A Man of Few Words

 Do you dream?   I dream most nights (that I can remember) but it is said that we probably dream every night and mostly our dreams fade quickly.  But what I rarely do is dream about either of my very dear husbands - one gone thirty two years ago and one gone six years ago.

I used to write what I will loosely call 'Poetry'.   It fulfilled a need at the time I suppose.   But I enjoy reading or listening to poetry, have a lot of poetry books (many inherited from my father) and often read particular poets last thing before going to bed, especially if my mind is in a bit of a whirl and I feel I am not going to sleep well.

I stopped writing 'poetry' because I had to face up to the fact that I am not a poet.   I began to feel that what I was writing was so unsatisfactory (I was going to say 'rubbish' and then realised that it was the wrong word because it served its purpose at the time (ie to get me through a bad time).

For some reason I have signed myself out of my URL - don't know how -  must have accidentally pressed the wrong button and my computer will not allow me in in the normal way.   I got in in a roundabout route and came across a saved folder marked 'my poems'.   This was the first poem in the folder - about my farmer of course.

                    A Man of Few Words

No smile.

No word of greeting.

Just a raised finger

on the steering wheel.

No praise

or complaint.

Just tacit acceptance.

No eulogies.

No promise of undying love -

just a cuckoo flower

or a  hand of hazel-nuts

or a subtle tail-feather 

of the grey partridge

brought in the afternoon

and given with few words.

But saying more

than any gaudy bunch of roses.

                          *********

I read it aloud as I sat at the computer.   I went to bed but I didn't sleep well.   The tears came and for a long time I wept quietly to myself.    Bottled up grief?   I don't know.   But this morning I feel clear headed and somehow different.

You who read my posts didn't know my farmer of course - most of us will never meet (but that doesn't mean we don't have a relationship with one another).   You only know him through what I have chosen to tell you.  So I am pleased you have read this 'poem' because now you will know my farmer a little better than you did before.

And when you have read it look again at my Header.   He took that photograph shortly before he died.   It is a photograph of Wensleydale - a Dale he called Home.