Category Archives: Writing

Personal, Sonnets

Ironic perihelion

Since, I live in the Northern Hemisphere,
The planet, in its orbit round the sun
Is at ironic perihelion:
I have no comfort, though the sun is near.
Instead, half-starved for any natural light,
I take what refuge in the sunlit days
I can, before the angled and anemic rays
Are smothered by another heavy night.
Rejoice! Rejoice! The turning of the year
That heralds a return to warmth and cheer –
And most of all, the light – the day is here!.
Rejoice, they say, for better times are near!
I know the light will come, and do me good.
But I’m too tired to care. I wish I could.

Originally posted on Making Light.

Family, Sonnets

Sonnets

4 Comments

For a number of reasons, I’ve been writing a lot of sonnets lately. Most of them are heavily context-dependent, and I’m not going to get into the context here. But there was one, just dashed off, that I thought would be good to post.

Bedtime

It’s hard to pry the schoolboy from the Wii
Or his admiring sister from the couch
(She likes to watch him play). For me,
To make them move means being Mama Grouch.
But up the stairs and out of clothes they go
Then run and hide, one giggler per bed,
Until the bath is full. It’s then, they know,
I’ll come and pull the duvet off each head.
The bath is soothing, time to settle down,
Then brushing teeth and choosing one book each.
He fidgets, but she listens with a frown
And wants the book left close within her reach.
A kiss, two kisses, and two hugs goodnight
A last shared smile, and I turn out the light.

Soppy, I know, but that’s what I get to do half the evenings of the week.

Villanelles

Straw into golden villanelle

A child at risk leads to a hopeless trade.
And now I need your help. Please PayPal me
To spare the innocent, lest all hope fade.

My dying father had no wealth, and prayed
For any suitor who would marry me.
A child at risk leads to a hopeless trade.

He claimed that gold from straw I made.
I never told him how they threatened me,
To spare the innocent, lest all hope fade

A stranger came to spin if he’d be paid.
I was too young to choose responsibly
A child at risk leads to a hopeless trade.

And now the baby’s born, and I’m afraid.
I need the spinner’s name. Then I’ll be free
To spare the innocent, lest all hope fade.

I’ll buy a list of names, if I am paid.
So stranger, can you send some cash to me?
A child at risk leads to a hopeless trade

Originally posted on Making Light, as an attempt to write fairy tale 419 spam.

Sonnets

Sonnet from platitude spam

A preaching fox, as Wymond lets us see,
Distracts us from our geese… Hieronimus
Says forced kindness must then thankless be…
When kindness is advice, and forced on us,
Distracting from the pleasure we find here,
I take their platitudinous links ill.
But blocking comments would, I greatly fear,
Be burning down the house, the mouse to kill….
(And thank you, Dorothy, I won’t forget.)
The best fish swim, George tells us, bottomward…
But Laura warns us that the gifts we get
From enemies have dangers… So I’ve heard.
I wrote this verse from Lawrence‘s kind thought :
That nothing is so bad it’s good for naught…

Originally posted on Making Light, following a flood of spam disguised as platitude posts.

Sonnets

Wordspinning, or the sixteen minute sonnet

A comment on Making Light, at 5:41pm:

All I have ever spun is merino and silk, so my spinning instincts are not finely developed.

The closest comparable silk to merino was my rovings. I found them about the same level of stickiness (with, of course, completely different hands). They were certainly about the same difficulty to spin to an absolute beginner.

The tussah was much slicker, but I actually found that easier to draft than a stickier fibre.

In the end, you’re just going to have to try it. Have you got a good source for rovings nearby? If not, do you want me to send you some, just to get a feel for it? Since I’m thread spinning, and since I use less than a meter to headband a single book, I can certainly spare a few grams here and there…

Email me at abi at my domain name if you’d like some and I’ll pop it in the post over the next week or two. It’ll get caught in the Christmas flurry, no doubt, but then you’ll have something to do when the presents are unwrapped.

