Poetry

A beautiful poem Ruth. I don't know what to say. There isn't anything harder in life than losing a child. I lost a daughter at birth, I often wonder how she would look now, what she would be doing.

A beautiful poem Harry. You have a wonderful way with words, a great sensitivity and doubtless a heart of gold.

May I say to all who mentioned my poetry: I am honoured to have been given the gift which enables me to write. I am merely another of God's tools. Thank you. It is my priviledge to share.

Here is the second part of Chapter one of "Cataclysm" - I am editing a section at a time, and will, for the benefit of all, display the remainder of this chapter. If you note any errors, whether in punctuation or composition, I would appreciate your comments.

Regards,

Harry.

Part two. Chapter one.©

The following day, Saturday, with his bag now packed, they would enjoy their traditional week-end at the Dorset coast. He sat then on the flat rock to his left and sipped brandy from a hip flask. Lush green grass, scattered with buttercups and daisies surrounded the slab of barren rock on which he now stood. He made a daisy chain for his wife. His three daughters, Millie, Marie, and Vicky, demanded that he make one for each of them. “Daddy, you must make some for us,” they had chorused. He had watched them play hide-and seek among the shrubbery and boulders, innocent to the horror that would occur within the next few days. He could not know their lives would end before they had reaped life’s beauty.He listened to their shrieks of laughter. He witnessed their colourful, floral patterned, skirts billowing in the warm afternoon breeze; pigtails and ribbons in their hair also caught up in the excitement. He adored the smile on the face of Eve, as she lay on her back, her ankles crossed; the hem of her thin summer dress resting lightly on her shins. She clasped her hands behind her head. The ivory hairs of her arms reflected the suns rays, which in turn, transformed them into tiny golden flecks. Her breasts gently rose and fell with each breath, as she soaked up the sun’s warmth. He listened to birds calling one another among overhead branches, and in the distance a dog barked. His life was complete. All that had gone now. Joshua wondered if those images ever existed. Was he now in real time, and what he would once have seen as exquisite memories were they now his dreams? Force of habit made him look at his watch. His consciousness was unaware of the time, or what day, or what month, even the year. Then suddenly, he did recall what year he was living in. The initials of the names of his three daughters told him. The twins, Millie and Marie, so named in honour of the first day of the new millennium in which Eve gave birth. Five years later, and on the fourth anniversary of their wedding day, unplanned but no less welcome, Vicki came into the world. The year then was two-thousand and five – MMV. Vicki had her fifth birthday two weeks before he left for Cornwall. It had to be the year two-thousand and ten! He sat on the bleached granite slab with his head in his hands and sobbed until the evening air became colder; the charcoal sky intensely forbidding, as it grew darker. Finally he rose, his weeping over. He peered through the gloom. He must search for shelter; anything that would protect him from the bitterly cold night that was ahead of him. During his trek from Cornwall the gray skies made it difficult for him to decide what was day and when night arrived; one being almost indistinguishable from the other. He had learned to distinguish, by the ache in his legs and the intense cold at the end of each day. Fortune smiled on him when the explosions occurred. His car had broken down on his return to Dorset. It was late at night and on a desolate stretch of road. He was in the middle of Bodmin Moor, returning from a business conference in Padstow. The London based consortium, for whom he worked, proposed a luxury holiday resort on the edge of the nearby cliffs. The proposal had met with stiff opposition by the local residents. They barred the entrance to the site on his arrival, screaming their disapproval and waving banners. The prospect of such a building overlooking the magnificent Treyarnon Bay met intense opposition by a huge section of the locals. It was of real concern the coastline would never be the same. Public reaction to the proposition was so explosive that Joshua thought it wise to leave straight after the meeting with the locals, held in the tiny Town Hall. The place was inadequate for all those who went along and some spilled out onto the adjoining lawns. It was late when he finally left.

He had driven for less than an hour when his car broke down. He cursed his luck. He would be late. It was almost a month since he promised Eve he would soon be home, and now this would delay him. At that late hour public transport would have finished their runs, and he thought that, given the hostile feeling from the residents, he would not be able to get a taxi at one o’clock in the morning. He decided to hitch-hike on the chance that a passing motorist would give him a lift. The night grew darker and colder as he trudged, lonely and dejected. In the distance he spotted the outline of a barn at the far end of a field. He decided to take shelter for the night. He would continue his journey the following morning. He found the barn neglected and unused. Its solid walls made of clay and rock, more than two-feet thick and the roof heavy with weathered, thatched, straw. On either side there were window openings just below the wall plates which supported the roof. The floor was of soft dirt. If only its builder had known that his handiwork would prove to save a lone, human life. From his pocket he took a torch which he had taken from the car. He swept its beam over the contents of the barn. In the center of the floor an old Massey-Ferguson tractor leaned precariously to one side supported under its rear axle by an old, lever-ratchet jack. At the far end there were several bales of hay which had fallen away from their bindings. He saw a rusting, hand-operated chaff-cutter, with a counter-like bed of planks. Beside it, a pile of empty, Hessian grain sacks, and further along, several square, rusting, cans. Their tops had been roughly shorn off. He briefly shone the light into them. They contained an assortment of old nuts and bolts and washers and linchpins with their rings spread. A split tractor tyre leaned awkwardly against the opposite wall next to several forty gallon oil drums. It briefly crossed Joshua’s mind there was no second tractor wheel. He had seen enough. He needed to make a bed. He decided not to sleep in the hay bales after watching several rats scurry from them. Instead, he took the chaff-cutter planks and laid them atop the drums which he pushed together. He grabbed an armful of the sacks, stuffed them with hay, and used them as a mattress. He closed the rickety door and flashed the light once more around the barn before climbing onto his makeshift bed. It was dawn when he awoke and stretched, relieving the aches in his muscles from lying on the hard boards. It was too dark still to check the time, but he saw the first thin, silvery strands of the break of day as he squinted through the cracks in the door.

Thank you everyone, for your condolences.  Fifteen years later, it seems a little strange, but this is the one loss you DON'T get over.  You learn to cope and you learn to smile, but it isn't like any other loss, and never really goes away.  My faith gets me thru.  When you have your little wrestling match with God, He kind of draws you in, you know?  Ron, C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed is a very common sense book about grief and faith.

Maria - it was a car crash, like so many others.  Tim was a passenger and it happened in San Diego, CA.  Mercifully, he died instantly.

Andy - I'm especially sorry for your loss.  I have met many people who've lost infants, and people tend to minimize an infant's death.  But your child is your child, not matter what age and they're simply not supposed to go before you.

Ruth, yours has been a been a most devastating and heartbreaking loss. I say that as someone who has, sixteen months apart, held two baby boys in my arms as they died. Luke would be twenty now, and John nineteen. I often wonder what they would look like and how they would have lived the life they never had.  But I also have a son aged thirty-five.....when you have them for years and years there is no doubt that the loss is more deep and wounding, and I  would dare not go in my mind to where you are, and have been.

My heart goes out to you.

Thanks, Sue.  My heart goes out to you too.  I don't think I could have survived it twice.

HI Maria:  Yes, I was thinking the same thing.  I'm thankful for all the new friends.  And thanks to you, sweet Harry for your gift.

On a lighter note - I think I got stood up today. 

I was supposed to get swept off my feet....LOL!