''Reflections''

A Poem by Will Neill

A poem about what makes us......us!

'' Reflections''

Sometimes I just sit and think

Of morning rain

And sunshine silk

Of bumbling bee's just buzzing by

Of flowers that bloom

A baby's cry

Soft white clouds that drift along

Clear blue sea

A mocking bird song

A sweet caress on a moonlit night

Loving arms that hold so tight

Setting sun

Lonely Beach

Stars that we can never reach

Trees that give us air to breathe

In gods love we must believe

A tender kiss

A wave goodbye

An infants smile

And a lovers sigh

The first steps when we start

The pride we hold within our Hearts

Music that can make us weep

promises we could never keep

Friendships lost

And family ties

Heartache caused by wistful lies

Sickness that can take a life

Wars that kill

A loving Wife

A hand to hold when its time to go

All above makes us so

****

Reflections by

Will Neill

2014

© 2014 Will Neill

Author's Note

I was taking a break from my novel writing and enjoying some time just staring out the window at the world....this is what happened. I hope you like it.
Will.

My Review

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Reviews

Leo

Fantastic! Such colorful smooth melodic and narrative style that makes the rainbow shy..I can sense that your novel brought you into a graceful mental state that enabled you to flow like a beautiful river..nothing short than brilliance, truly a masterpiece. Blessings

Posted 8 Years Ago

8 Years Ago

Thank you.
will

Richard Linsley III

One of my Public Speaking Mentors told me a long time ago, that there's a magic to words. That you can make them Scintillate. I never have been able to do that. My friend, today you have hit that magical moment of greatness. Kudos, Bravo Zulu!

Posted 8 Years Ago

8 Years Ago

Thank you your kind words are appreciated.
Will

Sir Drift & Mr. Pulse

Its funny because I have a story titled this exact same title! Reflections. I really annoyed this poem and I see that our minds can see so many things beautiful in the world. I would appreciate if you would read the story. You will see a lot of comparison between our writing. Reflections is its title.

Posted 8 Years Ago

8 Years Ago

Thank you I will go and read it soon.
Will

Jason Endfield

Very lovely. Sometimes, in glimpses, we can appreciate the moment.

Posted 8 Years Ago

8 Years Ago

Jason, thank you for reading.
Will

guy drori

very nice enjabments. I especially liked these lines:
"A sweet caress on a moonlit night
Loving arms that hold so tight
Setting sun
Lonely Beach."
Your usage in nature descriptions created a very vivid image in my mind.
Great work!

Posted 9 Years Ago

9 Years Ago

guy thank you for your kind words.
Will

9 Years Ago

It was my pleasure reading :)

FREE_BIRD

lovely really i must say what you deliver in the word is actually us.and time is running no one care what making us.

Posted 9 Years Ago

9 Years Ago

Free_bird thank you for your kind comments.
Will

James Hanna-Magill

Dear Will

Thank you for your many reviews and apologies for the paucity of mine in return to you.

I tend to review long, which limits my output.

But maybe by reviewing long even with limited output, what I do may mean more as I will have spent considerably more time thinking about the piece I am reviewing.

I admire you for your successes of which, though I have been published in your regular ISBN, I am certain I have fewer.

I connect with you, as we both know we are both Belfast boys.

You were born in 57 (my brother was) and I in 59. The difference is negligible. But we both had to go through the seventies in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.

It has marked me in as much as I think it has marked you.

Let me please, forgive me, continue to find the connections between us as I often do before I review.

You cannot disconnect the art from the artist

Of some differences, I think you stayed in Belfast whereas I at 18 took the first plane out, lived in France for two years and then moved into the UK to live there or for reasons of work internationally.

The bond of Belfast boys of whatever religion is tight.

I am of the Presbyterian Protestant Loyalist species. I have this funny feeling you are from the other party, Catholic, Nationalist.

I don't know!

Does it really matter? I think not.

But do you know why I left Ireland quickly at 18?

Because I hated them all!

Indeed I had less sympathy for apparently my own upbringing than perhaps the 'other side'.
.
I hated the UDA, the UVF, The IRA and the Provos in equal measure.

In fact in the end the only party I related to was the SDLP and Lord Gerry Fit. Counter character!They alone talked calm and peace.

I used to trudge my way from Dundonald to Oxford Street bus station every day for 7 years, to go to RBAI, the school in the middle of Belfast using the blue buses. Endlessly I got caught in places where the British Army had roped off an area because of the risk of a car, an unexploded bomb. So I had to walk miles round it and the taste in my mouth was bitter and the smell in my nostrils was acrid.