– o0o –

And at 5:57 pm:

Although I mainly spin in roving silk
(And rove it did, the time the spindle dropped!)
I tried merino and its woolly ilk
A little bit, before my wool phase stopped.
I found them much the same, at least in stick
(Each fibre has its own distinctive hand.)
The reasons I chose silk when I could pick
Were not from ease of use, you understand.
But words cannot convey the turn of thread
Nor writing substitute for spinning wood.
You’ll have to try, not reading what I’ve said
But learning for yourself what feels good.
So if you haven’t got the silk to try
Then email me. I’ll send it by and by.

Sonnets

Recording risks (Sonnet in a test completion report)

Recording risks is done in PlanView now.
The forms have changed from what we used in PRIME.
This briefing tells you what to say and how,
The basics, anyway, for when you’re short of time.
Use wording as sugested by this sheet
And in your action plan record details
Of what you’ll do, and when, and whom you’ll meet,
With fallbacks if your first intention fails.
Remember as you write that those who read
Your text may not be technical or see  
Details of your project. They will need
Plain terms, not TLAs. Be jargon-free.
In time these practices will be the norm.
Till then, this sheet will help you with the form.

Originally written for my office at the time.  Posted on Making Light.

Sonnets

Remembrances Expanded

A single one of us has passed away
Affecting every thread on Making Light.
We stagger at the impact. All we say
Is dimmer in his absence. He shone bright.
Imagine, if you can, a million lost
Or more: the good and better, bad and worse.
Each death its own immeasurable cost
Each grief deserving vivid, timeless verse.
We lost a friend. It’s cost us all so much
In future joy and present pain alike.
That price is paid by all that death can touch
They all were missed the way that we miss Mike.
The mind cannot encompass so much grief:
They lost a forest, we mourn a single leaf.

Originally posted on Making Light, in honor of Remembrance Sunday and John M Ford.

Sonnets

Against Entropy, the monkey version

I’m not Mike Ford, nor was I meant to be;
But an attendant lord, who will just do
To swell a thread, or start a meme or three,
Obtuse and pompous, yes, and foolish too.
Yet still I write my high sentitious verse,
Between the ether and the mermaid beach.
My scansion’s poor, my structure’s even worse,
And artistry is far beyond my reach.
I’m not alone: beside me Ledgister
Sits pecking at his keys with hairy paws.
We’re monkeys, see? Does Shakespeare register
Or can we go for Ford instead? No pause…
Fragano, Raven, Dan and I all writ
And hoped our numbers reached the infinite.

Originally posted on Making Light, in memory of John M Ford.

Sonnets

Gently with the newbies

Don’t call this fledgling to a strict account.
He has not glided in the wider world,
Nor even left his nest, and no amount
Of flapping of his wings, so new-unfurled,
Can really substitute for honest flight.
He doesn’t understand the atmosphere,
The updrafts and the currents, but he might
Become a thinker and a writer here.
He has a lot to learn of content, yes,
But also that opponents may respect
Each other, disagreeing none the less,
(A thought on which some others could reflect.)
Let’s tolerate his rudeness for the nonce:
Remember that we all were callow once.

Originally posted on Making Light, in reaction to an incipient dogpile.

Sonnets

Evolution for Theists

This world of wonders seems so very odd
And populated by things odder still,
That it feels easier to cling to God
As watchmaker as well as source of will.
Nor was creation made to calm your fears:
The heavens tell his glory with a light
Far older than the bare six thousand years
That Ussher counts. Yet still they shine as bright.
The fossils set in stone don’t teach of Eve,
But He created them. They are his work.
In what, precisely, do you then believe?
That He has lied to us? I think you shirk.
God gave (evolved) you brains to cross this rift:
You, wasting them, repudiate His gift.

Originally posted on Making Light, apropos of the “Darwin Fish”