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A Reflection-
A collection of personal poetry
By Pip Train
I AM
I am Me
Thoughts and Feelings
I AM IN MOTION
I am Me
An image in a mirror
I AM STILL
I am Me
Sealed into clothes
I AM STUCK
I am Me
What is the Me that you see
I AM NOT KNOWN
I am Me
Thoughts and Feelings
I AM HERE
I AM Me
Who will know?
The Mirror, the clothes, the people
I AM MY OWN CONFIDENT, I KNOW I AM ME
CHANGING​
My Head aches
Have I changed?
My eye are sore
Have I changed?
My memory is fading
Have I changed?
My age, my life
How long will I be here?
My love, my family, my friends
I am changing
I am me and I am not
I have gone, you remain, continuing to change
THINGS
Clothes, they are there to be worn
Pictures, they are there to be seen
Mirrors, they are there to be looked thru
Things are things but what of life?
Life, it is there to be lived
BREATHE
Panic Rising
DEEP BREATHS
Sadness and guilt
DEEP BREATHS
Contain it, control it
DEEP BREATHS
TURN
Round and round I go
TURN, which way?
Twisting, gut wrenching
Dare I ask? Protect and stay strong
FULL TURN, I can’t; I don’t know how
The Truth arrives, follows us and spins us out of control
Whose strong? Whose turn is it? NOT MINE, don’t find me
I have not turned, I am spinning
ONWARDS
Acknowledge and accept
HOW
Process and Distract
BIT BY BIT
Talk and talk
CONFUSION
Truth, Hope, Trust and Accept
MAYBE
Carry on
WE WILL
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Devastation
All encompassing, overwhelming crashing waves of disbelief hurl us, flailing into the depts of What Ifs and Whys
Ripples of strength that we cling to quickly disappear, pulling us back onto the sands of reality
Welcome To Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley
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Copyright©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
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I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this……
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland.”
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
* * *
Part-Time Granddaughter (Poetry)
by Anwyn Jenkins
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April Afternoon
We are
Sitting quietly.
Sun shines
Birds sing,
We stay
In shade
In quiet.
No movement
Small sighs
We think
I think
Together of
Better days.
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The Women
We are together
Like the threads of a spider's web
Oh-so-fragile in the morning sun.
We are woven between us
Like antique lace
Careworn and beloved and beautiful.
We rise and fall with an old man's chest
Rubbed red raw like thumb pads on a worn-out palm
Beholden to whispered words through cracked, purple lips.
We lug and plunge and soak
And wash and pin out to dry
The hoists that hold us captive.
We run over mountains into rivers
Sail our weary bodies around grey jetties
Shower, sleep, rinse, repeat.
We pray
In our own ways
For deeper nights
And brighter days.
Golden Years
I peel myself away as gently as I can,
Unsure of how much of myself I leave behind.
I disentangle
Disembark
Alight for another station.
I hope to fade away like seafoam
Leaving only speckles on our favourite beach.
Announcing my departure feels gaudy;
Spangled trumpets fanfaring my triumphant retreat,
Leaving only a bruised silence in my wake.
As I timidly face the sun,
I hope my love was not too deep
As to leave behind a scar.
As the train rumbles onwards
And the rolling hills flatline into fields
I breathe out
The last
of
my
home.
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Rest, now
In memory of tea with sugar.
In memory of trifle with plenty of custard.
In memory of the woodshed at the bottom of the garden.
In memory of strimmers and axes and a green boilersuit and a farmer’s cap.
In memory of a selfless, hardworking, humble man;
In memory of my grandad,
Roger Haggar.
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GROUNDING
Pip Train
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The hills, rising above us are grounded by earth and remain still
They hear the sound of the lambs playing and the ewes grazing, bleating their woes deep into the earth.
Clinging to the hills, the gorse laden with flowers and thorns warm them and offer a place of protection for any that dare to enter.
Red kites soar on the passing winds and the hills watch, without jealousy, as the winds although fleeting leave behind a sense of comfort, of new growth and of stories heard and told.
Once again, the hills settle deeper in the earth, content knowing they are the very thing that offers everything to all.