Category: Love

A love that grows and grows

On By jovisgoesIn Love, PoetryLeave a comment

lovers in black and white_edited

She crushed his young heart with just a hard glance
he’d wanted for so long to ask her to dance
but with her haughty grin and that withering stare
he’d wished the ground would just swallow him there.

At the time they were both just sixteen years old
she had looked up at him and with a look that was cold
that had crossed over her face in such a harsh final way
he never thought he’d see her smile at him one day.

But he never gave up it just wasn’t his style
he thought that perhaps it would change in a while
so though he never pursued her he still always cared
and he made sure he stayed close but he never stared.

Then one day at lunchtime she spotted him nearby
and gave him a smile and in his heart he did cry
but cry out in joy at her beautiful face
and his heart just ran to her as if in a race.

She was not like the girl he had looked at before
but he too was no longer a child anymore
and in all of the years that had passed in between
she also had watched him and had followed his scene.

Both of them knowing that hearts now were full
and feeling desires for each other that pull
they fell into each others love hungry arms
and lived for that moment of love-driven charms.

They’ve never forgotten those love-hungry days
and they care for each now in so may ways
they’re always together even when they’re apart
for each gave the other the whole of their heart.

©Joe Wilson – A love that grows and grows 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

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.

A Warm Heart

On By jovisgoesIn Love, PoetryLeave a comment

love-me-tender18

The Heart is a dangerous and yet beautiful place
Where the traveller should be wary to call
For if Love, its companion, looks out at your face
Your defences are nothing and will easily fall.

But what a way to fall to a loving Heart
What happiness is promised every day
Though to the unwary it can all be too much
For then the Heart shrivels and it all blows away.

So if ever you’re there in that dangerous place
And your chest feels a warm tender feel
Be alive to all the Heart’s possibilities
And for you perhaps Love will reveal.

©Joe Wilson – A Warm Heart 2014

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 ❤

A Place of Tranquility – 1994 (re-edited 2014)

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

jesus_christ_image_005

 

The wind was howling and the trees were bare
I called your name, there was no one there
The darkness gathered all around
And stillness – there was not a sound.

It was then I saw Him watching me
With eyes so sad that I could see
He felt the sorrow and sensed my pain
He knew I’d not see you again.

He surrounded me with a kindly peace
As if He knew there was no release
And all my tears welled up inside
Emotions that I’d tried to hide
All came tumbling, tumbling down
And fell like raindrops to the ground
And in that moment I think I knew
What He, Himself, had once been through.

I stood and looked into the night
Of Him there was no longer sight
And thus I left that Holy place
Myself at peace, and you in grace
And though my life will just go on
Forever now we’ll be as one
But when I go back to that place
I’ll hope to see His peaceful face.

©Joe Wilson – A Place of Tranquility 1994 (re-edited 2014)

The beat

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Love, PoetryLeave a comment

learning_edited

I’ve lived my life and to the full
adventures some, excitement yes
and now my time begins to shorten
one thing that I know for certain
that one thing is this
– children are the beat.

The greatest gift we can bestow
upon our child, boy or girl
is nurturing their sense to know
their sense to seek, to seek and learn
and of that learning
– what to discern.

The heartbeat of the new young child
the uplift to all our spirits
will make us all feel young at heart
they are the beat, it’s what they do
and in return we love
– the beat.

 

©Joe Wilson – The beat 2014