Homework exercises

I have signed up to a Summer Poetry School with Rommi Smith, and we get home work!
Great, so different from when I was at school ghost summers ago, when the weather in the summer was predictable and I hated ALL home work, and struggled with the undiagnosed dyslexia, which has turned into a blessing for me nowadays....years of school reports saying 'if only he could spell' 'why can't he be neater in his work' and a university career, pre-computer, pre-internet, pre-mobile phone, pre-on-suite-bathrooms, when I made sure I wrote lots, put dots over every word in case there was an i in it, and produced basically illegible scrawl for essays and exam work. I think I got my degree on the weight of paper I submitted, I could hardly read them either...

So my home work, see copies below, computer written spell checked, and a real joy to do and a change of subjects for me; things I would not have touched on without someone else's eye and sense of direction , an exercise in using words of ugliness in a poem of beauty and a pop at the mountain of a subject, the BBC shipping Forecast of the UK   - this just the first week too...so happy.

The scent of a rose after sudden rainfall

The rain has at last stopped its discrimination against the sun

For it felt superior to this shining.

The torture of the rain drops water-boarding the roses

Has resulted in serious wounds.

The scars of ground-strewn sodden petals are wealds on the soil.

Arising scent, released from the thunderstorm’s oppression

Exploits its transcending sense

To fill the air and my eager nostrils with its calling.

Ignored passions,

Held in dulled and darkened slavery

Are now, in this rain break, set free.

And because this is so deeply welcomed,

This is not an act of sensory rape.

My heart rises on these wind-born wisps of teasing pleasure,

And un-shackles me from this moment,

Kills the passage of time

Awakens word-free life-connected joy,

And transports memory and spirit to the palaces and gardens of the blessed.

In Ten (long) Lines – The Shipping Forecast for the British Isles

This kiln-fired, time-fixed ritual, fleetingly frames the changing sea weather in a rhythm of word song.

Brings repeated numbering and quiet spoken lullabies to the storm borne and battered brain

Ridding the growing ocean-long-reach waves as they crown the rock lighthouses, piers and sea walls.

The ear is soothed by the security of this slight sound changing repetition that names

The Air and the Sea and the Land and the Wind and the compasses boxed boundaries,

Chasses the pressure driven jet stream flotsam of Mother Earth’s endless spin and circling Sun’s dance.

Strange flowering phrases of rigid familiarity allow the details to draw back and flow on the spoken ebb,

Providing a comforting spirit-harbour to this ship and small boat Moon, this low Tide and rip-driven Life.

If we would listen to and trust our deep-soul-forecast past the gathered storm-clouds and star lit barnacled reefs,

Like the anticyclone high, we will lose our sector and quadrant-named, shore-snatched, brief identities