30 Sunday Apr 2017
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The smell of fresh rain on dry ground has always been a very pleasing sensation, an earthy, primal scent. A few years ago I discovered this aroma has been named petrichor – from the Greek for stone and the fluid that glows through the gods of Greek mythology.
Last week while cycling to work it started to rain, with this smell of petrichor coming off the ground.
fresh morning
rain drops
scented aromas
01 Saturday Apr 2017
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13 Monday Mar 2017
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28 Wednesday Dec 2016
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Frosty morning in Radcliffe on Trent
stillness hangs over
frost chilled morning under its
short-lived crystal shroud
04 Sunday Dec 2016
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This poem was inspired by a visit to Sutton on Sea in Lincolnshire on a windy October day this year.
22nd October 2016, Sutton on Sea
We travel ways trodden beneath Roman feet
towards a place of open and flat expanses
where Danish settlements of old still linger on
under skies as vast and wide as the heavens
as the year casts its lengthening shadows
across this canvas of old unchanged stillness
where in the silence, the distant horizon melts
in the autumnal haze which embraces the land
We stand as if looking out onto the world’s edge
the land finally surrendering itself to the sea
and where from far off wintry fields in the east
an endless wind continues on its relentless journey
gathering up waves into white crested peaks
and bringing them crashing down before our feet
so at last we turn away, leaving upon these sands
just footprints among the strewn out seashells
We walk beside this long silent row, beach huts
which though recently alive and reverberating
with the sounds and laughter of summertime
now stand alone in their winter’s sleep where
memories of times past drift by on the winds
and just as the wind raises up a kite into the air
so it lifts our spirits again until they soar high
carried happily along on the wind chasing clouds
25 Thursday Aug 2016
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Back in March at one of the Bristol Anglo Hellenic Society’s wonderfully quirky, esoteric and not to mention very tasty evenings we had a talk about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s version of Homer’s poem ‘Hymn to Hermes’, though he had ltalianized it somewhat into the Hymn to Mercury (the Roman equivalent of the ancient Greek god Hermes). At the time I was motivated to write some kind of poem inspired by Shelley’s work, though perhaps the accompanying glass of retsina helped at the time.
Hermes was always one of my favourites of the Greek gods being the god of amongst other things travellers and athletes. Not sure if it was cool as a teenager to have a favourite Greek god, but never mind it was the 70s and 80s and I tell myself that things were different then.
Over this Summer during warm evenings in the garden I have returned with much enjoyment and what has felt like verbal gymnastics to this inspiration. Although I have followed Shelley’s eight line Ottava Rima rhyming scheme of ABABABCC, I have restricted my poem to just the 3 stanzas rather than the original 97.
Song of Hermes
Hermes, messenger across these lands far and wide
Your winged feet carry you along without delay
Bringing messages from where the gods reside
You travel through distant realms by night and day
Across the barrier where the heavens and earth divide
Is it a message for us here that brings you this way
Or must your divine, winged sandals of gold
Take you far away before your message can be retold
But wait, for I see that in your arms you bear
Your lyre, wrought from the silent tortoise shell
Crafted with divine skill and without compare
So now come and sit here awhile and dwell
For we have food and wine aplenty to share
And all we ask is that you have stories to tell
Of your wanderings among men on earth
And from the Olympian heights of your birth
And after if it pleases you then take up your lyre
And let the tortoise shell sing with music again
That inspires our spirit and lights within us a fire
Which no cascades of water can possibly restrain
So let your fingers play as the heavens desire
And that only those born of the gods can attain
Then as you softly play the final strings
I’ll bid you farewell on your fleet-footed wings
18 Monday Jul 2016
12 Tuesday Jan 2016
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Some of the 50 things are of a more thinking nature rather than doing activities. Philotimo is one of them.
Philotimo is a Greek idea which I had heard about briefly in passing but wanted to explore in more detail. Here is a brief introduction to philotimo with more thoughts to follow in further posts.
It’s a word that is said to be fairly untranslatable into English without at least a long explanation. This is similar to some other Greek words which seem to encompass a range of ideas – for instance kefi (κέφι) which embraces having fun, joy, happiness, mojo, feeling good, passion amongst other things all rolled into one. So, perhaps this year of 50 things is about keeping my kefi alive.
And so to Philotimo.
Literally it means love of honour but it covers a range of values such as:
~ Pride in yourself, your family and country. Good citizenship, duty, doing the right thing.
~ Integrity, dignity, respect, honesty, decency
~ Compassion, humility, empathy
~ Personal sacrifice, beyond our own self interest, self development
While these values can be seen individually as general human ideals, philotimo is a uniquely Greek concept, passed down through the ages since ancient Classical Greece, used in New Testament times, Orthodoxy and modern Greece. It is something of an undercurrent that unites Greeks across place and time.
As far back as the 7th century BC the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus said “Philotimo to the Greek is like breathing. A Greek is not a Greek without it. He might as well not be alive.”
St Paul in his letters to the Thessalonians also encourages people to live their lives with philotimo.
The virtues of philotimo have also been embraced by the Greek Orthodox church. The monk Paisios on Mt Athos referred frequently to the spirit of philotimo and the American Orthodox priest Fr Stephen Freeman describes it spiritually as the intense feeling of deep appreciation and gratitude for God’s gifts and as the deep seated awareness in the heart that motivates the good that a person does.
More recently even Barack Obama in a speech described it thus ~ love to family, community, country, to have obligations to each other, and a sense of right and wrong, a duty to do what’s right.
Perhaps a modern day illustration of philotimo in practice is that while some European countries are building fences to keep out refugees, individual Greek people are helping the refugees as they come ashore on the Greek islands after perilous journeys.
08 Friday Jan 2016
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thoughts on a bicycle
like poetry in motion
gentle rhythmic flow
under dappled shade
meandering along
wheels taking us along lines
of verge, hedge and field
by light shimmering streams
birdsong heard only in fragments
rising slowly to highpoints
and freewheeling downhill
thoughts caught on the breeze
before finally coming to a stop.
~~~~~
new year
New year, new me
that’s what they say,
out with the old
in with the new
But I rather like the old
weathered by life’s winds and storms
softened by love’s caresses
01 Friday Jan 2016
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walking through thyme 