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Published poems by Veronica Ashenhurst, who has Severe ME

Discussion in 'General Advocacy Discussions' started by Simon M, Oct 4, 2021.

  1. Perrier

    Perrier Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The amber in Rivne is up to 50 million years old. And pieces of worked amber were recovered from Paleolithc and neolithic sites in the Dnipro area. It seems that at one site, Mezhyric, they found 4 mammoth bone huts from Cro-magnan Homo sapiens and they found over 300 pieces of amber attributed to the western Rivne region. This means that the amber travelled far from the Western areas to the more central ones.Also, in other places a small statuette was found carved of amber, as well as many other items.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2022
    Hutan likes this.
  2. Tom Kindlon

    Tom Kindlon Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Last edited: Oct 29, 2022
    Veronica, Simon M, Perrier and 4 others like this.
  3. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

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    As we approach the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, I’d like to share three poems I published last year about the war, not yet posted to S4ME.



    The poems grapple with difficult themes: lament; loss; grief. But the work also seeks to highlight the brave defiance of Ukraine, the country of my ancestors. I wrote the poems in the safety of home, far from a war zone. Yet I believe the severe ME experience—and its attendant pain and loss—can spark empathy for people suffering under the violence of war. Ukraine’s people want to live in freedom. So, too, in their own way, do patients with ME.



    I’m including one sonnet in its entirety here, and will link to all three poems below. As always, thanks to Simon McGrath for careful editing of my work.



    The Kharkiv Cellist

    You sit down and hold grief between your knees.

    She leans against you, immense in carved wood,

    Her front the colour of a chestnut mare.

    You touch her four taut strings and sculpted sides,

    The bow is a bent light beam in your hand.

    Behind you stands the brick school, quiet, burnt —

    Number one hundred thirty-four, with blown

    Windows like open mouths. Your city, where

    Shells drop, rats dart through rubble, tigers starve,

    And a girl loses her eye to rockets.

    You play, and know what I still strive to learn:

    Grief, that stark beauty, is a fraught chasm.

    You hold her edges, hush your knocking heart,

    And coax her music, in a minor key.


    Read all three poems at Academy of the Heart and Mind: https://academyoftheheartandmind.com/2022/07/22/borderland-and-other-poems/
     
    voner, Kitty, Simon M and 11 others like this.
  4. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    Location:
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    Heartbreakingly beautiful. Thank you Veronica for sharing with us.
     
    Veronica, Simon M, Binkie4 and 6 others like this.
  5. Perrier

    Perrier Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Trish is right: heartbreakingly beautiful work. These poems brought tears to my eyes.
     
    Veronica, Simon M, alktipping and 5 others like this.
  6. oldtimer

    oldtimer Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Location:
    Melbourne Australia
    I echo what Trish and Perrier wrote @Veronica .
    Thank you for all your beautiful poems.
     
    Veronica, Perrier, Simon M and 5 others like this.
  7. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

    Messages:
    9
    April is National Poetry Month in Canada, a good time to share a sonnet I published not long ago. When writing, I’m often drawn to the theme of envy as part of chronic illness, and its subjective, contingent nature: envy can make me lose sight of the ways in which I am fortunate. The poem also explores how people are denied the right of protest speech. The right to protest can be of great value, not only in taking a stand against war crimes, but also to advocate for better treatment for all who are disenfranchised—whether by war or disability. I hope you enjoy the poem and thank you for your kind words of support.


    Dusk in Montreal, Four A.M. in Moscow


    The bone-sore truth was that I envied them:

    Two young friends sailing on their will, strong legs

    Upright, unlike mine. Dawn’s lace above them,

    Rose facades in back. The friends linked hands, posing

    Wordless before the lens, their fanning white

    Dresses stained blood red. Quick, thirty seconds

    To protest a vain conquest—snap, snap, snap—

    Before police bear down with rods. No one there

    Dares call the war a war—nor talk of shells

    And shallow graves. The chief brooks no dissent,

    Yet the women in the photo surge like ships.

    Later, I grasp that they might envy me—

    My legs won’t take me to view twilight’s close,

    But still I type. No vengeful state surveils me.



