Walking Alone
I came early in the morning
to walk by the river
I came to walk thinking
that you might be waiting
here, beneath the oak tree
whistling
or reading
I came alone thinking
that you might be dreaming
of sunlight
or shadow
or time for the planting

I've left you this message
and hope you will find it
and remember
the words
of the poem that we shared. Fran


do you know I never left you?
your memory holds my image fast
correct to the last detail

I'm there in the photograph you have of me
next to our bed
waiting for you

I whistle with the wind to pass the time
and sing lustily as rain pelts down
hard on the tin roof

you will hear the echo of my voice
down by the river
when you least expect it

Jen

Old Photographs
I have been walking
paths of my memory
alone
for you have gone
and there is no one
who remembers
when we were together
and young.
Yet here is your picture
and you are still smiling
for me. Fran

I am working on trying to search my family history and all I have are myths and photos of smiling realatives from the past. They seem to haunt me once they have been unpacked from the storage boxes they have lived in for 30 years. They smile or look back sternly at me, as forces within my soul that I have never met. They seem to say that their immortality lives in my remembering their faces. Now if they could only reach me with their stories. If I could write poems as beautiful as the rest of you this could be the source of some great verse. Would love to hear what you would write on these thoughts. Do I dare ask?
Jane Crone

And I, wonder if poetry is the only way to write. I think the only way to write is what comes naturally and so, perhaps, one need only to write a postcard to each ancestor and place it with his picture in the file. Perhaps there is a question one would like to ask of a grandmother who looks so stern but had eight children. Why don't we write a note and ask her what it was like to live in a village. Perhaps you could ask the person in the picture how she would like to be remembered? Perhaps just a list of the few things you truly knew about someone is all that is needed to seal the face to heart. What would an uncle like us to use as the caption? (One of mine was a chap who used to say "The weather is so bad today it is only fit for a funeral" . On his own funeral day one of the grandaughters quoted this and all of us knew that in that instant Lee was back with us. For he had made us laugh together. We would like to hear your stories. Fran


Faces On The Wall.

Faces on the wall,
Photographs of family and friends.
People we love,
Some, not with us in this world,
Others, far away
In a distant state or land
We miss them greatly, these
Faces On The Wall.

Faces on the wall,
Photographs of family and friends,
People we love.
Ones we can spend time with each day,
Those we see now and then,
Do we appreciate these times?
Do we show our love for them?
Or will we regret we never did,
If they too, became missed
Faces On The Wall.

(c)T.Seed. 2202.

Anne.

How you loved your horses, ever since you were a child.
Your faithful companions through good times and bad,
Fulfilling your childhood dreams,
Reminders of the life you once had
With mum, dad, brothers and home
And the many Equestrium trials you'd won.

A beautiful model, every young girls dream!
The catwalks glammor, the newest fashions.
Pictures needed for new editions,
Photographers from different magazines, clicking their cameras.
Time in the spotlight didn't seem as bright.
Compared to love, marriage and family nights.

'Happily ever after', didn't happen for you
Another young girls dream now was gone.
Shattered, you braved life through all your fears.
Determined to go on, living mostly alone,
You faced your challenges, wiped away your tears,
Raised your children, seeing them through.

You settled in the countryside at last!
Ran 'holiday', live in riding classes.
Giving your youngest, only daughter,
The life you loved and remembered.
By example you taught your children and grandchildren.
To never give up, to always keep going.

Two years ago you were taken away.
You lost your fight for your life.
Now, you live in our hearts and memories.
Your children, grandchildren, friends and family,
Better people for having known and loved you,
Anne - daughter, mother, grandmother, sister, friend and wife.

(c)T.Seed 2002.


On the 28th March, two years ago, we lost Anne to cancer. She left behind 4 children: Clive, Quenton, Jason Seed and Gemma Williams.

She presently has 5 grandchildren: Cassandra, Melissa, Robert, Natalie and Nicola Seed.

She is greatly missed and loved by all.

I've fluttered in and out
dipped into the fading flowers
but could find among the reeds
no new blossoms

Lonely Here
I've walked along the edge
of the sacred river
but you have gone
leaving a single track
a leaf, barely turned
to mark your presence here.

Perhaps the next time
I come to the river
I will here singing
and know
you are
near.
Fran Sbrocchi

Lonely Here
I am in the gentle breeze that blows
gently on your face.
I am in a smile and in the eyes
of a childs face.
I am in your heart and memories,
So close to you, always.
I am in the sun that warms your skin,
I am in the first birds song,
I am with you - always.

T.Seed 2002.

The Leaving:

Old men plough while sons grow cold under the mountain
Prairie wheat fields murmuring golden and rich in the days before harvest
the smell of grass-- long hay newly mown
dry crunching under our running
and we counted our days in puffs of old-man dandelions
knew our distances in the long rows of telephone poles.

At the base of the poles we put our ears to wood
that trembled messages of the great world
Wind on our shoulders telling-
listening we knew that the time of our leaving would be soon.

The winds of migration were everywhere
in the v-line ofducks and the wide sweep of Canada geese
We heard at dusk the calling and in the morning packed
our bags growing fat with things we could not leave
memories of a hundred days of our mothers
and of long words of our fathers
as they sat round the furnace in evenings remembering

Remembering the furrows and the days they ploughed virgin soil
talk of the finding
talk of their wandering
and of coming to this rich black land and of how in long furrows
the seed had been sown - hand to machine
or of an old horse tied to a pulley
of trees retreating to the edge
to the fenced edges.

