked the region.  So many asked why these young people did such a thing and what sort of home life were they raised in?

What is interesting for us is Sankalpa Mahatara’s response.  He did not want to react to violence and hate with more of the same. He did not want to spread hate.  He saw the value of the simple things in life. An honest day’s work.  Care for family.  Courteously considering our neighbours in the human family.  He is a man of basic nobility, in its truest sense. May he, and his mother, know more peace in their lives.

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We Don’t Pass On The Hate

(In honour of Sankalpa Mahatara and his Mother)

We don’t pass on the hate,

We pause and breathe and wait,

There’s already enough hate.

We don’t point the finger of blame,

Our role is not to shame,

Nor is it to defame.

We don’t pass hurt around,

Ears pain upon its sound,

There’s enough hurt to be found.

We speak and act for peace,

From violence we seek release,

We give our lives for peace.

We seek the truth in love,

Open hand, not fisted glove,

Of goodness lived in love.

So spread some cheer along,

We thrill to hear its song,

Among friends and to the throng.

Simon C.J. Falk 28 April 2017

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Please SIGN UP for WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST in the linky list below:

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~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1.  Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news, about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List below.

Can you help us on a team of Co-hosts?  Contact Damyanti on atozstories at gmail dot com.

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Who Trod These Paths and What are Their Tales?

Who Trod These Paths and What are Their Tales?

How many times have you heard the expression: “if only these walls could talk?”  I’ve had that thought about pathways, seaways, rivers and landforms. They hold stories.   Two paths in the images I included here hold stories of their own.  The poem tries to get a feel, however incompletely, for the story under the surface.

 

Who Trod These Paths and What are Their Tales?

Who trod these paths?

What voices do they give?

What are their tales?

How did they live?

First Picture: A scene from Pioneer Park Lookout, Griffith NSW, Australia.

(i)

Way back in the Dreamtime,

Shapes formed in the land,

Great marsupials and serpents,

Gathered as a band,

They came,

They ate,

They played,

They strayed,

And so began another day.

People came to tread upon

This earth with shoeless foot,

They hunted with the spear

And the boomerang they tossed.

They walked upon this hillside,

As to other lands

They crossed.

They communicated with message stick,

Traded food and skin,

They came across the white fella,

And now both dwell therein.

Tourists tread along this path,

And youngsters doin’ their thing,

In the grating of the gravel,

And the rustling leaves,

We hear their stories sing.

 

 

Second Picture: ancient gateway in the old city of Rhodes (Rodos) in the Greek Island group.

(ii)

Peoples disembarked upon this isle,

Greeks and Turks

If you please.

Add mixes of Italians,

Even the Maltese.

There were Spartans, sparsely clothed,

But tough and fierce and strong,

And Crusading knights

Who came to smite,

And hold their banquets long.

Fisher folk and traders,

The powerful and the slaves,

Those on land and waders,

The mature as well as knaves.

Battles won and lost here,

And even change of names,

From Rhodes to Rodos we hear

Tourists pronounce in ancient lanes.

Some gather for the markets,

Others for historic sights,

In busy tourist seasons,

Cafes and beaches

Are crowded in at nights.

But in the age-old pounding

Of waves from o’er the sea,

The archaic tales are sounding,

Of the indentured and the free,

Inviting into the story,

People

Like you and me.

 

 

Simon C.J. Falk     30 October 2016

 

A Pilgrimage in Poetry

A Pilgrimage in Poetry

It all started on some animals,

And a school assessment on ‘The Drought’;

But as the years began to flow,

I then encountered doubt.
Did I have the rhythm?

Did I have the rhyme?

How could I get into the zone?

And where would I find the time?
But the poem always found me

At a time l least expected;

It found me when I was exultant,

It consoled me when dejected.
At times I wrote of love,

At others I wrote of hate;

Or of the carnal twinge of lust,

Of the dullness or dread of wait.
I wrote of persons parting,

Of time’s great passage on;

Sometimes it spied me in a picture,

Or motioned in the melody of a song.
I mourn the poems I lost,

When moving house or tidying things;

I cannot recollect those words now,

And the pain of loss within still stings.
One time I co-wrote with a friend,

On a drizzly day in highland retreat;

She finished it off later,

And then mailed the draft complete.
Sometimes I cannot finish,

The verses for a piece;

But when I conclude a poem,

I always feel release.
A release of a creation,

While still connected here to me;

It has been gifted to the reader,

And its verses can can roam free.

Simon C.J. Falk 17 November 2015

 

Rambled Writing from a Distracted Attentiveness

 

As a young lad in a little country town I first encountered Kenneth Graham’s book “The Wind in the Willows” in the Year 5 classroom.  Then I thought it tremendously boring!  Later, when studying literature at uni, I encountered the tale again.  That time I was captivated.  Recently, I heard an audio version while travelling along the highway.  This was a time when I was not in a good space personally.  The aside into the ravings of the riverbank and words on the wild wood brought me great solace. I heard an alliteration in some of Graham’s sentences that I’d not heard before (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5659.The_Wind_in_the_Willows ).  It reminded me, as I mused with pencil and page today, that those of us who love poetry, literature and writing often go there to get away.  It is our escape into a world that takes us to horizons that turn our faces from the treadmill of our days.  In some ways it is escapist.  But it helps us do the soul-work we need to do.  The poem that emerged is dedicated to all of us would-be literary lovers who need to get lost in our words!

 

 

Rambled Writing from a Distracted Attentiveness

 

Ratty messed about in boats,

He traversed moats

And fought with stoats,

As he paddled in his desire

With the Mole.

And as we face the life we’re in,

Searching for stillness amidst the din,

Boxing temptations into sin,

We seek a quiet spot within,

To stop

And still

Our soul.

So I trawl and troll through sites and blogs

On written things and our “Black Dogs”,

Wordy steps in encompassing fogs,

To fill the empty hole.

The hole that seeks its cavernous fill,

Tossing and jostling our tendentious will,

Tales and verses gristly in our mill,

From our pate down to our sole.

Sole of the feet that beat a retreat,

From all that troubles us in our street,

And pain displayed in the eyes we greet,

As we cast ourselves in our role.

A role that says: “do your job!”

And cop tough jabs of life upon your gob,

Only the silent shadows permit a sob,

As you lean upon your pole.

The pole that draws you into words,

Of verses and stories and loaded verbs,

And risks pinning on of labels like: “you’re all nerds!”

Living in a cage.

A cage of image, story and phrases,

A dreamy world of passing phases,

Attracting only certain praises,

From those of similar whim.

Yet to the written word we stand,

In narrative and verse we try our hand,

Joining together in the writers’ band,

For it does sustain our soul.

 

Simon C.J. Falk     26 March 2014