healingwords: poetry for the soul

I reminded today of my lovely Dad and his fairy stories, told to me when I was a child and repeated to his grandchildren. I miss him today and everyday and the garden where he and my mother created a wildlife haven and where we sat together with the birds and the fae. 

Today I miss the garden, I would visit every year between September and Christmas, sometimes twice. I loved the winter garden, the branches of trees revealed, the redness of berries, the frosted oak leaves littering the ground. Most of all I loved sitting with my parents, watching the birds and squirrels.  Too infirm to tend their garden, it had grown wild, an urban sanctuary for birds and wildlife. The trees and bushes were full of life, robins, blackbirds, wood pigeons swooping down from the Oak to startle the feeding birds, bushy tailed squirrels raiding the bird table, crows and magpies claiming dominion, flitting sparrows from the shorn beech hedge. A little part of us all stays in the garden. As grief unexpectedly returns, I take hope in my Dad's positivity, his joy in the dawning day, sunshine breaking through cloud.  © 2019 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved.  

Today is not a birthday or an anniversary or any special day for remembering my parents but they are on my mind. Maybe I am missing my July visit, an escape from the heat of Spain to the beautiful green of England. They are with me always, in my mind, in the woods, in my children's memories, in the garden.  © 2019 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved.  

My dear friend Elaine sent me this photograph to bring some nature into the hospital room. She is my mother's water nymph who lived in our garden since I was a child. After the house was sold Elaine took her in and she now sits on a beautiful Welsh hillside beside running water.  The poem inspired by this story is written as a sonnet, not a form I usually use. I am doing an online poetry course with the inspirational and brilliant poet and tutor Wendy Pratt and this was one of the challenges. To read her poetry and thoughts I have added a link to her page and a new one set up by Jacqui Rowe who posts beautifully crafted and moving daily haiku. https://wendyprattpoetry.wordpress.com/ https://17haiku.wordpress.com/ WATER NYMPH It had to be done, the house had to sell, emptying daily, lives bagged and removed, little by little the house now a shell, stripped of their presence, its heart removed, saving the precious, my fragile soul bruised. I walk in th...

This poem celebrates my father’s birthday and the coming of Spring in the garden of my old family home. The garden saw many lives, a children’s playground, a mini allotment bringing vegetables and fruits to the table, a cottage garden with flowers, fishponds and dove cote, a mature garden loved by my parents who planted trees, grasses, shrubs and flowers to make a home for birds and wildlife. As they became elderly and less able the garden evolved once more, growing wild, a riotous overgrown jumble as nature took over, a space of wooded beauty in the middle of the city. I loved the garden, for its spirit and my memories and now my parents and the house are gone it lives on as part of me. It seems apt that the greening of Spring coincides with the day my father came into this world. SPRING GARDEN A year since I walked the cobbled path, winding from house to garden’s end, felt Winter loosening ice chains in season’s yearly dance. The great Oak bestrides the gar...