How do I know my youth is all spent?
Well, my get up and go has got up and went.
But in spite of it all I’m able to grin
when I think of where my get up has been.
Old age is golden so I’ve heard said,
But sometimes I wonder when I get into bed.
With my ear in a drawer
and my teeth in a cup,
my eyes on the table until I wake up.
As sleep dim’s my eyes, I say to myself,
is there anything else I should lay on the shelf?
But I’m happy to say as I close the door,
my friends are the same, perhaps even more.
When I was young my slippers were red,
I could kick my slippers over my head.
When I grew older my slippers were blue,
But I could still dance the whole night through.
Category Archives: Poems by mum
Like waterfalls
Like waterfalls, unceasing
Like rivers swollen after heavy rain
Like the endless flow of the ocean
Words pour through my brain-
And I stand dumb and tears fall
Unchecked while I search in vain
For just a handful of
Those words. They are not there.
No words to tell how deep
At our parting
Is my pain.
D.L. Hardy-Jesshope (1974)
Ten years old
Ten years old – well that’s no age
Time ahead and plenty.
School takes time and suddenly
You find that you are twenty.
Well twenty’s fine, you work
You live it up, have fun-
Then turn around and wonder where the last ten years have gone
You’re thirty. Fine, still young and trim
You’ve made your choice and married
And birthday forty comes along
You get the feeling harried.
Time passes now on mean swift wings
The years, they fly like hours
Then suddenly you’re ten again
-Only more wrinkled.
D.L. Hardy-Jesshope (1974)
It seems to me
It seems to me that long ago
There were fewer people at the table
And not all the doors were locked.
It seems to me I was able
To come and go-to smell the grass,
To touch the bark of a tree.
Now all the time there is a window, a wall
I wonder what happened to me?
Take that window-it’s very strange
For all that I struggle so hard
It just won’t open wide enough and they
Laugh and say I’m a card.
Well, laughing was never bad
So I just smile along with them-but still
There’s a chill in their laughter
That makes me feel hot
A heat that turns my heart chill.
The visitors come from two till three.
I wonder whatever happened to me? . . .
D.L. Hardy-Jesshope (1974)
This planet
This planet, this earth is our mother
And, in our time at least, we will not have another
On which we shall find such a wealth of good things,
Yet we sleep undisturbed while the alarm bells rings.
This planet, this earth out mother, will die
Unless we help her recover.
The air is so foul she can’t breathe anymore
And the oceans deposit black oil on the shores
Where once, long ago, we gathered at leisure
Clean salt-scented shells.
Now for good measure they are covered in sludge
And you are lucky if you can get them to budge
From the place where they’re laying
So stuck to the ground.
And many a murdered seagull is found
Our rivers dry up that once gave us cress
Birds die on sprayed acres-their songs we hear less.
There are parks full of litter, there are bombs being made
And children are dying where once children played.
Dying, right from the day of their birth
Because they are starved on this bounteous earth.
Moon landings were made and oh! How we gaped-
But we turn a blind eye while our planet is raped.
This planet, dear people, this earth is our mother,
IF WE DON’T HELP HER SOON? WE WON’T NEED ANOTHER.
D.L. Hardy-Jesshope (1974)