After all these years I still remember a debate in the debating society at RBAI (supposedly largely but not exclusively Protestant). Gerry Fitt from the SDLP was invited to speak against Ernie Baird from the tightly Loyalist UUUP (sad to say he was a personal friend of my father's). But do you know what? Gerry won by the power of his words. I'm so glad he did.

But otherwise Belfast was all mischief in those days. I am pleased that a peace however delicate has broken out. These days when I go back home, I have forgotten my childhood misgivings and now feel that Belfast is actually my HOME and I like the Irish again, because of it.

Enough of connection.

Perhaps I am lazy as I have chosen a poem of yours to review this first time rather than your prose. Less words on a page. But I write both as you do too and I look forward to reading your prose in due course.

Whatever I do, I don't do thin. I reviewed RJ Askew yesterday. It was probably the longest review I have written and it took me the larger part of the day.

Let me do the best I can by this poem of yours in my own way.

I often try to push poetry into an analytical format which looks at technique as part of writing a review. It gives me points of reference. But at times I will let go and this applies to prose much more than poetry and what I write is pure stream of consciousness.

I really don't know what I am about to write next.

Let's find out, shall we?

Looks like I am going to fall into boxes again before I get to the point.

Form: 32 lines.

Rhyme: There are constant end of line rhymes in here, but unless due to my ineptitude I cannot find a fixed pattern. I took a while looking at it in sextets, five of which get me to 30 lines with two left over. Certainly you end in your last two lines rhyming in couplets. Otherwise your rhyming you seek to do is in your own way as far as I can see. I am just trying to find intent here. But I find your own pattern of rhyme here soothing, lyrical and melodic and in your own fashion.

Rhythm: Again no fixed pattern, but the way you manipulate beats to the bar especially in couplets is marked in places and pleasant to the ear:

'Setting sun (3 syllables)
Lonely beach' (3 syllables)

'A tender kiss (4 syllables)
A wave goodbye' (4 syllables)

Thing is Will, I can often sit down and review a piece and start looking for things that aren't there and the writer never intended.

But yet maybe that just helps me see better what you are actually doing in the end.

I start to try and fit things in boxes that do not belong to boxes.

And maybe therein, in what I might call free style rhyming poetry, you create something unique. Just what you want to say, how you want to say it, and in how many lines.

Bravo. You have succeeded in lulling me into your own patterns of speech!

Let me keep on trying to define this and its merit:

Language: By keeping it simple, you make it accessible to all.

Simile and metaphor and allusions: For the sake of ease, let's put them all in one basket: There is only one that resonates for me here - 'And sunshine silk'. So for me what you are doing here is you keep making it small. Perhaps most beauty does not reside in complexity. It resides in the simplest of thoughts and meanings.

As I have said in review, at least once in review, I learn as much from poetry (whatever it is) as I do from the Robin, who sits outside my conservatory every morning looking as if he wants to come in.

In this case, simplicity is all.

Favourite lines:

'A sweet caress on a moonlit night
Loving arms that hold so tight'

and

'Music that can make us weep
promises we could never keep'

Listen Will, I could keep going but what is the point of repeating the whole poem back to you?

And so to meaning.

But as I can often say, to whom? To you, to me, to your partner, to your best friend or to us all?

For me, this is a very simple and personal piece that applies to us all in life.

Precisely in the end it focusses on the fact the simplest things, when we REFLECT are the most important.

As in one of my poems 'No more need for complex thought' a line in ' 'For simplicity's Sake'

What you do here is in all simplicity liberate all of us from our woes and focus us largely on the most important thing in life.

Perhaps you and I both need to find simplicity in life after living the complexity of the Troubles. That's how we may all have survived them I think.

Thing is Will, when I get to the end of a review, I never feel I have said enough. I feel I may have disserved the writer, when there is much more to say than I have said or rather better things to say.

The problem with the length of my reviews is that I limit the number I can do.

The other problem is that the more I say, the more there is to examine and critique. I assure you my review here is as open to critique as this lovely lyrical piece of song.

I have said genuinely Will all I can say on this piece.

Except this:

It moved me.

Your friend

James

Posted 9 Years Ago

Dear Will

Thank you for your many reviews and apologies for the paucity of mine in return to you.

I tend to review long, which limits my output.

But maybe by reviewing long even with limited output, what I do may mean more as I will have spent considerably more time thinking about the piece I am reviewing.

