These are the Readings performed at the 2009 Spring Concert

A Knowing by H.M. Traquair

She hunches over her work, measuring words, mixing metaphors,

She brews a poem, her body a boiling cauldron,

The fires burn beneath

A chant grows, a dance dictates her feet

Arms wind blown branches

Reach back in time.

Eyes, rich coals ablaze, illuminate her quest

A vision spins tales of running free upon the moor

To a sod cottage where her people sang

of dreams lost.

Bellies cold, peat warming the hearth

The old songs waft across oceans

Lamenting a barren homeland

No potatoes, no cabbage

Hope dashed on the rocks of a jagged famine.

She tries to speak but the words, decomposed

Wound round by silken webs, eviscerated

As if by spiders that dine at their leisure

Tangling the telling.

Although she yearns to feel their pulse

Voice their struggle

Her breath alone affirms their courage

Peat fires still burning warm in her heart.

Mother Ganges by H.M. Traquir

The December day in darkness

He paints daffodil yellow on his mother's kitchen walls,

Paler on the cupboards before he leaves for another - Ganges

To meander her waters seeking adventure

He and his mate navigate currents, shallows

They row downstream, GPS in hand

Read stories, maps, avoid alligators, deadheads

To the next village, where welcomed

They draw cool water for parched lips

They play ball, joke in gestures

Try to decipher the dialects of difference.

They share the evening meal

Inhale air spiced with sweet curry

The tang of ginger

Somosas, dahl rice dishes prepared

By generous hands, they are fed

Sit satisfied, cross legged by the fire

Blessed by a Holy man

Who meditates in silence under the stars.

At dawn they thank their hosts

Say "Namaste"

Pack up and paddle away

Glide past throngs of laughing youngsters

Who follow along the sandy shore

Waving with glee.

Sun lights their way,

 sky brilliant in topaz saffron turquoise iridescence

Saris scarlet, purple deep blue silk

Shot with silver

Lilt and whisper on the warm wind

Later, burnished turrets of the Taj Mahal

Shimmer golden on two young travellers

As Bengal tigers stalk round the edge

of her dreams the mother holds him

in her heart, prays for the river

To deliver him safely home,

Adventure accomplished

'Til then breezes blow across continents

Ruffling the curtains in her daffodil kitchen.

Rainy Days by Ingrid Alesich

(A children’s story, written with Savannah Bowman in mind)

Rainy days can be fun days.

They don’t have to be sad days if you choose.

When you look at the sky, it’s soft and fluffy like a big, big, big woolen blanket.

When you look at the trees, their colours are bright and sparkly from being washed.

The trees sing softly as the rain swells their secret roots their stout

Trunks and long, slender branches.

They sway their arms with the winds, and they sing thank you songs to the sky.

Birds wash their feathers in the rain.

They puff themselves up, so the rain can’t reach their soft, warm bodies.

They dance on the branches and flap their wings.

Then they use their beaks to slide down each feather, so the feathers will be bright and shiny with special oils.

Pebbles get washed in rain too, and when they get wet, you can see pinks, grays, blues and whites, speckled ones and striped ones, some even have magical sparkles of silver or gold.

When it’s raining, you can curl up warm inside under a blanket and watch the veils of rain sweep through grasses and trees, and over houses.

You can listen to rain drumming its drops on the roof, or tick, tick, ticking on windows.

Or you can curl up warm with a good book on rainy days.

Or you can put your rubber boots and rain-jacket on and go outside to splash in puddles, watch the water run in rivers, downhill to a stream, getting bigger and bigger, till it reaches an enormous lake, or even the big, big, big, big sea.

You can walk by streams and listen to them rushing and babbling busily on their way.

Sometimes, you might see animals drinking there.

When it rains, it fills up the big reservoirs for fresh drinking water, so when we are thirsty, we can take big, big, big, big gulps of fresh, ….cool…. water.

Rain feeds all the foods we want to grow, and all the flowers we want to paint our yards and forests with.

Rainy days can be fun days.

Spot the Difference by Paul Mansfield

Here we stand before you,

Feel free to look us over,

It’s a bit like a Spot the Difference puzzle,

Have you found any yet?

We walk, we talk, we breathe,

When we are cut we bleed red blood,

Yet some of the deepest cuts we have received in our lives,

Showed no blood

For a bleeding heart does not show

Except in a teardrop from the eye.

And we have got used to covering that up

For tears are not the answer

To a hateful tongue or a threat of violence.

Our songs are bland and old fashioned

Because we are, mostly, bland and old fashioned.

We do not climb mountains or dive to the bottom of the ocean,

We do not  swing from the circus trapeze,

We live our normal, somewhat humdrum existence,

Work, play, rest,

Exactly the same as the majority of people.

Yet sometimes, just sometimes,

We will reach to the stars, carried on a wave of inspiration

To create something unusual or different,

Something to say “I am here. I am me”

Just like other people do.

We know we would never win a beauty contest

But we do not depend on outer beauty to get by.

Within us is a beautiful soul full of song and poetry

Kind hearts beat out a willingness to kind deeds,

And the ability to help others when help is needed.

Just like yourselves, no doubt.

We take pride in who we are, not what we are,

We are not the screaming queens who march your streets,

We are not the limp wristed stereotypes of your nightmares.

Our women sing Soprano or Alto,

Our men sing Baritone or Bass

(Okay there’s a few doubtful tenors in the middle but what the heck)

We are just people, ordinary people

Happy, sad, scared, confused, jubilant, celebratory, all by turns

Just the same as you.

The only difference is the way we love

And yes we do love, we love a lot

For those who are hated for nothing more than loving

Will love all the more, those who will accept that love.

If you can accept that of us, then we can love you

If you cannot accept then we can feel sorry for you,

But we will not hate you for what you are, for who you are.

That is the difference.

Sonnet for Sparrows by Ken Vaughan 

I watched some sparrows on a winter’s day

outside my window, drab as dead leaves

yet bold and bright of eye.  I stay

indoors.  And while my heart grieves

the death of summer, the shortened hours

of light, the pallid sky, the chill

that settles in my very bones, and sours

the world for me, the sparrows fill

their days with jocularity,

chase each other through the leafless trees,

evince a certain singularity

of purpose – to live, to fly, to be!

Drab perhaps, the little sparrows seem,

yet of such gladness I can only dream.

Poetry by Ken Vaughan 

You say you don’t like

            poetry.

But listen –

            here’s the thing.

Don’t think it’s just words

            on a page.

That would be to say

            only that

            my fingers brushed your face,

            that you felt the heat

            of my tears,

            that the alphabet of touch

            is less literate

            than any sonnet.

I would not have you

            labour over metaphor,

            decipher rhythm,

            chase meaning from these

            scratches on the page.

Could it be that

            we are poetry,

            that we are shaping with

            our hearts and hands

            a verse more true,

            though wordless it may be,

            but no less sweet.