Rhymes (And Other Sorts of Poetry) and Reasons

By David Bamford

The poems in this collection fall into four categories: Snapshots, Chile, Spiritual Stirrings and Nature. What they have in common is that they are born out of the author’s lived experience: sights seen or moments lived, holidays in Chile, a country in which he lived for 22 years, visits to churches and other holy places, and the Cumbrian countryside in which he now lives. Every poem in the collection is preceded by a brief comment on the circumstances in which it came to be written. This is what gave rise to the title.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Apr 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984594730

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Copyright © 2020 by David Bamford.

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 Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/27/2020

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part 1. Snapshots

Coping with an orthopaedic boot

No more orthopaedic boot

New Year, new week

A New Year wish

Apostrophe

Sign language

Attack or pardon?

Companionability

Empathy

Father Christmas

Metamorphosis

New book

Pipistrelle

The beached cetacean

The Dog-Poo Tree

The gift

Waiting to leave

Haiku

Acrostic

Part 2. Chile

RUPANCO

The old church

Tomorrow?

Tree stumps

Flat bed

Dusk

Daybreak

Osorno Volcano

Plank Bridge

The Old Trunk Road

Fare well

Part 3. Spiritual Stirrings

Pilgrimage

Holy Ground

In Lanercost Priory

Thin Place

Holy Island, Lough Derg

St Mary’s Church, Lindisfarne, Trinity Sunday 2017

Iona

Funeral

Boxing Day

Epiphany

Remembrance 2019

Part 4. Nature

Snowdrops

Spring: an apostrophe

June

September

October

Autumn

Landscape

The land

Winter

The garden in early February

Introduction

In September 2019, I attended a prize-giving ceremony for a poetry competition which I had entered. The adjudicator of the competition and two other poets read from collections which they had published. Listening to these poems was a pleasant, even a joyful experience; however I felt that we were given insufficient time to linger over what was read. Poems are, of course, written to be read aloud, providing enjoyment and satisfaction for both reader and listener. This experience, which was really a prelude to the main part of the event: the adjudication and the reading, by the prize-winning entrants, of their work which had received awards, was a bit like eating a starter to a meal, a whetting of the appetite, or even like devouring a burger or some other fast food item. The appetite was perhaps assuaged, but there was no real opportunity to savour different tastes or textures. I would have liked to have been given some background, to be told what the inspiration was behind the poems, how they came to be written, what thought processes went into their creation, etc.

Every artistic creation is the fruit of some kind of inspiration: a sight, a sound, a smell, a sensation of some sort. I fell to considering my own poems from the point of view of what was behind them.

And so this collection came about. . . .

Part 1. Snapshots

Sights, sensations, experiences of a moment, sometimes longer, captured in words before they fade. Often, these are triggered by a pin-prick in an instant. Like flowers, pressed between the pages of a book, preserved beyond their scent and flourishment, the words remain, recalling the sensation beyond the latter’s passing.

Coping with an orthopaedic boot

Early in May 2017, I fell off the edge of one of the raised beds in my garden. As I went down, I felt the electric shock type of pain that I associate with the pulling of a muscle in my left calf. It turned out that the Achilles tendon had been ruptured. I was put in a cast for a month, then an orthopaedic boot for six