Category: Personal

My Children

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, Life, Love, Personal, Poetry, Time2 Comments

 

Daphne & I, and our children. Our son was on holiday from New Zealand and our daughter was up from London.
Daphne & I, and our children. Our son was on holiday from New Zealand and our daughter was up from London.

The dark night now surrounds me
I am all alone in my world
There is no one here distracting
I am thinking now of my girl.

I was always such a lucky man
I have children, one and two
Last year I almost lost my son
This year my daughter too.

My son had a head-on collision
Almost twelve thousand miles away
But now almost eighteen months later
He is now fully back into play.

But my daughter, my beautiful daughter
Chemo treatment made her go bald
But she’s back on the upside now smiling
I weep when her bravery’s recalled.

Of course she will still need some treatment
But she’s better, and we’re now almost cool
And I know by the end of her kid’s holidays
She’ll not need a headscarf for school.

I think of my son, I think of my girl
I’m grateful my luck has been fine
For if I was to lose either one of them
I just couldn’t finish this last line……….

 

©Joe Wilson – My Children 2014

I’ve written this because it is bursting out of my chest.

Two short pieces

On By jovisgoesIn Belief, Faith, Life, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

To sit thinking quietly on ones own
is perhaps today’s rarest commodity
when you say that you wish to be alone
observers will tag you as an oddity
and yet that solitariness is divine
a time to question one’s thoughts
a moment where honesty will guide you
and lies get your personal retorts.

©Joe Wilson – Private moments 2014

 

We seem so discouragingly needy
to resist the desire in our mind
to be seen to be caring to others
as if it was a sin to be kind
but to be kind to others is no sin
it is all that we should ever be
and He who is watching and caring
misses nothing in His Heavenly See.

©Joe Wilson – Not sinning 2014

Teenage boys can be cruel

On By jovisgoesIn Life, Love, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

Love-3-love-7843647-301-441

Sometimes we return to long ago conversations
where more than cross words were uttered
where protagonists squared up to one another
and arguments and insults were uttered.

And when with the benefit of hindsight,
that most magical and wondrous thing
we realise often how wrong we were
and the knowledge of embarrassments sting.

If we could just take back those words
that were aimed to wound so deep
knowing how they’d hit their mark
and said to make someone weep.

In those teenage years, how cruel we were
how very little of life we knew
how gentle and forgiving our heart’s desire
how slow the understanding – in young men grew.

I’m now a man – three score and five
a man who love has touched so deep
but I colour now as I think back
at my cruelty then and I want to weep.

For almost fifty years I’ve loved just one
kindness flows through her every pore
I’ve strived to make up for those teenage years
and she just smiles and then loves me more.

My luck has held, we’ve stayed the course
I pinch myself to check I can still feel
and she looks and smiles at me and I know
it’s not a dream and it’s still real.

©Joe Wilson – Teenage boys can be cruel 2014

My life less ordinary

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Friendship, Fun, Illness, Love, Personal, Poetry, Point of ViewLeave a comment

contentment-inner-peace (1)

As the years go flying past
you realise just how much
your perspective changes and
when I now look back at how
things were I realise that far
from having had an uneventful life
mine has been one so full and rich
with love and laughter that I wonder
that there was time for it all to fit.

How we laughed as we left the wedding reception
and all those ‘old fogeys’ and drove away
to enjoy our honeymoon together – alone!
and how we loved each other finding fun in
all that we did together, sometimes
just looking at each other – and how
highly amused we were by the ‘jobs-worth’
car-park attendant by our hotel who stuck his hand out
the moment we crossed his threshold and said
“ten pee please”, he did it every time we went
there, often just to hear him say it again, and
how beautiful you looked in that dress that was
covered in the lovely cherry design. I think
everybody else loved you too.

How wonderful the mead tasted as we sat by the
pub fire in a place we’d never before heard of
never letting go of each others hands for a minute
and how the regulars who treated us so nicely
must have thought we were a bit bonkers.

The joys in raising our beloved children and
the intertwining pain of watching them sometimes
get a little hurt along the way, but our always
being there to help them find their own right solutions
has helped weave a rich tapestry through our lives.
The times when you want to take their pain and
make it your own – but can’t, the smile on their faces
and their laughter as they play with friends and
of course the grumpy expressions as they rail against
doing homework and tidying things like bedrooms. But
what pride we felt at their achievements along the way.

And now they too are married, one on a beach
under a lovely blue sky on the other side
of the world, and one in a most beautiful
church in our capital city. We spend such a
lot of time laughing with our grandchildren,
they are so very clever, and so funny – and
they just make us feel so young again.

Illness – illness!! Now there’s an unfortunate
word, one that has been used in our lives rather
more often than we would like. My wife has been ill,
survived and can still love and laugh. I have too,
but I can still love and laugh. Our children are not
unscathed either from this darker part of growing older,
and yet they too still happily love and laugh very much
and with all their hearts. Illness really is just
a small percentage of our time here.

So now when I reflect on my life I realise that
far from being ordinary I have been very lucky
indeed to have taken part in a life that has overflowed
with love and fun and laughter and only the occasional
sadness and it’s then that we help each other through
to the other side of it. It turns out the fact is
there has been nothing ordinary about my life at all.

And I’ll not be bowing out yet – not yet

©Joe Wilson – My life less ordinary 2014

The tells.

On By jovisgoesIn Nature, Personal, Poetry, Seasons, Time, Village LifeLeave a comment

beech
I often wake up in the night these days
and if I lie very still and quiet
listening to the house I’m rewarded
as it makes all the nightly noises
that I find are so very reassuring.

