This post originated from The Institute of Management Chichester Branch, UK, circa the millennium

And the Lord spoke to Noah and said, In one year I am going to make it rain and cover the whole earth with water until all flesh is destroyed.But I want you to save the righteous people and two of every kind of living thing on earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an Ark.

In a flash of lightning, God delivered the specifications for an Ark. In fear and trembling, Noah took the plans. Remember, said the Lord, you must complete the Ark and bring everything aboard within one year.

Exactly one year later, fierce storm clouds covered the earth and all the seas of the earth were in tumult. The Lord discovered Noah in his front yard weeping.

Noah, he shouted. Where is the Ark?

Lord, please forgive me, cried Noah, I did my best but there were big problems. First, I had to get planning permission for construction and your plans didn't meet building regulations. I had to hire an engineering firm to redraw them. Then I got into a fight with the HSA over whether or not the Ark needed a sprinkler system and approved flotation devices. Then my neighbour objected, claiming I was blocking out his daylight by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to go back to the Local Authority and fight the planning appeal. Then I had problems getting enough wood from sustainable forests, and also there was a ban on cutting trees in order to protect the spotted owl. I finally convinced the Forestry Commission that I really needed the wood to save the owls. However, the WWF won't let me take the two owls. The carpenters went on strike and I had to negotiate with the union. Now I have sixteen carpenters on site, but no owls. When I started rounding up the other animals, the animal rights people sued me for taking only two of each kind.

The suit is still pending.

Meanwhile, the Environment Agency notified me that I could not complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood plain. Then the Royal Engineers demanded a map of said flood plain. I sent them a globe. Right now, I am in discussion with the EOC about a complaint of discrimination by not taking atheists aboard. The Inland Revenue has seized my assets, insisting that I'm trying to flee the country to avoid paying taxes in a 'recreational water craft'. I really don't think I can finish the Ark for another five years.

Noah waited. The sky began to clear, the sun to shine, the seas to calm. A rainbow arc stretched across the whole landscape. Noah looked up hopefully. 

You mean you're not going to destroy the earth, Lord?

No, replied the Lord sadly. I no longer have to. But will Government find gold at the end of the rainbow?

He makes quite an impression

The chair knows who he is -

forget memory foam -

It hears him coming,

catlike and unshod,

and braces for the slump

He sports a dark blue sock

with an emerald toe

and a furry one, ankle-patterned,

Got another pair like these, he says,

somewhere,

I wouldn't bet on it, I say

Outside, the clink of recycling,

the dog lets rip a volley of ire

Don't tell him to put a sock in it,

he needs no excuse, he says

There was this Great Dane on the News,

couldn't stop retching

They opened him up

and found forty-three socks

and a half,

all the colours of the rainbow,

Just proves that silver technology

can't be any good for you

No, I say, I imagine not,

Makes you wonder what happened

to the half,

the other half,

Well, it wouldn't make a pair,

he says, that's for sure

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/04/great-dane-portland-eats-43-socks-hospital-wins-prize

"Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. The last is essential."

 Wassily Kandinsky.

It may seem a little odd to begin a review of poetry with a quote about artists, but the Snell sisters don't make such distinctions easy. While each is pledged to keep her own internal boundaries, so that Janet's pictures are not a direct expression of Cheryl's poems, but rather conjure the atmosphere of them, it is plain that both are consummate artists, one with well-honed quill, one with a psychogenic brush.

The 'heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors' applies equally to 'true poet', Cheryl. Her verses are a riot of color, sometimes named colors from the palette. She speaks of 'blue irony' and 'the indigo moments before bed' and 'alizarin, vermilion, cadmium, red wings beating everywhere at once'. Those who paint, or spend a lot of time in galleries, know how shades of red vibrate and redefine a whole canvas. Then there are the subtler hues, as in the gentle poem, Aura.

Small galoshes

fracture the rainbow

in a puddle.

A spray of seven colors

prisms the sky.

 
It falls back to earth,

trailing iridescence

around a thin yellow foot

it mistakes for the sun.

Cheryl's mastery of language is breathtaking, her phrases turned with lancet-precision. The montaging of constrasted images taps deep into the soul and releases elusive truths with the chaste simplicity of oxygen bubbles rising to the surface of a lake. You can feel at one with the unfurling torsion of spring, its sinews newly braced, in Poem With Spring Fever, opening you up to growing possibilities beneath a benevolent sky.

The perspectives range from under-your-nose through middle distance to wide blue yonder, with close-up shots that refuse to freeze and leave you on the crest of longing. A broken spider's web is 'a ruination of silk geometries' while 'In the stunned hush of its own snapped strands, the spider writhes and rolls in a ransom of insects.' Hope describes 'how the glazed sky hurled through will feathers will sometimes part like water for one bird.'

And who, in love, has never been poised on this precipice described in Closer?

Crisscrossed nerves

vibrate like colours on a map.

My senses are a balcony

overhanging the sea's dark watch,

its constant ticking. I wait,

a flicker of light upon the spine,

from my high place.

The rooms sway, and I know you

are near, the train pulling

into the station,

quick bound

down the escalator,

eyes on the door,

its hinged footing,

your hand opening the cab's yellow

roaring

into the rush-hour surge.

This is not poetry merely to beguile the imagination; it is experience by vital proxy, full of pulse and texture and radiance.

Memento Mori is a tour de force. I cannot praise it enough and feel privileged to have had the chance to review such a gem. The book is well-produced and does credit to poet and painter on every level. Janet Snell's expressionist art - vaguely reminiscent of Edvard Munch but intensely unique - broods over these pieces, depicting shape and shadow from the hazy layers of the subconscious. These presences shifting through space are the masks we tow our troubled worlds behind.

If the title suggests that Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality has been turned on its head, then it would certainly be misleading. This book is life-affirming to a degree and proves the paradox that there is still life beyond the barbed reminders of human transience.

RJC

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*Title from Cheryl's poem, Indian Summer

Wishing all friends across the Pond a happy holiday!

WHITE SHIRTS

With white shirts, he said
the pain is that stains proclaim
your ineptitude
in a competitive world
blighting self-esteem

Dripped cappuccino
spinach, lentil soup, red wine
are markers of taste
and habitude and hunger
A neat paradox

But the choice is smart
even after Labor Day
I said. Obama's
an iconic trendsetter
It comes from the top

They suit you, I said
You wear pristine honesty
on your sleeve, or front
You strive against the tide for
the immaculate

That's Hope triumphant
You're no whited sepulchre
sporting a dark shirt
You wish the Cloths of Heaven
and Resurrection

from THE TWAIN, Poems of Earth and Ether