Poem 987 – Stopping Outside Rebel Rouser

Aug 29, 2026Aug 29, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Standing a while beneath the trees,
I seize the moment to be still,
to feel the breeze upon my face,
to listen to the gentle rain
that patient falls and ripples through
the leaves. These trees have stood for unknown years, not knowing the urgency
with which we flit and flirt, the passing
fears o’er which we fret and tease;
these tricky knots that agitate,
slipping between uneasy fingers.

Heading into a poetry workshop on rhyme this morning, I found myself mulling over the first two lines as I admired the trees the venue is in.
(29.08.26)

© Ben Quant 2026

Poem 813 – Twenty Qs

Mar 7, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Quirky and quizzical,
This quintessentially English
Quest to quantify
And quarrel over lists
To fill their qualifying
Quota, may be a quagmire
Of querulous quips and queries,
But quibbling over such questions
Is a worthy quarry,
A quixotic quiver of quanta,
That quickens not quashes
Our curiosity.

With the surname Quant, I want to promote the letter Q.
(07.03.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

Poem 810 – Lost Wor(l)ds

Mar 4, 2026Mar 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Forgotten words no longer used,
a language of the past that haunts
our tongue, I tenderly trace your text
and search your shapes in hope of meaning.

Were these passages profound
in thought, philosophy supreme,
or simply shopping lists and gossip,
our daily scratched humanity?

Did you think like us and dream
upon the page, playing with words
simply for the sake of it?
Or were your words just functionary?

One day, these words I’m typing now
will also be forgotten, echoes
of a long gone world, and merely
reproduced lines upon the screen.

When meaning is no longer known,
our sounds silenced, shorn of sense,
when words are gone do we fade too
like aging pencil on the page?

A new challenge for the year, I’ve decided to try and learn to read Old English, intrigued by the connections between our tongue and theirs.
(04.03.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo first lines of Beowulf from the damaged Nowell Codex courtesy of Wiki Commons

Poem 710 – Making Sense of Lfe

Nov 24, 2025Jan 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Filling in the blnks,
Personalising the crwd,
Identfyng objects
Hgh in the gathering clouds.

Forevr seeking patterns,
Our brains instinctivly,
Fill in all the gaps, to mke
Snse of what they see.

This is our superpowr,
Our mnd’s great party trck,
Unless there’s no connecton,
And then we come unstck.

All that said, I’ve never been good at the missing vowels round in Only Connect…
(24.11.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Poem 709 – A Voyage through Voyage

Nov 23, 2025Jan 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

‘I’m going to ABBA tomorrow’, he said
Fantastic, I replied. I’d heard
so many good things about the show,
and how the holograms seemed so real.

Not having seen the gig myself,
and wanting to add to the conversation,
I started to talk about a show
that I’d just seen the night before.

I saw a jolt upon his face,
a mental change of gear, but ever
composed and mindful of the other,
he quickly engaged with what I’d said.

Realising, perhaps, that I had moved
too quickly from his coming joy,
I returned the conversation to
our quartet of Seventies songsters.

His features creased a merry crease,
‘I must have miscommunicated,
I didn’t mean the sequinned Swedes,
but Aber as in Aberystwyth!

The moral of this mutual blunder?
The danger of assuming shared
perception, a common understanding,
obvious isn’t always so.

A comic conversation from this morning that makes a perfect illustration.
(23.11.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Andrew Ebrahim on Unsplash

Poem 650 – Truth

Sep 25, 2025Jan 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

A hidden beauty disguised beneath
time’s veil, erosion and graffitti,
tucked behind irrational fear and
under hope’s blind shadow sat.

Hatred rails against it, whilst
vainglorious proclamation rants,
but come what may, in quiet
stillness, unmoved and firm it stands.

But just because we wish its change
and close our eyes, place fingers into
ears and make such childish noises,
there is no metamorphosis.

And from its judgement seat the truth
returns our judgement back on us
and casts its verdict cold and clear,
untouched by lies and ignorance.

A response to recent assertions in the public arena.
(25.09.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

Poem 643 – Three Sandwiches

Sep 18, 2025Jan 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

A Bacon Sandwich:
Two slices of bread with meat in between,
The perfect blend (forgive me veggies),
Both perfectly complementing each other.

A Marken Sandwich:
Two gospel stories intertwined,
The second tucked inside the first,
Giving meaning to each other.

A Human Sandwich:
The symbiotic network
That comes from living in community,
Identify found in relation to each other.

We’re looking at Mark’s Gospel at church and how he structures his narrative to communicate to us. Tonight we talked about the Marken Sandwich.
(18.09.25)

Poem 640 – Time

Sep 15, 2025Jan 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

‘I’m trying to carve out time’.
What a strange phrase that is,
as if time were a solid
block of wood or stone.
It’s true that running out
of time can be like running
headlong into a wall,
immutable and solid.
But can time be chiselled into
shape? Be forced into
a form that fits our hopes?
Have violence done upon it?
Surely time is fluid?
It simply runs around
one’s fingers, flows away,
oblivious to our lives.

Today, reflection upon the book ‘The Unhurried Pastor’ and the constant demand of deadlines, has had me thinking about the nature of time.
(15.09.25)

Poem 591 – An Existential Crisis at the Services

Jul 28, 2025Jan 5, 2026 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

A late night stop at the services
having just found the M4 was closed.
‘I guess you see all sorts in here?’ I asked.
‘Yes’, replied the woman in Costa,
‘The weird and the wonderful!’ She laughed.
I left with a life saving coffee,
wondering which, if either, was me.

A long day helping my daughter decorating. Diverted on the way home.
(28.07.25)

Poem 473 – Two Heads

Apr 2, 2025Nov 25, 2025 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

An honest conversation,
A sharing of opinions,
Through letting our guards down,
And trusting one another.

Revealing ignorance,
And asking searching questions,
Opening to the other,
Two heads better than one.

I’ve had a day of activities and meetings today. A common thread has been a series of cracking conversations where we’ve genuinely learnt from each other.
(02.04.25)

Ode for the Day

An experiment in poetic doodling

Language & Philosophy