    The poem was published by The Christian Century. The link is here: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/dusk-montreal-four-m-moscow
     
    Amw66, Sarah, Kitty and 9 others like this.
  8. Simon M

    Simon M Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    This is wonderful work. I haven’t seen some of these poems for a while, and some of the lines are startling:


    thank you, Veronica
     
    Veronica, Perrier, rainy and 7 others like this.
  9. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

    Messages:
    9
    Hello S4ME poetry readers. Today I am sharing another poem with a Ukraine theme. This is a sestina, a poem of sixes. A sestina comprises six sixains followed by a three-line summation, and the poem uses six different end-words reused in a set pattern. This poetic form takes on a spiral shape, which I found helpful in exploring the historical repetition of Soviet (and now Russian) imperialism in Ukraine. The poem is dedicated to my maternal grandfather. I hope you enjoy it.

    Sestina for the Black Earth

    In memory of S.P., my grandfather

    You, fatherless, wished revolution’s wounds
    might finally mend. At thirteen, held fit to farm,
    you knew chilblains, threadbare boots. But not theft.
    Mam sold a calf in Stavyshche, and led home,
    to work the land, the frayed young pony
    whose coat you brushed to gloss in the village.

    You yoked him to a sleigh, sped from the village
    for sugar beet pulp, forgetting your wounds.
    Then, sour rumor landed near the pony.
    Men with guns brought state decrees for the farms.
    The village elder called all from their homes
    to gather. An armed partisan roused by theft

    stood on a rundown wagon, obliging theft:
    yield your tools and oxen, he told the village;
    hoes, plows, carts to the collective. Stripped homes.
    The people stood stunned and hushed, then wounded,
    they let forth cries. The man said this new farming’s
    certain utopia. Your bucking pony

    whinnied, and men seized him, sliced the pony’s
    tail, tossing it at Mam—exulting in theft.
    To build vast barns, men stole poplars from your farm.
    You, fifteen, bore this ruin of your village.
    A century on, revolution’s wounds
    aren’t healed yet. You’re not there, but your home’s

    a plunder anew. Empire’s soldiers ship home
    metric tons of pilfered shoes and tires. Ponies
    gallop from wheat fields set aflame, while wounds
    from mines kill men among the barley. This theft
    palms Scythian gold; hauls girls from villages.
    Rockets lie wrecked near sacks of grain on farms.

    Still the conquest rolls, looting cherry farms,
    blowing roofs from silos and smallholders’ homes.
    For you, I count the splintered villages
    in the old country, struck like your pony.
    Farmers save what wheat they can, amidst the theft,
    but I can find no balm to close these wounds.

    You memorialized home, a lithe pony.
    Now village partridges take flight over the theft:
    sundown gilds their wings, high above torn farms and wounds.



    The poem was published by The Christian Century. The link is here: https://www.christiancentury.org/poetry/poetry/sestina-black-earth
     
    ahimsa, Simon M, Perrier and 5 others like this.
  10. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    Location:
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    Such a beautiful and heartbreaking poem, @Veronica. Thank you for sharing it.

    On a lighter note, I tried some years ago experimenting with poetry forms. The sestina is incredibly difficult. I salute your achievement.
     
  11. oldtimer

    oldtimer Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Location:
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    Thank you Veronica for such a beautiful and moving poem.
     
    Veronica, Perrier and Trish like this.
  12. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

    Messages:
    9
    Hello S4ME poetry readers. Today I'm sharing two poems that draw on the ME/CFS experience. The first is a sonnet, below, that explores themes of loss and longing. As some of you know, I had to stop working as a lawyer due to the severity of my illness, and since I fell ill quite young, I didn't have a chance to become established in my legal career. I allude to this theme of aborted dreams and plans in the poem. Do let me know if the poem resonates with you.


    Second Spring


    Come for tea, though I’m plaintive. You’ll wear scented

    May blooms. I’ll tell you about my first spring.

    I had unfurled plans, then, angled to the sun:

    codes of law I’d learn; a dais at which I’d stand;

    a nameplate; an office. But the court robes are

    scarcely worn, my poise stands moth-eaten now.

    Illness settled like a loft of pigeons

    on my limbs. The world greyed to this room, this

    exhale, these dejected hips now turning

    by degrees. Sit by me, in your lilac of renewal:

    I’ll pull your four-petaled buds that taste of

    green rain. You won’t see summer, you’ll fall in weeks,

    but you re-emerge yearly, while I thirst,

    decades on, to grow jewelled leaves—to flower again.



    The poem appears in Corporeal Literary Magazine, here: www.corporeallitmag.com/veronicaashenhurst
     
    Amw66, SNT Gatchaman, Hutan and 3 others like this.
  13. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

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    The second poem, below, is a sestina which seeks to shed light on the experience of those who care for ME/CFS patients. I've been very lucky to have my mother's unfailing support over the decades of my illness, and I dedicate the sestina to her. But the poem also aims to speak more broadly to any experience of caregiving, and the challenges therein. If the poems I've written speak to you, I hope you'll share them with friends, to raise awareness of the many facets of the ME/CFS experience.


