wall

Cherry

By Di_Hard

Tue, 03 Sep 2019
  • 2559 reads
10 comments
 

We're the biggest stone in the wall

but we don't sit straight, almost fall

each time we ask why are we here?

This is our free will, to feel fear

yet it's we stir calm seas to rough -

a peaceful thought's not worth enough.

We always want to go inside

where it's dark, a safe place to hide

far from uncomfortable light

where wrong can be mistook for right -

escape into greed, desperate

to do more than keep separate

The Nothing before and after

with our power to burn and slaughter

use science to rock to and fro

grinding the future till gaps grow

Nothing, change everything exept

ourselves; the flaw we can't accept :

to see the Earth and know it's good

without us. Life's more than Man's food

and our stone nestles in the rest -

to keep balance none can be best -

so if we think wer're at the top

it's because others hold us up.

Certificate U
Poem

Comments

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

A clever poem Di, 

I like the idea of us all being stones in the wall and holding each other up, but if one should escape and another follows, the wall could collapse.

like you say, to keep in balance we have to work together with the earth. But I suppose there will always be opposing forces, we are all so different. But like yin and yang we can work together if there's give and take.

An inspiring poem indeed.

Jenny.

 

 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Thankyou so much Jenny for your kind and thoughtful comment which was very helpful as it made me see what the point actually was :0)

 

Submitted by luigi_pagano on

Good morning Di. 
I am not a bricklayer but in my younger days I was naive enough to believe that I could build a Spanish wall with three layers of breeze blocks on top of ordinary bricks and I actually did it. At this point you may suspect that there is a but coming and there is. 
As I was saying, I actually did it but when I finished it I realised that I should have used wall ties to keep the blocks tightly joined together but I hadn't  A gap developed where my wall joined the house and although it was still miraculously standing when I moved I feared that it was in danger of collapse in the event of a strong wind.
As your apt poem says, in life we need to maintain stability by co-operation and holding each other up if we want to avoid the metaphorical wall crumbling.
Thanks for sharing your deep thoughts with us.

Luigi x

 

 

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Thankyou for your wise comment Luigi! Well done tackling a wall, breezeblocks are so heavy! I am making some steps in my garden from all the rocks I have dug up. I look at it and feel smug, then look at all the walls around the town where I live, and feel ashamed. I don't know HOW  people made them all so straight - if you stand sideways to them they are flat from top to bottom, as if they were bricks, not like my billowy bulgy attempt. I can see if we ever try to sell, a surveyor will pounce on it as a health hazzard :0)

I am so grateful for you commenting as I always think of your writing  when attempting a rhyming poem

 

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

You've been changing this around haven't you? sometimes in verse when 'we' is used, I'm not sure whether it it oneself, or generic for mankind in general that is meant? I was intrigued by far from uncomfortable light where wrong can be mistook for right - as it is often the desire to keep in the dark so that misdeeds aren't seen, but here it is the fear of being wrongly accused?

I appreciate the truth that we are held up and helped in whatever good we do by others, as in a wall. but I wasn't sure here whether that was in your mind, or that humankind doesn't appreciate it is being supported by all of nature. Though we are flawed now, God does still want us to look after this earth - to 'steward' it as he said at first, and that's a challenge to each of us personally, not just groan and despair about the accumulating thoughtless usage. For those there may be some progress, and to urge it is good, but we don't need to fear for the future even though there may be difficulties, and many of our/mankind's own making, - Jesus said he's coming back to change everything right again, so he want us to befriend him now to be ready for him. Rhiannon

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Thankyou for your detailed and knowleadgable response Rhiannon :0) "Light" was sort of like concience, what illumines our ability to know right from wrong? Or whatever gives us concience. And the darkness our ability to ignore the Truth, reason our way out of doing what we know is the right thing?

"We" means all of us. I am sorry I do not have your Faith that Jesus will make everything right again. I worry about all the suffering now and in the future. I do not think I am more worthy than any other creature, or that God loves me any better. An ant is just as much a miracle as a man, moss as a tree.

I am frustrated, raging that we could fix what we have done, with politicial, economical, agricultural upheaval. But we would rather let everything go on as normal for as long as possible and try to forget people drowning in the sea, or birds feeding their chicks plastic

 

Submitted by Jane Hyphen on

Really interesting piece Di_Hard. These lines: 'use science to rock to and fro' and 'if we think we're at the top it's because others hold us up' particularly stand out. It all seems so precarious doesn't it, all it would take is a mad person with big boots to knock it all down. The dark, cold side facing inwards and the sunny outward facing side which we show to the world. The stone wall metaphor works well.

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Thankyou Jane :0) Your poem about the rocks in your garden is one of my favourite poems, maybe because of all the rocks in my garden, so it sticks in my mind. Looking at real victorian walls where the stones fit like Tetrus pieces, and knowing my own rocks are just the same, I marvel how they got the walls so straight with ony the same amount of flat sides per rock! The more I look at them the more beautiful they become, how the makers must have found each rock's potential, the best place for it to be, to make the wall better. And amongst al this, the five or so different types of ferns and other wall plants, and the woodlice and centipedes etc. I know from my steps building how many creatures move in, so quickly, they must be well fed up when I take it to bits again to try to do it better

 

Submitted by Tom Brown on

Whenever I hear of the wall I think of Pink Roger Waters and this poem is quite appropriate I would say. O yes and of course the Huppty Buppty sad story. The Berlin wall is more of an (happy) ending and actually I don't like PinkFloyed.

Keep well Di! Tom Brown

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Thankyou very much for commenting Tom. That Pink Floyd song is very bleak, isn't it? About chilldren all being forced to become the same, like bricks are the same. Dry stone walls are not like that though, they are made from diifferent sizes, shapes, even kinds of stone? There is a huge skill to making them (which I don't have) and they are sculptures, I think. Only useful sculptures as home to many kinds of creature. Walls are interesting as can be to keep in or keep out, keep safe and warm or keep prisoner, have an inside and an outside. A big solid made of many smaller parts, which can come apart, like the Berlin Wall, as you say. You have raised lots of ideas I didn't think of when writing this!