The human mystery, the cryptic puzzle
of what makes minds and bodies tick.
The tick, tock, tick of chemical
reactions and emotional responses.
The mystery that makes us, us,
that charges love and triggers thought.
Conference is done and I’m home relaxing to House MD.
(30.10.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Catherine Hughes on Unsplash
Last night the Northern Lights stepped out, came south,
a holiday for celestial phenomena,
illuminating skies with swirling swathes
of dancing reds and pinks and greens and yellows.
A one night only premier played out
to astonished audiences gazing upwards who,
gasping, reached for phones and cameras
to capture this extraordinary event.
It seems the entire country stood in rapture,
entire that is except for one, yes me.
I sat inside writing about heaven
oblivious to it prancing around my head.
As it says. Trust me to spend the one night they came my way inside writing sermons in blissful ignorance. Gutted.
(11.10.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash
I shall never scale the heights of Everest,
explore the alien ocean depths beneath,
or skydive from the breathless edge of space.
I’ll never run the fastest 100 metres,
hop, step and jump into the record books,
or climb the podium of the Tour de France.
I will never win the Nobel Prize,
for scientific discoveries as yet undreamt,
or finally nailing down the theory of everything.
My paintings will not hang next to Van Gogh’s,
my verse be ranked with sonnets by the Bard,
or songs be played upon the radio.
My name will quickly fade from recollection,
there will not be biographies of me,
nor obituaries typed up in The Times.
But I will strive to love and that’s enough.
For love is all that’s truly asked of us,
and Love will be my harvest and reward.
Today I’ve been thinking about what it means to be fruitful as I’ve been planning various Harvest celebrations I shall be involved in. Paul’s words in Galatians 5:22 came to mind, ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control’.
(24.09.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
A cat has taken up residence in our garden.
They didn’t ask, they simply chose their spot
and stayed without a please or by your leave.
Each day they laid there as still as the ground below,
until yesterday, when they saw a squirrel.
Transformed, they moved by quantum mechanics from here
to there seemingly in one instantaneous
blurry blip, Schrödinger’s cat on ‘speed’.
Luckily, for every action there’s an equal and opposite
reaction, and Newton squirreled the squirrel away.
I think we’ve been adopted. I don’t know if it’s a stray or domestic cat that’s simply taken a liking to our garden, but it’s certainly staked it’s claim.
(20.09.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Jaël Vallée on Unsplash
The view across the lake,
from the crest of Cader Idris.
The eyes of my life’s love as
she glances in my direction.
Feeling B.B. King’s vibrato
and Gary Moore’s sustain.
The emotional release of
an encore’s delighted applause.
The rich aroma released
from freshly ground coffee beans.
The taste of blue cheese. It shouldn’t
work but somehow it does.
Snuggling up on the sofa
and finding another’s world.
Talking to a gathered crowd
and holding them in your hands.
Discovering flamingo
mouths are upside down
so they can eat with their heads
between their distant feet.
Black and white images
formed within the womb.
The sight of freshborn signets
their feathers still damp with shell.
I’ve never known your voice,
not heard you talk out loud,
and yet, it strikes me that,
you’ve never really stopped.
Someone mentioned to me the other day that they’d heard God speak, and this got me thinking. I’ve never had that privilege, and yet…
(16.09.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
My to-do list is ready,
tasks hungry to be ticked,
I’m waiting for the gun.
Today I will be productive
and focus on the job –
no time for mindless scrolling.
I turn off notifications,
say no to interruptions
and put aside my phone.
But before I start
I’d better check
just one more time…
Is it procrastination, lack of discipline or dopamine release trigger by mobile alerts? Whatever it is, I’m guilty like so many of us by being distracted by the lure of one more look…
(02.08.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
You know it’s your 52nd birthday
when you keep thinking it is Friday
when in fact it is Thursday.
Is my subconscious telling me
to simply skip over it?
Being an Englishman
I don’t know where to look
when people sing Happy Birthday,
how to configure my face,
or if I should join in.
You’d have thought I’d have
worked it out by now.
I celebrate by trimming nostril hairs
I never used to have and
stretching out stiff limbs.
Perhaps I’ll treat myself
to a proper coffee while I work.
As a child I received cards,
as an adult, thumbs up from Facebook.
Internet forums I once joined,
but have long since forgotten,
emerge from the mists of time
to offer congratulations.
Will I do the same one day?
A dusty poem popping up
in someone else’s Google search?
I do some sums.
Three score years and ten?
Just eighteen left;
that doesn’t sound so good.
Let’s change the parameters.
Doubling makes one hundred and four
and allows the same to come.
Possible? Perhaps.
And as every day’s a gift
and I’m a half-full glass guy
I’ll gratefully take every one.
Yes, happy birthday to me
and many more to come!
For some reason I’ve got it in my head that today’s Friday, when it’s Thursday, and more significantly (to me at least), my birthday…
(16.05.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Becky Fantham on Unsplash (you may need to change your window shape/size to see the picture properly…)
What is this alien brain/no brain
that weaves its weft and warp, pervades
the world? A web of teasing fingers
that, tangled, threads through soil and roots.
It rules without our recognition
hidden beneath/within/without
blurring boundaries, one yet other.
Silently it speaks and calls
in foreign words, articulates
beyond our comprehension; this
mycelial ‘deity’ in whom
‘we live and breathe and have our being’.
I’m finally reading Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘Entangled Life’, an exploration of the world of fungi that I referred to in ‘Poem 77 – WWW‘. What a glorious enigma they are, I had no idea of the extent to which life is pervaded by and dependent on them.
(12.03.24)
© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Christopher Cassidy on Unsplash
Your verse hasn’t faded,
just merely passed along
Watson’s famed double-helix,
finding a new voice in me,
your son. Your words still speak.
I may not have your humour,
my poems don’t twinkle like
yours do, so mimicking
your eyes as you read them.
They have a different accent.
But underneath they share
that same urge to be spoken,
to find a way to be
formed and found and so heard.
Nature and nurture guide me.
I write and hear us speaking
shared turn of phrase, and see
a familiar gesture.
I smile in recognition
and wonder whose turn’s next.
Dad has always written verse, verse that’s made me smile and groan and think. Recently he’s found his fading memory has militated against this. I think he’s felt the loss. Dad, your poems have inspired mine. I hope that in some way through them you speak on.
(31.08.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash
This vaulted canopy, cascading wave,
cathedral to the men who crafted ships.
Your hall of mirrors draws past scenes towards us
and paints them in an overlapping vision
so ghosts of shipwrights, echoes of the age
of sail, now walk with us beneath your cage.
Their sweat lined muscles stretch and strain in labour,
slipways delivering hard won art down birth
canals to Father Thames, whose eager arms,
outstretched, lap forwards to receive them.
We recently spent a happy day exploring the historic docks at Chatham. At the heart of them stands 3 Slip, this magnificent building in which the boats were built. It’s vast and glorious – ignore the floor in the picture, that’s a mezzanine level erected so you can view the roof. It didn’t take much to imagine the sights, sounds, feel and smells of the place as it was when it was open.
(16.08.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Ode for the Day 