    Sestina for My Mother



    You lugged hope to teashops: your keen-eyed girl,

    the child you believed could conquer blue worlds

    with her wit. You showed her Klimt and tested

    her recall for French while she sat, a friend

    in small-scale, helping you forget a distressed

    flight, by sea, from the old country. You confessed


    the burden of swift uprooting, confessed

    to narrow rooms, pickling jars for cups. The girl

    listened through silk braids, sensing distress.

    By after-school light, books became the girl’s world,

    as books had been your world, well-thumbed print friends

    on the shelf, refuge when fate sent its tests.


    The girl fell ill from infection, testing

    the will you had left. Damp, scared, she confessed

    her strength had turned like a changeable friend.

    So, you took her to doctors, who told the girl

    they had run various tests, and your world

    halted. The girl might have mental distress,


    claimed the doctors, might be tired, distressed,

    wanting reprieve from her studies, and the test

    results—negative—only showed her world-weary.

    This was no contrived pang, the girl confessed.

    You believed her, sunk in her wheelchair, your girl

    whose verve had once lit teashops. You’d be a friend,


    then, as stalwart as red cedar. A friend,

    a mother with roots. Still, your daughter’s distress

    grew when doctors said they had nothing for girls

    with an illness few cared to thoroughly test.

    It was simpler to shrug behind desks, they confessed,

    to leave girls forgotten in beds, for the world


    spun on. The girl became a woman. Her world

    held blank hours, sore limbs, seclusion. Old friends

    fell away; your grief felt hard to confess,

    while doctors, half-hearted, reviewed the distress.

    In the girl’s blood and cells, they ran new tests:

    her body was ill after all. The girl


    had nearly forsaken the world. Your distress

    hid in your friendly heart. But these cumbrous tests

    had rendered you mother—thus you confessed to the girl.



    This poem was also published by Corporeal Literary Magazine, here: www.corporeallitmag.com/veronicaashenhurst
     
    Starlight, Amw66, ahimsa and 5 others like this.
  14. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

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  15. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    51,871
    Location:
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    Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful poems. As both patient and carer for my daughter over decades, your poems touched and moved me.
    I particularly like the images in the sonnet. A poem I will return to.
     
    ahimsa, Hutan, Veronica and 3 others like this.
  16. Simon M

    Simon M Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Thank you, Veronica, for all the effort you put into crafting these fabulous poems.

    The Sestina to your mother issuch a beautiful exploration of the impact of illness on a carer as well as a patient and, even more, of your relationship with your mother, that evolved from it that it made me want to cry. Which doesn’t happen very often.
     
    ahimsa, Perrier, Hutan and 2 others like this.
  17. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

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  18. Veronica

    Veronica Established Member

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    Hi S4ME poetry readers. I'm sharing my most recently published poem. As always, I try to describe the ME/CFS experience as faithfully as possible.


    Wishing in July



    —for S.M., in friendship

    Our days were a host of common house sparrows
    perched on a fence – preoccupied with millet
    seeds or dust baths, waiting for squares of sun.
    Our letters were patchy flights in which we
    told of weak limbs, wheelchairs, folded selves, and
    the flat concrete of loss – but also, of myths,
    and the waterlily that bloomed like a full
    salmon moon on your emerald pond. As you
    celebrate another milestone, I wish
    for you one cardinal day, with kingly
    feathers and a crowned swagger, with climbing
    crimson wings and a whistle to pierce the woe.
    The sparrow days now scatter for a poplar;
    wounds sleep; and the cardinal alights, carolling.



    The poem appears in the December 2023 issue of Star 82 Review. You can find it here:
    https://www.star82review.com/11.4/ashenhurst-wishing.html
     
    Jacob Richter, Ash, Simon M and 8 others like this.
  19. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    Location:
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    Thank you for the New Year greetings Veronica, and I wish all the best for you in 2024.
    And thank you for sharing your poem. I love your use of imagery.
     
    Veronica, Perrier, Ash and 5 others like this.
  20. oldtimer

    oldtimer Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Location:
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    A cardinal day - wouldn't that be something!

    Thank you for your lovely poetry, Veronica. Happy New Year :)
     
    Veronica, Ash, Perrier and 2 others like this.

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