Crack!! I recognise that sound
of the little lumps of ice falling
down a chute at the back of the fridge
as it defrosts itself by some
magical force once again.

If I wake soon after I fall asleep
I can still hear the creaking sounds
of the furniture as the springs
seem to relax and get themselves ready
for those who will use it next.

Should I wake nearer to dawn I hear
the gentle gurgle of the hot water
as it makes its way along the pipes
warming the house for the new day and
getting us all ready to rise and face it.

When the day is bright I hear the roof tiles
as they tighten up when the warmth of the sun
slides over the trees at the bottom of
the garden and gradually release their
wonderful rays of light on the house.

It is life and it should never, ever, be taken for granted.

©Joe Wilson – The tells 2014

She said “yes”

On By jovisgoesIn Love, Personal, Poetry2 Comments
This can never do you justice.
J x

Silver clouds gently eased by overhead
standing out against a clear blue sky
and it was on such a beautiful morning
that I determined I’d give it a try.

My prospects were looking quite good now
I was certain I was in with a chance
and now was the time to take the bull by the horn
for it was true love, not a holiday romance.

I laid favourite flowers down before her
and I went down on one knee, that’s the thing
then I said, “Darling, will you please marry me?”
“for when I see you, you make my heart sing.”

I waited for what seemed like forever
as she sat there and looked into my eyes
then her eyes lit like sparkling diamonds
and she said “Yes.” and I let out a sigh.

©Joe Wilson – She said “yes”

On 1 July 2014 my wife, Daphne and I, celebrate our forty-second wedding anniversary. I would never have made it without her constant love and support. I wouldn’t have wanted to make the journey alone or with anyone else.

This poem is dedicated entirely to her…with love.

Family down

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Loss, Love, Personal, Poetry, RegretLeave a comment

sadness_8_by_scarabuss

 
Going down the stairs on that March Saturday afternoon
I looked out of the landing window at the torrential rain
It was then that I heard a loud hollow thump as he fell
And I was never to see my father alive again.

I was just a little shy of my thirteenth birthday
It was the unhappiest and saddest of my days
My mother now a widow had lost her best friend
And the pain that followed hurt in many ways.

Five brothers and our sister had lost a rudder
To the ship that is a family going through life
And the empty place not filled beside the table
Strikes at the heart as with a rusty knife.

Time passes and my brothers number just one
And my sister makes us three and not now six
For over four decades and five my kin have fallen
And that’s one statistic nothing can ever fix.

Never fail to love the ones you care for
Never fail to tell them how much you care
For sometimes if you turn around for too long
You turn your head and they’re no longer there.

©Joe Wilson – Family down 2014

Surviving

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Love, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

thankful

 

Strenuously pushing against inevitability
He fights desperately for every breath
But the overwhelming coronary attack
Has surely guaranteed his death.

In those last few moments that remain
He reflects upon the sum of his life
Filled with regret of such magnitude
That he’ll never again see his wife.

For their’s was a bountiful marriage
A life full of children and love
A life that he really didn’t want to leave
For it fitted him just like a glove.

He awoke some twenty hours later – alive
Saved, this mere mortal man
He’d live a much more thankful life now
For it seems death was not yet in his plan.

©Joe Wilson – Surviving…2014

My love lies beside me

On By jovisgoesIn Friendship, Love, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment
"Lasting Love" Metallic Print. LilacPOP
“Lasting Love” Metallic Print. LilacPOP

 

Inwardly smiling as the thought just returned
Remembering the shame as advances were spurned
Still going red at the thought’s recollect
No romance that time, another chance wrecked.

Ah adolescence and all the things new
The callowness is borne like a fedora askew
The so spotty face that we tried hard to hide
By growing our side-burns enormously wide.

And now decades later and still happy in love
With the woman who always fits me like a glove
Those teenage angst years are now way in the past
But we have to go through them for the now things to last.

To be loved for decades is a wondrous thing
My heart wakes each morning and just starts to sing
For my love lies beside me as we welcome the day
In my heart I now realise it was always this way.

©Joe Wilson – My love lies beside me 2014

Only Waiting 1992 (re-visited 2021)

On By jovisgoesIn Loss, Love, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

graveyards
Bury me where you find me, bury me nice and deep
Bury me, remember me, and sleep a peaceful sleep
And dream of joy, not sorrow, dream of peace, not fear
And dream of your tomorrow, for I’ll not disappear.
And dream of us throughout your life, keep me in your heart
And though you’ll go through utter strife, we’ll never be apart.
And dream of all the love we had, dream of all the laughter
And dream, and dream, and don’t be sad, we’ll meet in the hereafter.
And dream of happy lovers, dream of you and me
And slowly you’ll discover, you’ll smile again, you’ll see
And dream of me when you’re alone, and you will see my face
And you’ll not be all on your own, but in my warm embrace.
Bury me where you find me, bury me nice and deep
Bury me, remember me, and I will go to sleep.
But I will wait for you my dear, through every lifelong storm
And when you come to join me here I’ll help to keep you warm.
Bury her where you find me, bury her nice and deep
Remember her, remember me, and we will go to sleep.
©JoeW – Only Waiting 1992 (re-visited 2021) as J Richard Wilson
Printed in the Anthology – A Question of Balance
ISBN 1-56167-038-3 (1992)

I wrote this poem after I had a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage that required immediate surgery, and some serious heart problems too, that also resulted in bypass surgery, and a devastating career loss. However, I was thirty-seven when that started and I’m sixty-five next week, and having realised the inevitability of death, I decided that it would not be yet, not yet!! Live long and love, and smile ❤