Category: landscape painting

Poem: ‘Winter Sun’

Winter Sun

The weaker sun burns low
over stilled marsh and scrape.

Straight-cut dykes glow like
hot metal fissures through indigo.

Heavy boots crunch on ghosted grass,
breaking threats of enveloping silence.

By a glistening gate I pause, to gaze,
the pristine kiss of rime stiffens my hand.

The lone motion is my breath, brief clouds
vanishing in vasty air, to which I am inured.

A bleeding horizon yields dwarfed
silhouettes feigning heat, random skeletal

trees and pylons merely punctuate
before a distant church stump.

A sudden snipe breaks his cover,
rasping furiously over my head,

where I catch fleet Mercury gleaming
bright through icy blue.

© copyright David Francis Barker 2011

* Taken from poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, which can be found here: http://liten.be//nr7n9

** The illustration is from a current painting by the poet/artist, showing the marshland at winter sunset near Boston in Lincolnshire, England.

Versatile Blogger Award

versatile-blogger-award.jpg

Many grateful thanks go to Lauren at http://lscotthoughts.com/ for nominating me for this award. I feel lucky to have even one person look at my blog, which has only been wound up to anything like ‘full capacity’ in the last few weeks. I am grateful to everyone, and apologies to all if I seem a little rusty or ‘green’, I’m not very good at keeping up to pace!

And the rules for the Versatile Blogger Award is :

1. Nominate 15 fellow bloggers.
2. Inform the bloggers of their nomination.
3. Share 7 random things about yourself.
4. Thank the blogger who nominated you.
5. Add the Versatile Blogger Award pic on your blog post.

1. When I was three or four I used to tinker on an old harmonium and make up songs about werewolves.

2. I was born almost exactly on top of the Greenwich Meridian line.

3. I’ve always loved music as well as writing and painting and in the past have owned far too many guitars.

4. I was brought up in an agricultural community which seemed very old fashioned, even in the 70s.

5. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a cat (or two).

6. Like over 90% of the English population, I am descended from Edward III

7. Unfortunately (or should it be ‘fortunately’?, like nearly everyone in western Europe (and many in North America, Australasia etc..) I am also descended from Charlemagne.

Now, it’s time to nominate 15 bloggers:

http://kiranchawla44.wordpress.com/

http://justsimplyinlove.wordpress.com/

http://swansongsandprose.wordpress.com/

http://newprairiestore.wordpress.com/

http://poesiepocketsandpapercuts.wordpress.com/

http://journeyintopoetry.wordpress.com/

http://Catsnco.wordpress.com/

http://granbee.wordpress.com/

http://DancingAntelope.com/

http://littleskew.wordpress.com/

http://rhernandezpoetry.com/

http://neelthemuse.wordpress.com/

http://jamesboshea.wordpress.com/

http://myotherbookisatolstoy.wordpress.com/

http://allisongrayhurst.com/

I hope you all don’t mind being nominated! (perhaps again) I have enjoyed all your comments and look forward to great future postings.

Distraction

Distraction

The thing that’s killing me
is that which first caught my ancestor’s eye.
Until then, I was content to roam the far horizon,

to be that quivering digit in the African plain,
strolling and musing, simply taking my time
when it didn’t matter; crouching at pools,

fishing for food, picking up things which lay around.
You could say it was like a kind of Eden,
for which I didn’t care or mistrust.

But then one day – I can’t recall exactly when –
something sparked, like a piece of flint in the sun;
sharp, fetching blood and an idea.

The rest you know in its outlines;
when the shaping of some tool
turned the wise one into a fool.

*Taken from poetry collection ‘anonymous lines’

http://liten.be//iHKVl

New Poem about travelling in Canada… aaah!

Long Train

I’m going to catch that train,
so I can watch panoramas roll by,
their gently unfolding stories,
and pinch myself into believing
I’m seeing the Canadian Shield.

I’ll drink endless cups of coffee
while chatting with fellow travellers.
Perhaps make a friend or two,
and we’ll exchange stories about homelands
and climate change and places never seen,
maybe raise a glass of schnapps or single malt
to toast Ontario, just to ease it all along.

We’ll swap addresses and emails;
I’ll start a blog on my laptop
where I’ll write some pithy lines
with quotes from my friends,
to capture the spirit of Saskatchewan
and Alberta, while the people back home
simply won’t believe my progress.
I’ll produce a battered guitar
from my back pack and we’ll
write songs together about places we see
and sing familiar tunes like Yellow Submarine
to help pass the darker hours.

And when I finally see the Vancouver skyline,
I’ll look forward to the Pacific,
my first sight of the sea.

Or maybe I’ll just sit here in the warm,
and stir more sugar into my tea.

© copyright David Francis Barker 2011

New Slideshow of Paintings

https://francisbarkerart.wordpress.com/current-original-art/

A more pithy representation of the work, or some of it.