Just a quick thank you to Feniton WI for a great meeting recently. Thank you for your donations to Anthony Nolan and for buying Heartlands: the Poetry of Jeni Braund.
I am available for talks to groups on poetry or Nursing Notes and Anecdotes. Please contact me here.
The autumn of my life is done,
It’s really been a lot of fun.
The leaves have changed from green to gold
Though often cracks start to unfold.
The tree when young could bend and sway,
Those long past lovely distant days.
Then came maturity and young
And times of strife when branches hung;
Time passed and grace took hold, and years
Changed into mellow times, some tears.
Though now it has to be admitted
Those ill made choices I committed.
Now all has passed and autumn nears,
No more decisions, no more fears.
Accept that I am going home
The tenure of my life is done.
And memories come and memories go
It was my life, I loved it so.
The seeds I shed are now full grown,
Now see, it’s time I left for home.
Don’t weep for me, as branches fall,
My life of love I gave for all.
No time for tears, just celebrate,
I lived and loved and now it’s late.
Goodbye my loves, my children all
Remember me as winters’ fall.
By chance, it seems I came across
a cottage in a wood.
Many a day I passed close by,
not knowing where it stood.
Perhaps the home of keepers past,
whose woodland children knew,
Its seasons and its secrets
as year by year they grew.
A thousand years from now will show
an ancient family home,
A lifetime’s loves and memories
encroaching trees entomb.
“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
and I have promises to keep.”
Perhaps, who knows, when these are done,
a home like this, a hallowed one,
In woods as lovely dark and deep
with no more promises to keep,
The Autumn of our lives we’ll share,
expressed at last a lifetime’s care.
Acknowledgement to Robert Frost
The days when my soul goes wandering
To find the eternal thread,
Leaves hearth and home like an empty shell-
These are the days I dread.
When nothing is me, when husband and
Children with clouded eyes
Look to the centre and find it bleak,
Like the moor under threatening skies.
I know where my soul goes wandering,
Where the sky and the hilltops meet,
Where deer softly graze
In the damp morning haze,
Where creatures are born
And the winter’s forlorn
And I’m lost in the mist.
In the deepest shade of the darkest wood,
Where the searching soul meets its self,
Where the spirit of earth is the spirit of man,
Where light in the trees plays “catch if you can”,
I am.
More than these others you alone are home,
Where childhood’s sweetest fantasy took flight.
When shelter was denied a child and mother,
‘Twas you that took them in one moonlit night.
Did you bestow this gift of love, this yearning
Deep in the saddened heart of lonely child,
And know that all your loveliness and caring
Would invade her being, leave her heart beguiled?
That she would come again with love and gladness
And show her children secrets of her own;
Your rocky cliffs which once absorbed her sadness
And turned to joy and giving when full grown.
Your pebbled ridge, your sand hills and bleak burrows,
Each inch familiar, loved, remembered yet,
Beloved cliffs and green clad tors and lookout
Are part of life I never shall forget.
Strange little town that sits upon it hilltop,
Surveying proudly valleys far below,
The River Torridge wending through green woodland,
Like ancient moat protecting you from foe.
Tall pavement seemed to a child a giant’s doorstep,
Old Market Sqaure where all who came could meet,
Small freindly inn with crackling log fire blazing,
And, best-rememberd, May Fair’s anual treat.
