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 Sep 16 Rob Rutledge
Chips
Falling stars like speckled gold,
Juniper fields, memories of old,
The bees have gone, or so I've been told
Would you have known?
Where you were, the path grows cold
Not one you've wrote, those empty notes,
Hardly a modern myth,
To me, this dream you sold
when the waves of the sea sang of summer,
wan midnights and flowers beguiled

by a love strong and tender in slumber,
awakening tumultuous and wild;

oh, love, sweetest love, won’t you listen
to the song that the fierce sea sang,

while the desolate waves seemed to glisten
and silver bells rang.


oh, my love, oh, my love, hear the fire
of the love that has blossomed for you,

a song full of want and desire,
and all of its dreams about you,

the wind fires up through the mountains,
the clouds fill the desolate sky,

the waters of earth fill the fountains
and all the seas sigh.


and i never felt love for another
as strong or as passionate as for you,

and my legs longed for yours like a lover,
and forever they’d stay ever true,

up high in the night sky the birds fly
and plunder the sorceress moon,

and love in her waves gives a sweet sigh
and falls in a swoon.


the solitary sea starts to whisper,
with a love that n’er knows of a god,

and the mist on the sea-wall grows crisper
as it dampens the ghosts of the sod,

and love cries out loudly at sunrise
toes dipped in the trembling dew,

forgetting the murmurs of moonrise
besotted and blue.


the wind now no longer seeks shelter,
curves the clouds who now run and then run,

sings of tides full of moonlight who welter
with tears (though no gift of the sun,)

and these tears for my love i now carry
stripped away like the sun and the rain,

our love both soulful and arbitrary,
flowing true in the vein.


the flowers of midnight are calling
like lilies with petals outspread,

on an ocean that dreams as it’s falling,
and falls like an anchor of lead,

the streams lift up high as if dreaming,
the wings of the wind’s edges bleed,

and all of their wonderful streaming
begins to recede.


the sun sung out once to the morning,
unshackled the wings of the seas

who flew as the light started dawning,
as the sea water started to unfreeze,

day more of the morning soon conjured
of magics both dreadful and free

of tenderness’s sweetly outnumbered
like your love for me.


the brightening bird grows to an ocean,
its brilliant wings full of day,

and our hearts sing out loud with emotion,
the clouds float along in their greys,

the light in the sky starts to shiver,
no longer of evening and night,

sings songs of the moon’s lonely river
her lamps set alight.
originally published in seventh quarry magazine. new to hellopoetry inspired by swinburne's "by the north sea".
Revisiting the Outreach
and on the way
passing by the last chance cafe,
we
stop for a mug or two
having a chat
the way old friends do,
talk about the beach and
the Outreach Cafe
and the days that we stopped by
those days when we weren't high.

It's slow now and
that's the way things go now.

But we remember
when it felt like December in July

we moved on.
 Sep 15 Rob Rutledge
irinia
I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
Grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
Towards which my deep longings migrated
And my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

by Pablo Neruda
Damocles' poem Still Now, I fall reminded me of this poem by Pablo.
I wonder if we love differently in different seasons
 Sep 15 Rob Rutledge
Poet B
-
 Sep 15 Rob Rutledge
Poet B
-
Whispers about willows,

their leaves sealing secrets,

blocking them from the sun.
 Sep 13 Rob Rutledge
irinia
I can't leave aside the latitude of your eye
where roads and memories reside
my dreams
more than my shadow crash into you
my lips conjure your scent
my insinuated hand  does not hold
does not hold anything tangible
words are wounds, the meanings flow
angles intersect and lines converge
to the proof or woof of your existence
in this poem the words laugh
at the fragile calculus of tears
as if they would celebrate the question mark
in an unfinished sentence
I wonder where your touch begin, how far
the eye can stretch into the camera obscura of flesh
~
September 2025
HP Poet: irinia
Age: 47
Country: Romania


Question 1: We warmly welcome you to the HP Spotlight, irinia. Please tell us about your background?

irinia: "I live in a country with a difficult past, I have complicated memories of the XXth century. I studied foreign languages and literatures (English & German), British cultural studies, psychology and psychotherapy. I worked as a cultural journalist for some time, and as an English teacher for a decade. I love working as a psychotherapist, it is a humbling honour to get to know and be with people in a profound way. I am the mother of a spirited teenage daughter whom I am in love with. I am a highly sensitive person which is a blessing and a curse because I am often times moved by life in an intense way. I am from the Balkans so my taste in everything is rather eclectic."


Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

irinia: "I wrote my first poem as a teenager, and I’ve been writing since then discontinuously, whenever poetry came to me. There were periods of intense writing and also long periods of silence. It was difficult to see myself as a poet until relatively recent. On HP I've been since 2010 or 2011, I am not sure, I have to check my first post. This site and the community supported me to keep writing. I owe to HP the existence of my book of poetry called "Psychic retreat" published by Europe Books last year. Thank you Eliot for keeping HP running and thank you to all of you for keeping HP alive. I witnessed this community changing, growing, descending into chaos sometimes. I enjoy the diversity of styles."


Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

irinia: "I am inspired by everything that moves me, especially people, stories, the natural world, history. Poetry simply happens to me, words and images start pouring down in my mind, so I just write them down as they come. I don’t rewrite or work with conscious intention on any poem because I don’t have time to be a „serious“ writer, who has the discipline and toil of writing. At some point poetry started coming to me in English, perhaps because my readings were mostly in English. I think poetry is a way of containing or transforming my emotional processes as for me poetry happens in the presence of feelings, and I am also observing a tendency to be more reflexive or abstract as if when I write there is a witness inside. I feel more and more that I am interested in writing about politics and society too."


Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

irinia: "It means a lot, I am afraid it is difficult to capture it into words. The poetry of other people touches me deeply, fascinates me, gives me the feeling of awe. It was my constant companion, it was a mirror, I found out about myself through resonance with other poets. Poetry captures the depth of life, our dreams, struggles, aspirations, our joy and our pain, creates alternative worlds from words. It captures the pulse of inner reality while it also mystifies it. It is a space of freedom and play for me. It is a protest. It is an attempt at destroying and recreating the world captured in normal language and used concepts. It is perhaps a measure of our humanity, vulnerability, resilience."


Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

irinia: "I will start with William Shakespeare as I love his use of language and wit. I love Japanese haiku poetry, their ineffable simplicity is mesmerizing. There are many poets that I adore: Rumi, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Charles Bukowski, William Blake, Robert Browning, T.S. Elliot, the English and German Romantic poets, Nichita Stănescu (Romania), Ana Blandiana (Ro), Florin Iaru (Ro), Mircea Cărtărescu (Ro), Ioana Ieronim (Ro), Gellu Naum (Ro), Nora Iuga (Ro), Paul Celan, Mary Oliver, David Whythe, Anne Sexton, Tibor Zalan (Hungary), Jean-Pierre Siméon (a wonderful poet), Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Ana Akhmatova, Viktor Neborak (Ukraine), Marjana Savka (Ukraine), Hrytsko Chubai (Ukraine), John O’Donohue, Rachel Bluwstein, Yehuda Amichai, Nathan Zach, Wislawa Szymborska (Poland), Mahmud Darwish (Palestine), John Donne, Friedrich Hölderlin, Reiner Maria Rilke, Joseph Brodsky, Marina Tzvetaeva, Octavio Paz, Garcia Lorca, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Primo Levi."


Question 6: What other interests do you have?

irinia: "I love art in all forms, it moves me and it bemuses me, it stimulates my creativity. I love photography and taking photos, I attended courses in my youth. I am fascinated by cosmos and cosmology, I love physics. I love stand-up comedy, music, dancing, hiking on the mountains. I am interested in history, I am fascinated by the becoming of the world. I am fascinated by the individual and collective psyche, I think this is something that has left a mark on my poetry."


Carlo C. Gomez: “We would like to thank you irinia, we really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to get to know the person behind the poet! It is our pleasure to include you in this Spotlight series!”

irinia: "Many thanks to Carlo for this series and to you all for being here!"




Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know irinia better. We most certainly did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez

We will post Spotlight #32 in October!

~
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