Where are they?

Published on by Laura Bloomsbury 
Behold the gentle, brown-eyed child
two blonde sisters, widened smiles

Along the ridge they often sped
a rider, wood nymphs close behind
capes, like wingèd insects, flying

and the damp earth rumbled with their canters
and the trees caught up their far-flung laughter
till all their childlike chattering calls
had echoed far beyond us all

Where are the arms full of harvested leaves?
Where now the hands that curled, careful and soft
on spiders and conkers, kittens and cake?
Fading fast those painted faces, sticky mouths 
all gapped and grinning
Tear-streaked when the ice-creams melted
when the snowmen seeped away

Oh where are they that went before?

Their days have gone down to the laundering sea
and left all at once on the urging of tides
They have passed through the mists of memory
like smoke from doused candles, ghosts in a wall, 

Oh who shall gather them up again?
That gentle, brown-eyed boy of mine
two blonde-haired daughters; three of a kind

For my MTB prompt “Ubi Sunt and that Where, oh where“ we are writing with this classical motif of lament from the Latin phrase ‘Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt‘ (where are those who were before us)? It is a style imbued with nostalgia associated with Middle English epics, Norse sagas, Romantics which reference mortality and transience.

29 thoughts on “Where are they?”

  2. Your lament resonates with me, Laura. I love the sounds in these lines:

    ‘…the damp earth rumbled with their canters
    and the trees caught up their far-flung laughter’

    and the imagery in these lines:

    ‘Their days have gone down to the laundering sea
    and left all at once on the urging of tides
    They have passed through the mists of memory
    like smoke from doused candles, ghosts in a wall’.

    Made me sad, my sisters and I were two blue-eyed fair-haired and one brown-eyed and dark-haired.

  4. This has the musicality of an old ballad. Childhood’s loss is of course both ancient and eternal. A song that, nevertheless, keeps singing in our hearts. (K)

  5. A one-of-a-kind, wonderful work, Laura, capturing a wonderful three-of-a-kind! Thanks. And thanks for the cool prompt.

  7. Just grown or fully gone the lament doesn’t differentiate and doesn’t need to — once the effervescence of childhood diffuses, it cant be brought back. Nicely done.

  8. A beautiful memory of childhood gone by and an anticipation that it will continue on in your children and grandchildren! I sometimes feel sorry for kids today who sit bent over their phones playing mindless games and miss the creative spontaneity of being a child!

  9. Laura, your poetry touched my heart, powerful in its sweet reflection. I look at my grown children, three sons in their 60s, a daughter mid 50s ~~ I remember their childhoods, quite vividly. The happy, sad, celebratory moments. Thank you for the challenge.

  11. I think this is truly a great poem, Laura, up with “We are the dreamers of dreams” or Yeats, you name it, I love it…

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