My Life of Rhyme

By Sylvia Bryan

This is a collection of poems written over many years and for many reasons. There is no connecting overall idea. The subjects range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from a garden party at Buckingham Palace to saving the life of a whale, and in many other directions.

I have always wanted to know more. Why was Wordsworth wandering that hill when he saw those daffodils? And what was the inspiration for the word jabberwocky? Words have always fascinated me, but ideas even more so. When I decided to put my poems together, I was always going to put the reason I wrote each verse, so the reader would get more from each piece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514458563

Sylvia Bryan

Sylvia is the granddaughter, daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother of dairy farmers and has spent the last half century raising their seven children in the Far North of New Zealand. Many grandchildren and a growing number of great-grandchildren keep her doing what she has always donecare for her family. But books have always taken her from here and now to there and then while she has been anchored deep in the backcountry far from any town.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Sylvia Bryan.

Library of Congress Control Number:           2016902168

ISBN:                   Hardcover                                  978-1-5144-5858-7

                            Softcover                                    978-1-5144-5857-0

                            eBook                                          978-1-5144-5856-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/12/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

733727

Contents

Author’s Note

You Are

When You Look at Me

Empty

Okahu Road Church

Marriage

Geoffrey’s Mother

Damn you, Dave

Little by Little

Agoraphobic’s Song

Liza’s Song

My Professor

Songwriters

My Diary

The Tragic Love Affair

Consuela from Venezuela

Before Me

The French Farm Lad

She’s Five Now

Three Chairs

On the Death of a Child

Country Music Club

The Rainbow’s Treasure

Elaine Plays the Pianney

A Love Poem

Mother

Tomorrow

An Evening with Pam Ayers

Tea with the Queen

Thanks from a Whale

Moon Tax

Country and Classical

Appearances

Healing Hands

Rhythm

Changing Fashions

My Drum

Long Love

The Motorbike

Housework

The Old Road

To all my children.

Author’s Note

I find a poem or a song or even some stories much more interesting if I know why they were written, so each of my poems has the reason for it written on the opposite page. Some poems are just sagas of something that happened and need no further words. Some are just a little bit of whimsicality, and some follow my habit of philosophizing, or would that be otherwise called preaching? Many were inspired by something that happened.

I realize I have used a bit of kiwi slang here and there, and also I have used a lot of poetic license, as these are poems after all. Some words and some spellings and even peerage titles are different, but that is me and the character coming through. Some of the poems have a bit of bumpy scanning but in those cases, like the Queen, the story was more important than the rhythm.

You Are

You are the flight of birdsong

Borne on the wind of time

You are the colour of music

That moulds the shape of rhyme

You are the sound of tree growth

Deep in a forest grove

You are the shape of abstract

For you you you are my love

You are the mem’ry of future

You are the past soon to come

You are the unformed ending

Of the deed already done

You are the end of eternal

Infinity’s final move

You are the strength of my weakness

For you you you are my love

The local paper asked for a valentine verse, and I wrote:

You are the flight of birdsong

You are the soft moon shine

You are the colour of summer

You are my valentine

I wanted to play with these words and the idea of impossibility because after all, love is the ultimate impossibility. I do not think I even entered the verse in the competition because, for me, the pleasure is in the writing and not in winning some easily forgotten tiny competition, which may, anyway, decide that my words become theirs.

Rose asked me for a gospel song for the Far North Country Music Competition, and I gave her this poem but changed the last line of each verse to For you, Lord, you are my love. I thought no more of it until later, when Rose won the songwriters’ section with my poem and her tune. When she handed her entry in, the convener read it and thought to himself that Rose had unknown depths. The item won, and Rose collected the cup with her name on it and in the archives. I found this out when I read about it in the local newspaper. I was not given the recognition for my part in this success, but honestly though, it is annoying to think that Rose blatantly left me out of the loop, when all is said and done, it makes not much difference in the whole scheme of things because what is winning something like this after all? It is only the feeling you get inside yourself, and I have