Love You, World! E-Book

Robert Ferguson

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 39

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Examine your world with all your senses, immersing yourself fully in its richness. See the kittiwakes and bees go busily about their lives, each playing their part in the intricate dance of life. Smell the sweet fragrance of ripening apples hanging heavily on trees. Feel the softness of a pet's fur beneath your fingertips, or the warmth and strength of a lover's hand in yours. Hear the faint, mournful sound of water trickling from a glacier slowly succumbing to the planet's warming embrace. Consider what human beings are changing irrevocably, shaping the world's fate with every choice and action. Ask yourself: What beauty, what experience, what life might we fail to notice? What might we lose forever if we do not stop, look, listen, and cherish the wonders around us before it is too late?

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2025 novum publishing gmbh

Rathausgasse 73, A-7311 Neckenmarkt

[email protected]

ISBN print edition: 978-3-7116-0469-9

ISBN e-book: 978-3-7116-0470-5

Editor: Chris Beale

Cover photo: Rangizzz | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Acknowledgements

“The Cosmic Search” and “Almost” were first published in “The Cannon’s Mouth”, the quarterly anthology of Cannon Poets.

Huge thanks are due to all the Cannon Poets for their warm welcome and invaluable advice, to the members of Solihull Writers’ Workshop, to Lydia Towsey and the members of Word!, and especially to Charlie Jordan for the inspiration repeatedly generated in their workshops.

All peculiarities of interpretation are my own.

Introduction

Being blessed with a long life, I have many memories, most of them dim until stimulated by companions’ talk, and a lot of them shared by other people walking the same long road. For me, the memories seem to return most easily in verse, and the clearest of them relate to the most important aspects of an active life.

This collection therefore includes more poems about love – could we exist fully without it? – the childhood in which we were formed, some stupid risks and lucky escapes from before we knew better, critical issues (climate change and interpersonal tolerance get a mention), the inevitability of ageing and its limitations, animals (especially cats, of course) who accompany us and teach us so many truths, and a nod towards humour, without which, however peculiar, it would sometimes seem difficult to go on. There is no particular theme, just the reflections of a life thoroughly enjoyed, set down to spark the readers’ own memories and enjoyment.

Robert Ferguson

Spring, 2024

Apple Green

The smell hits you as you climb the unsteady ladder

Into the house-wide loft. It’s solid,

Nothing like the smell when they hanged in the orchard.

Much stronger. Not the rot-smell of fallen fruit,

Wasp-drilled as if to be screwed back

Onto the tree. No, these green globes have been dressed

Each in its own square suit of torn paper

And laid in its place on the planks

Stretching between the roof-tile battens

On either side. The smell has a colour,

Apple green, which deepens with the early frosts

Until most of the fruit have been chosen,

Transported in round wicker baskets to the kitchen,

And cored and cooked in sauces and pies for Christmas.

The Kitchen Range

Set into the wall, and forbidden

For safety, but still the centre

Of life for the family, whose chairs,

Each jealously allocated,

Are gathered round it

After meals. “Five minutes for the Queen.”

Aside, the scuttle from which Mother throws,

And Father places, reflective coal

On the dull embers behind sooty bars.

The baking oven’s heavy iron door

Is never opened. Bread is bought

And Grandma slices it

In wafers, and then spreads

The raspberry jam, boiled there

In a copper cauldron,

Stood there on the hob to cool,

Bottled on the table unchenilled

For the purpose,

Spills rubbed into the carpet

Where I play.

Early Lesson

I sat at the end on the left,

Looked at by the big boy at the end of the table.

I was small, the smallest,

From whom nothing was expected but silence and a clean plate

Whatever was served that day.

So I learned to eat everything –

Grey mutton, thin gravy, lumpy mash,

Boiled and boiled and boiled cabbage –

And it served me well.

When abroad in different cultures,

When offered hospitality by non-culinary friends,

In cheap cafes, presumptuous banquets,

I always manage to present

A clean plate.

Coin

If I were a coin

I’d be tempted to be a penny.

Not a modern one, insignificant

In size and colour.

One from my boyhood, an inch across

That, when you had a few,

You could clink them together in your pocket

To show you were rich,

Or at least had enough for a ’phone call.

No, not even one of those.

Rather, something silver.

A Half-a-Crown, like those a barely-known rich uncle

Left on his occasional visits?

Untold wealth! “Put it in your money box.”

“Yes, Ma.” – reluctantly.

No, that’s too big and flashy.

What I’d like to be is a Silver Joey.

Not worth a lot, but enough

For an ice cream in those days.

A bit of pleasure for a tiny gleam.

Across Vauxhall Bridge

Red Routemasters clustered in Camberwell Green

When we were young. Perhaps they still do,

But not as they were then

With an open rear platform for boarding

As they pulled away, and for leaving them

Between stops when the traffic delayed us