‘Edenbray in Exile’

A Retrospective Anthology of 50 Poems, Articles and Essays

… … …

Rejection

AN UNFINISHED POEM

…   …   …

The snow of ’63

…   …   …

That bad winter when the snow was piled high was the first shot

It ricocheted on ice leaving a double echo hanging in the frozen air

As it slid, an arctic sidewinder, the full length of a tortured sled-track

Not sure if Etienne had said to me, Is there something more I can do?

That I would have learned to cry then, those tears that melt the snow

…   …   …

Something looms over the banks, over the deep crusted hard-pack

It’s a silence you can hear, the shadow of a huge bird passing

When you know you are alone, even with people in your home

We never learn to be lonely, we bring it when we pass the gorge

From eternity’s darkest night into history’s brightest dawn

…   …   …

Icy glaciers run cold today with the missing tears of that golden age

When ignorance raped nature’s store and turned her to a common whore

But when the second shot rang out and the curtain fell in Dallas

Jackie held her husband’s brains in tender hands and we all cried

For the baby-boomers like me and Jen, something genuine that day died

…   …   …

And then upon the snowy scapes, we learn to love again

Plunge our hands into the icy flow and watch the mountain grow

Within an atmosphere of coldest breath, without the hostility of death

Pluck the sweetest flowers born, shout the loudest words we’ve ever sworn

Curse the mighty behemoth from his slumber, with eyes of red and thunder

…   …   …

Then a third shot sounded, it took me down, limp and broken to the ground

Ice drained deep beneath my skin, the cruelest capers speak the ugliest sin

To turn away a heart as trusting on a night as cold and rank was disgusting

The snow leopard pads the highest parts, a mother learns to bare her heart

To make her family sure and safe when life’s harsh moments scrape their face

…   …   …

A berry picked, shared or given, to the cub with no will for living

Rain falling in the desert, coats for street children, kind words to a victim

Abuse of child-love cannot be measured, love that always should be treasured

When the skip returns to a broken step, its’s always love that lays that path

Not else can light that darkest shaft into the misery of a soul’s rejected past

…   …   …

always unfinished .. .

writtenbyedenbray26/03/2018

..

‘.. . love that always should be treasured’

…   …   …

A PHOTO GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED for THE UNFINISHED POEM

“REJECTION”

…   …   …

DALLAS – November 1963

..

‘Icy glaciers run cold today with the missing tears of that golden age’

‘For the baby-boomers like me and Jen, something genuine that day died’

‘Pluck the sweetest flowers born, shout the loudest words we’ve ever sworn’

.The snow leopard pads the highest parts, a  she-mother learns to bare her heart’

…

GLOSSARY:- Ettienne – Steve

…   …   …

#Authors Note : Good poetry should contain a hint of mystery and enigma, that is my view. I do not say this by way of introducing my own piece here reviewed, but out of tact and tasteful consideration and to introduce an idea. Neither would I wish to suggest that in my view – my poetry is either ‘good’ or even close.

Rejection – AN UNFINISHED POEM it turns out is of a most experimental notion. The notion that domestic pain and distress may be healed but still leave a scar that even the most repaired and readjusted will find themselves fingering from time, to time. Whether out of sad regret or of painful scarred-tissue memory, the victim rarely mounts the horse it fell from without a second thought.

At this sad time amidst the turmoil of the Covid-19 pandemic we have been made aware of those for whom lockdown adds no relief from suffering as they themselves are victims of another curse – their abusive domestic partners or parents.

Rejection is another silent foe that niggles, undermines and hampers its victims for years as clearly as those in post-virus recuperation may find in the coming days, denying quality of life and peace within, as certainly as those who harbour painful memories of a more physical nature.

Not wishing to necessarily ‘blow the gaff’ on this piece or ‘tell tale’ but the novel notion this verse conceals and reveals in pretty much equal quantity, is that those shots that rang out in Dallas in November 1963 at the assassination of JFK provide a kind of terrible punctuation to the telling of my biographical story of personal pain around that same time in the early sixties. The JFK narrative provides a ballast to my sad story, according to the thinking that there is always someone with a sadder tale to tell than our own.

                                                                                                               ~   edenbraytoday

…   …   …