Travelling the Verse Portal

The end of the Tuesday Poem, is making me think about how I want to continue with this blog. And the way I wish to travel through verse... So maybe as a beginning of an end, I can take you on a journey through space and time, not just speculative fiction, but the long road of being human

Here are links to some of my favourites...I hope you enjoy

Cul-de-Sac by A.J. Ponder

Eulogy to battles lost by A.J. Ponder

Firefly by A.J. Ponder

For Whom the Bell Tolls/No Man is an Island by John Donne

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

The Road goes Ever On, walking song  by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Road Not Taken - Poem by Robert Frost
 

The Piano Twins by A.J. Ponder

The Trouble with Time Machines by A.J. Ponder

Travelling by A.J. Ponder

This Year of Fire by A.J. Ponder 

The Weary Traveller by Mary Wroth

 
Winds and Time by Keith Westwater

 My love of poetry is undiminished, but I will be making some serious decisions about the when are still undecided. But nothing is decided yet - and I do rather like post over Christmas...after all, Christmases are often signposts of our journey through time...

Travelling

It's a dangerous business
travelling
the empty path
of dreams

sunlit as it is
you'll never see the
danger
until you're bundled

into mouldering blankets
and dragged
into
shadow

there's no telling
where you'll be swept off to-
mountaintop or
Khazad-dûm

you could fly
or fall

and never stop


 A.J. Ponder

On a more upbeat note, our family went to the opening of the Rivendell Archway in Kaitoke National Park over the weekend, it was great fun, and we are especially grateful to our "fairy godmother" Kristi Klein who made our gorgeous elf costumes from dresses she found at the SPCA op shop.


For more photographs of the event go here to my Wizard's Guide to Wellington site. https://wizardsguide.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/pass-through-elven-ruins-and-discover-a-world-of-magic

Poem inspired by the Lord of the Rings quote: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.” (Frodo Baggins about Bilbo, The Fellowship of the Ring,) Which I think was itself partly taken from "The Hobbit."


This is not the first Kaitoke, Lord of the Rings inspired poem. My original Kaitoke poem (published Quiet Places 2005) starts...

I run as lithe as any elven maid,
through forest steam and...

and is here at http://anafflictionofpoetry.blogspot.co.nz/2010/07/nz-poetry-day-kaitoke.html

Wishing you all a little magic, and look out for more fantastic poems at the Tuesday Poem Hub

Travelling through 70's Mainland NZ

in the middle of the

patchwork flat

peeling in the sun

a cottage tumbled

far from the snowy peaks

hazy in the dusty distance

rats along the rafters

visitors at the door

far from the wind

the water

the bustle of the big

city across

and away

with fangled ideas

calf, dark curled lashes, blinking

and down the road

the main road

not a café

just a road stop

where you could have everything

you liked

even vegetarian

so long as

you didn't mind a little bit of bacon

rats, you can have your dust

calf, stay if you wish to be et

we're headed for the mountains -

maybe they can tell me -
why we left the sea

A J Ponder

This is a poem I've been working on really does in some weird way seem to capture one of our many trips through the South Island when I was quite young.  It would have been either late seventies of very early eighties but accuracy at this point is not going to be easy, nor particularly relevant, and although my memory of most of our other trips is almost non-existent this one stood out because of  an unscheduled stop at a place where the guy really did have rats along the rafters.  He opined that they (the rats) were quite entertaining and the walkways should be a more prominent feature of the house design.   And not so very far away some kind of diner, the only eating establishment for miles around - where Mum asked if they had anything vegetarian and the lady pointed to some kind of cheese muffin thing - with bacon.  A small amount of discussion, utter horror on both sides.  (Mum grew up with pigs on a farm, she might be a little lax about her vegetarianism when going out - but not when it comes to pigs the images of them being slaughtered still haunt her.)  Unstated was that there wasn't a heck of a lot of choice, it was that or the road... I believe we found something to eat - in the car. 


More of Richard Ponder's work can be found here
It's not of the hut in question as the background is clearly not the middle of the plains with miles and miles of flat land.  Gosh even thinking about all that flat land just seems wrong as I'm so used to being nestled in the hills of Wellington.  


A.J. Ponder  

 A.J. Ponder's work is also available through Rona Gallery, Amazon, and good Wellington bookstores