They take their chain-saw armies
And cut down all the trees
To make a chair, a house and cash!
They need the wood for these.
But later, when they couldn’t breathe
And it was far too late to wonder
Oxygen comes from wondrous trees
They’re not just there to plunder.
The world survives by balance
We ignore that every day
And soon there may be no trees left
There’ll be a price to pay.
©JoeW – Trees, we should love them more…2021
It still seems strange walking into the living room
And seeing that there is nobody there
It isn’t really a living room in this house anymore
Just a space through which I sometimes veer.
A log fire that I never now light for just myself
And a basket of logs sits waiting – just waiting
It’s an lifeless room just like the rest are
We often sat in there just – debating.
A kitchen we’d just had renewed last year
Yet no-one to cook for anymore
Barely a pan gets dirty these days
Unused I just wipe off dust haze.
There’s an almost empty fridge there too
The food keeps getting thrown out
I haven’t got used yet to buying less
My mind is just so full of doubt.
And a bed that now feels so empty
Where once she lay in my arms
A wardrobe of clothes I can’t yet remove
And jewellery and bracelets with charms.
Though fifty years is a long time to love
Not a second of it would I give up
And I would live every second again
For mine was an always filled cup.
©JoeW – Recollections…2021
There is no greater peril facing the world today
Than the health of the planet slipping away
Yet still the fumes will fill the skies
With noxious fumes we can’t disguise.
We put the power in the hands of them
Who help their friends stay wealthy men
Who care so little for world affairs
They just want profit from their shares.
They break the backs of working people
Then stand in church beneath the steeple
And think their sins are washed so clean
In truth they truly are obscene.
©JoeW…2021
He sits beneath the acacia tree
Where once he sat with her called she
She who filled his heart with love
She who now resides above
She who loved him everyway
She who helped him through the day
She who gave him children two
One who now resides with you
She to whom he gave his all
She who made him feel so tall
She whose touch he no longer feels
Who isn’t there to share the meals
O how he misses her called She
He sits and waits beneath the tree.
©JoeW – The Tree…2021
Saturday in the dull….
Saturday afternoon is a dull time when it rains
Nothing much passing my window save the odd car
And they probably pass at the rate of one an hour
Such is village life during this blasted pandemic.
The brown leaves of the beech hedge outside my front window
Can always be seen right through at this early time in Spring
But the hydrangea growing up the wall by the front door
Is already well on the way to looking fully green and splendid.
Soon its will be covered in beautiful creamy coloured lace caps
And the buddleias are already searching for attention.
There is a Victoria plum tree in my back garden that was my wife’s
Her sister gave it to her for a birthday present six years ago
The next year our daughter, Victoria, died and now so has my wife
There has never been as much blossom on the tree as this year.
Is that a message or am I clutching at straws! Who knows…
Saturday afternoon is a dull time when it’s wet and you’re lonely.
©JoeW – Saturday in the dull…2021
The Final Part…
He’s retired now himself, my boy Clem
And home to the cottage he came
For Libby, his wife and Clem look for us now
It’s back’ards but things ain’t the same.
And we all live a life of quiet now
In the village where the river’s in spate.
We watch from the garden as the days just go by
Rarely leaving through our creaky gate.
But it’s good to be here in the village
With our kinfolk not too far away
With Libby and Clem here beside us
It’s different but the clouds aren’t just grey.
There will come a time when I shuffle off too
But not too soon I hope, not too soon
For there’s lots of odd things that I’ve still yet to do
Not wrapped up in some useless cocoon.
©Joe Wilson - The Final Part…2021
A final part to ‘Dreaming of home’ and ‘More thoughts of Home.’
All three were written in a style similar to O. Henry
[William Sidney Porter (1862 – 1910)]
…and yet when finally I drew back the curtain, life was still there ticking away as always. For in truth, ‘time really does wait for no one’. My self-all-absorbing grief, is only a very small pothole along the much larger global road of life. I don’t care, it is my pothole.
I touch her things, my fingers gently passing over her wedding ring and her watch, both of which she had worn every day since we had married some forty eight years earlier. It has been four months since she was stolen away from me, she was taken away in an ambulance and I never saw her again. Even worse I never got to speak to her again. That is what I miss most of all, I will never hear her voice again. It could be, ‘can you pass me the butter knife please?’ or ‘have you read this article in the paper?’ or ‘I love you.’ I will never hear her say anything again. That breaks my heart.
Potholes get repaired but I am like the local council and their repair schedule, I will take forever.
I miss you so very much my skin aches for your touch
The gentle contact of lovers and experience mixed
But the year of heartache severed the whole
And the love in my heart cannot now be fixed.
I lost my girl so cruelly to the ills of life
The best half of two was you, my wife
Now I sit here and stare at blank painted walls
Where I’ll sit for the rest of my life.
How sad life can be, how stark and cold
How riddled with grief can we cope
How lonely the life that gets left behind
Close your curtains, abandon all hope.
©JRW – Blank walls…2021
It was becoming a bad habit
Constantly drinking himself to oblivion.
Four Roses was fine Kentucky Straight bourbon
But it couldn’t go on, forever drunk
Vomiting like a slob, covering himself in puke
Waking in the early hours covered in snot and sweat.
He had to get to grips before the grips got him
Time to put the bottle away before he couldn’t
Life was once so straightforward
And then it wasn’t.
©Joe Wilson – Wasted…2021
…and having moved on, where to go
His active brain just did not know
And so, he tried to think a while
An hour passed and then a smile.
He`d take up writing, yes, he would
Able, or not, deciding he could
And so, he took his brain and quill
Then sat for hours, thinking still.
The page was bare, and hunger called
At lack of progress, he was appalled
But after lunch he did decree
The page would fill, just wait and see.
The lunch was long, the wine did flow
Refusing top-ups, he got slow
And so, he slept all afternoon
Finally woken but far too soon.
His head was sore, his own fault, true
But nausea called, twas to the loo
Where all his sorrows left his gut
More care in what goes in he`ll put.
No words he`d writ, no words at all
This writing lark was not a ball
He couldn`t put the thoughts together
Drunkenness made it heavy weather!
So, he would try another day
To put on paper things to say
And nauseous still, he went to bed
To rest his unproductive head.
©JRW2021…Writing when drunk.
Jovis on a Journey... 