The scent of autumn clung to our memory to our fathers
but we were young and knew it was time to go
we left thinking that in spring we would return.
Fran Sbrocchi


Lonely Here
but by spring the air was ripe with promise
and our roots were anchored deep
in fertile soil

nourished by a cornucopia of plenty
and warmed by endless sunshine days
we were replete with love and crimson-berried wine
and learnt new songs in the promised land

how could we leave
so soon
what we had sought
so eagerly
on the winds of change?

oh
how we had changed
ourselves

we knew in our hearts
we would not return
though torn by thorns of remembrance
and thoughts of loved ones
anguished

shadow figures
waiting by the river
hoping for a sign
a singing on the breeze

walking along the banks
as spring turned to summer

they came down to the river
throughout the golden days
until a leaf fell
fluttering
to the ground
before the first frost

when ice stopped the river's flow
there was heard a ghostly song
keening in the bare branches

it is only the wind
they said
finally
only the wind.....

Jenny Aarts

Lonely Here
We found instead
our feet upon the distant shores
of a land so far from home
and here, we had to start again,
begin our lives, anew.
Our memories kept us strong back then
and keep us strong today,
as we remember the ones we love are
with us still - today.

(c)T.Seed 2002.

The Prompt
Shadowing

I sometimes feel a little uneasy about that imagined self of mine - the Me of my daydreams - who leads a melodramatic life of his own, out of all relation to my real existence. So one day I shadowed him down the street. He loitered for awhile, and then stood at a shop window and dressed himself out in a gaudy tie and yellow waistcoat... Logan Pearsall Smith, Trivia 1918

Shadow yourself within Lemuria and observe as much as possible about yourself.

A Response from Vi Jones
Crepuscular rays created by the sunrise and filtering through the window awakened me. Too lovely to lay about, I thought, so I got up and showered, the stream of water chasing away the last remnants of sleep.

I stepped out into the street and, following a woman who was ahead of me, boarded the first bus. I moved toward the back of the crowded transport and hung on the strap as the vehicle rocked and swayed. Since I had nothing better to do, I though it would be fun to follow the woman and see where she would lead me – sort of a Day in the Life adventure.

We changed routes at the town square and boarded another bus. This one was empty except for a couple of teens sitting in the rear and clutching colorful kites. I took a seat directly behind the woman. She was rather attractive in a natural sort of way. Her neck length salt and pepper hair waved easily over her collar, insisting as it were on it’s own styling. She wore blue jeans, a colorful, lightweight sweater over a turtleneck tee, and carried a blue daypack with a light windbreaker threaded through the straps.

We got off at the beach. I waited at a discreet distance while she sat on the cool sand and removed her shoes and socks. With her socks stuffed inside, she laced her shoes together and tied them to a pack strap. I waited patiently, staring at the horizon and trying to not be intrusive, as she rolled her jeans up to just below the knee. She hadn’t noticed me yet which was a good thing, for how would I explain my shadowing her?

When she removed her graduated dark glasses and looked my way, I was stunned by the intensity and depth of her brown eyes from the corners of which squint wrinkles spread like miniature cobwebs. She wore tiny dolphin earrings and around her neck, a silver chain. I smiled awkwardly, but she seemed not to notice me.

She drank some water from a bottle strapped to her pack, then headed toward the surf with a lighthearted step. There were few people on the beach; a couple exercising their dog, an old man walking head down as if afraid of the expanse of Nature that surrounded him, and two middle aged women who marched as if to the sound of bagpipes. My quarry waved to the women and took off down the beach at a clip. I had to move to keep up, but keep up I did.

She stopped suddenly and dropped to her knees to examine something she had spotted in the sand, a shell, I think. After studying it for several minutes, she took a journal from her pack and proceeded write and to draw the shell, picking it up for closer study, then setting it down again, as carefully as if she were handling a priceless work of art. When done, she took the shell to the water’s edge and rinsed it off before holding it high, presenting it as a gift to the mist-adorned sun. Her lips moved, perhaps in prayer. Then, at the water’s edge, she laid the shell carefully on the hard packed sand and photographed it before the surf wrapped it in its embrace. She turned quickly, sending me a smile before continuing her journey of exploration while aware of my existence in her world.

She continued along the beach, strolling, skipping, walking briskly, but stopping frequently to look at this or that, until she came upon some driftwood; trunks they were, from some distant forest. She sat on the sand, and using the bleached wood as backrest and table, pulled a picnic kit from her pack and spread a small cloth before unwrapping a sandwich and opening a small container of applesauce – lunch in style in the out of doors. Some might think her an odd duck, but I saw her as a human in the moment with no yesterday or tomorrow – she was living fully in the present and completely absorbed in the beauty around her. She was one with the environment in which she moved.

After lunch and some more journaling, she stretched out beside the smooth wood and napped. She fitted somehow; she was part of the scene, as natural as the sand, the wood, the singing surf, and the sky above.

I followed her activities for the rest of the day, even following her home. Wordlessly, she invited me in. She had to, you see, for I was her shadow and she was me.

Vi
©February 2002