Remember, my darling, the wind o’er the roses The scent of pink you breathe into your soul The bluebell’s small sweetness, the raspberry blossoms and more shades of green than your great heart can hold.
Remember, my darling, the bright sun of summer the soft breeze that cools and caresses your brow Birdsong and bee buzz and butterflies dancing the hare that lies hidden, the fox on the prowl
Remember, my darling, the wind o’er the roses when the north wind howls and the nights are too long Close your eyes, take my hand and think of the solstice, Remember the words to summer’s sweet song.
and remember, my darling, the wind o’er the roses again.
In late June the scent of the wild roses along the road that leads to my home is almost intoxicating. There is a purity and innocence to the fragrance of the wild pink roses. It is a thing one stores in one’s memory, to tell overwhen the snow and the temperature falls.
Between forever and long ago
There’s a song I used to know.
I sang it loud to calm my fears
Or soft to cushion tears.
Between forever and long ago
There’s a word I used to know.
Forcing me to make a choice
To stand and raise my voice
Between forever and long ago
There’s a path I used to know.
Clear and smooth or full of stones
It always led me home.
Between forever and long ago
There’s love I used know.
From life to life I followed him
To meet and love again.
And the song I sing is the beating of my wings
And the word I cry is freedom.
And the path I choose is the one less used
And the man I love’s the reason.
Here it is! this poem was a group creation. Rebekah and I cut out words and phrases and put them into a bag . Then the audience at the February Peace Region Songwriters, Coffee House at Faking Sanity Cafe (Dawson Creek, BC) selected snippets randomly. We then put the snippets together into this poem. (a little ‘poetic license’ was used by using the ‘you’re’ as ‘your’. Yes we are aware it’s the wrong form of the word for this context, but hey, it’s a ransom note poem!)
DaDa Poem You’re period of mourning uncovered death in the fifth position. Illuminate yourself. Morning. slipped into her robe and heard a masculine voice say: “What can we do?…especially if he’s innocent, Stronger than a season Between home and night that never slips away moment by moment, slowly, looking, do you look inside the flowers blooming last.
It is either very profound or very bizarre, or perhaps a bit of both but it was fun to do and it brought up some interesting images. Images like ‘morning slipping into a robe’ and ‘a season between home and night.’ I like these images and perhaps they, or modified versions of them, will eventually find their way into my poems. You’ll never know until you look inside the flowers blooming last…
Great Coffee House at Faking Sanity Cafe! As the final stop on the Spirit Arts Festival tour the ranks of our audience were swelled by some wonderful, arts lovin’ people and we were also pleased to have a new face front and centre with Lana Sloane and her very entertaining cowboy poetry. We hope she will come back and read again soon!
Karen McGowan, featured performer at Feb coffeehouse
Our featured performer was Karen McGowan, who performed both cover songs and her own original music. Karen’s sense of humour is a treat; she really knows how to entertain an audience! An interesting note for those of you who may not know: Faking Sanity Cafe used to be called Under the Willow and was started by Karen. It passed from Karen on to Jennifer Singer, Karen’s daughter , and then to Angele and Cindy, the present owners, who changed the name to “Faking Sanity”.
At last month’s coffee house, we created a pantoum poem from suggestions from the audience. This month we had our audience participate in creating a Da Da Poem (or as I like to call them, ‘ransom note poems’!) We cut out words and phrases from discarded books/magazines, threw them into a bag, then the audience drew out the ones we’d use for the poem. It’s always quite amazing, and often a little odd, what you can make out of these snippets. I’m getting the original poem scanned and I’ll include it in my next post.
Bill Studley
Bill Studley held the audience spellbound with his incredibly fast rendition of ‘I’ve been everywhere’. Wayne Ezeard not only played and sang but also regaled us with some poetry from his book ‘Where Eagles Soar’. Rebekah Rempel-Chorney and Marilyn Belak read several selections from their exceptionally fine original poetry.
Dave McGowan
Dave McGowan, the man whose voice I’ve often referred to as “sounding like melted chocolate”, delighted us with some old favourites.
As MC I spent a lot of time trying not to place my foot squarely in my mouth but I also had time to play a few songs. I’ve included a video of my redition of Siúil a Rúin, an old Irish traditional.
Despite the nasty weather, we had a really good turnout at the January PRSA coffee-house (Peace Region Songwriters’ Association) at the “Faking Sanity” Cafe in Dawson Creek. Bill and I were the featured performers and played mostly original songs for the better part of an hour. A great variety of performances were provided during the open mic sections of the coffee-house by musicians, singers, and poets.
Barb and Ian Munro
Barb Munro, long time member of the PRSA, debuted a new song, “Over You” (she made a point of telling us that it was NOT about her husband, much to Ian’s relief!). Lovely people, Great new song, Super talented!
Kjetil Landsgard
It was a treat to have Kjetil Landsgard perform a couple of songs for us. Kjetil is a past member of the PRSA and I hope we’ll see more of him now that he’s moved back to the DC area. Kjetil’s music is unique and compelling, he uses his voice in the most amazing ways and had the audience enthralled. Welcome back Kjetil!
Barb Carlson
We had poets aplenty too! Barb Carlson delighted the audience with a reading from her original poetry.
I am also privileged to be a part of a group of writers who meet regularly to share and challenge each other. One of our most recent challenges came from Sabrina L’Heureaux, who unfortunately couldn’t make it to the coffee-house. She challenged us all to write pantoums (an unusual poetry form that repeats lines in a specific pattern). So we exchanged photos that we thought were interesting and we wrote 10 lines/ phrases/ questions about the pictures, then fit them into the pantoum form. The resulting poems were quite interesting so we thought we’d share the exercise with the audience at the coffee-house.
Rebekah Rempel Chorney
Rebekah brought a picture and asked the members of the audience to write a line/phrase/question about it. Then she and Jeannie Lindgren worked to put the lines into the pantoum form. The result? A beautiful pantoum poem. Rebekah has promised to send it to me so I will post it here, with the picture as soon as I get it.
Jeannie Lindgren
Jeannie and Rebekah also entertained us with more of their poetry during the evening. These ladies are very accomplished writers. You can find out more about Rebekah on her blog
Janina Carlstad and John Fletcher
More music! We had some wonderful collaborations last evening.
Janina Carlstad – our local Flute aficionado teamed up with guitarist John Fletcher to great effect! Both PRSA members!
Jenna Bratt and Andrew Ho
Another great duo included Jenna Bratt, vocals, and Andrew Ho on keyboard. Jenna and Andrew are new to the open mic and we are very pleased that they participated. Jenna has a very lovely, expressive voice and Andrew is a brilliant pianist.
There were other performers too, including a very talented trio of young ladies who sang for us and an amazing performance of South African music, vocal and Kalimba! That was a real treat! I apologise for not including everyone, but my little old digital camera is not fool-proof (I guess that would make me the fool taking the pictures!) but if I can find more photos I’ll definitely post them!
All in all, another excellent coffee-house.
Writing – songwriting, poetry, it’s so much better when it’s shared!
Linda Studley 