A poem very close to my heart…

This morning, I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk. Up the slanting street I went, and found myself by the field behind Osmondthorpe Lane, facing the bridge I’d climbed up after I came back from hospital, the night my Granddad died.

I wrote a poem for him after that, I’d intended on reading it at the funeral – I messed up though, it was the first funeral I’d ever been to, and I left it at home, and even though I’d practiced it, I didn’t dare stand up and read it, in case I spoiled it.

By no means is technically a great poem, but it’s a poem that means more to me than any other. Since I ended up at the bridge, and the memories and chain of thoughts led me to rekindle my blog, I thought it was fitting I put it out there once more.

One of the last great heroes has gone

One of the last great heroes has gone,
A warrior of sea and life,
Lost to us, but for memory,
And love in our hearts,
He will be there for us in the strife,
And always too when life is merry.

But on that sorrowed night I prayed,
Just for two minutes,
Two minutes, to say my love,
To share my heart,
He had given his all to life’s fight,
And from his body he flew, released like a dove.

I wish I could have said more in the time we had,
How much we all cared for the tailor,
I know, I hope,
With all my heart,
That we loved with out failure,
Only with that faith could I cope.

By Jonathan Lawrence, 5th April 2003

My Poetry Archive

Header for my poetry archive section of the site.

Here we have my poetry archive, here I will undertake to type up and post as many of my historic poems as I possibly can. There are of course many that won’t make it, some were sadly not kept together, others given away as gifts, others that are unreadable (I have shocking handwriting, made worse by writing on buses and trains), and others no matter how low I set the bar, I just couldn’t bear to post.

The bar is low though, these are poems from across the past twelve or so years, and though I don’t consider myself a great or talented poet, I’d like to think my use of rhyme, structure, and English has improved over those years. Certainly looking back at some of my poems, I feel I definitely have improved. Who knows where I’ll be in another twelve years time, here’s hoping to way out there.

In the meantime feel free to peruse this category, sadly I don’t have dates, even just years, for some of these poems. I’ve kept most of them together, but my version of filing is fairly chaotic. For instance, the picture below is about two thirds of my collection laid out:

[singlepic id=62 w=320 h=240 float=]

I shall do my best to catalogue these writings accurately, and with as little prejudice as possible (what’s a little embarrassment between friends?), and hopefully it will all work out. Suffice to say, this blog will be the premier place for the complete collection of the works of one Jonathan L. Lawrence, should anyone ever need one.

It will take some time to achieve, in the meantime, here are some already typed up, saved from the now closing GeoCities site I’ve had for many a year.