RUBY JAND'S POEMS

  Ode to Midsummer   Christmas and Easter and Halloween were stolen and renamed by the Christians who were smart enough to know that people wouldn’t Start accepting this new religion unless they got to keep their holidays and their ways of celebrating the nature of things like spring and harvest and the darkness of winter – equinoxes and solstices. Clever Christians but nature pays no heed, it doesn’t need to heed the human folly of pretending that nature is run by gods, or so they say. Anyway, for reasons unknown to me the Christians didn’t claim Midsummer as their own and that’s why I love it best. I’m Fondest of the sun at its highest, the day at its longest. I’m now sitting on my balcony, I’ve eated my pickled herring and potatoes and drunk (am drinking) my akvavit Such a treat. It’s 9.30 p.m. and the sky is still bright and light Though officially night, The night to celebrate. It will not get dark until after Midnight and it won’t stay d...

  Poem from the balcony in the night after quite a lot of bubble   If I were to write a poem what would I write? About sitting on the balcony in May at ten o’clock at night? About my solar lamp shifting colours on the wall in patterns that sprawl against the wall? About geraniums and petunias that glow redly in the approaching dark? About the flickering spark Of inspiration to read Shakespeare again after London, after Ian McKellan? Maybe even write something as Rhuddem Gwelin? Or maybe about not wanting to go to bed because this wondrous spring evening on the balcony at home in Hallonbergen has gone to my head? But it’s getting dark and chilly so it’s time to close the windows and stop being silly. I don’t write poetry, I write books so I’ll go to bed now and maybe dream about the next one – oh look! There it is. I’m such a wiz.