I admire you for your successes of which, though I have been published in your regular ISBN, I am certain I have fewer.

I connect with you, as we both know we are both Belfast boys.

You were born in 57 (my brother was) and I in 59. The difference is negligible. But we both had to go through the seventies in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.

It has marked me in as much as I think it has marked you.

Let me please, forgive me, continue to find the connections between us as I often do before I review.

You cannot disconnect the art from the artist

Of some differences, I think you stayed in Belfast whereas I at 18 took the first plane out, lived in France for two years and then moved into the UK to live there or for reasons of work internationally.

The bond of Belfast boys of whatever religion is tight.

I am of the Presbyterian Protestant Loyalist species. I have this funny feeling you are from the other party, Catholic, Nationalist.

I don't know!

Does it really matter? I think not.

But do you know why I left Ireland quickly at 18?

Because I hated them all!

Indeed I had less sympathy for apparently my own upbringing than perhaps the 'other side'.
.
I hated the UDA, the UVF, The IRA and the Provos in equal measure.

In fact in the end the only party I related to was the SDLP and Lord Gerry Fit. Counter character!They alone talked calm and peace.

I used to trudge my way from Dundonald to Oxford Street bus station every day for 7 years, to go to RBAI, the school in the middle of Belfast using the blue buses. Endlessly I got caught in places where the British Army had roped off an area because of the risk of a car, an unexploded bomb. So I had to walk miles round it and the taste in my mouth was bitter and the smell in my nostrils was acrid.

After all these years I still remember a debate in the debating society at RBAI (supposedly largely but not exclusively Protestant). Gerry Fitt from the SDLP was invited to speak against Ernie Baird from the tightly Loyalist UUUP (sad to say he was a personal friend of my father's). But do you know what? Gerry won by the power of his words. I'm so glad he did.

But otherwise Belfast was all mischief in those days. I am pleased that a peace however delicate has broken out. These days when I go back home, I have forgotten my childhood misgivings and now feel that Belfast is actually my HOME and I like the Irish again, because of it.

Enough of connection.

Perhaps I am lazy as I have chosen a poem of yours to review this first time rather than your prose. Less words on a page. But I write both as you do too and I look forward to reading your prose in due course.

Whatever I do, I don't do thin. I reviewed RJ Askew yesterday. It was probably the longest review I have written and it took me the larger part of the day.

Let me do the best I can by this poem of yours in my own way.

I often try to push poetry into an analytical format which looks at technique as part of writing a review. It gives me points of reference. But at times I will let go and this applies to prose much more than poetry and what I write is pure stream of consciousness.

I really don't know what I am about to write next.

Let's find out, shall we?

Looks like I am going to fall into boxes again before I get to the point.

Form: 32 lines.

Rhyme: There are constant end of line rhymes in here, but unless due to my ineptitude I cannot find a fixed pattern. I took a while looking at it in sextets, five of which get me to 30 lines with two left over. Certainly you end in your last two lines rhyming in couplets. Otherwise your rhyming you seek to do is in your own way as far as I can see. I am just trying to find intent here. But I find your own pattern of rhyme here soothing, lyrical and melodic and in your own fashion.

Rhythm: Again no fixed pattern, but the way you manipulate beats to the bar especially in couplets is marked in places and pleasant to the ear:

'Setting sun (3 syllables)
Lonely beach' (3 syllables)

'A tender kiss (4 syllables)
A wave goodbye' (4 syllables)

Thing is Will, I can often sit down and review a piece and start looking for things that aren't there and the writer never intended.

But yet maybe that just helps me see better what you are actually doing in the end.

I start to try and fit things in boxes that do not belong to boxes.

And maybe therein, in what I might call free style rhyming poetry, you create something unique. Just what you want to say, how you want to say it, and in how many lines.

Bravo. You have succeeded in lulling me into your own patterns of speech!

Let me keep on trying to define this and its merit:

Language: By keeping it simple, you make it accessible to all.

Simile and metaphor and allusions: For the sake of ease, let's put them all in one basket: There is only one that resonates for me here - 'And sunshine silk'. So for me what you are doing here is you keep making it small. Perhaps most beauty does not reside in complexity. It resides in the simplest of thoughts and meanings.

As I have said in review, at least once in review, I learn as much from poetry (whatever it is) as I do from the Robin, who sits outside my conservatory every morning looking as if he wants to come in.

In this case, simplicity is all.

Favourite lines:

'A sweet caress on a moonlit night
Loving arms that hold so tight'

and

'Music that can make us weep
promises we could never keep'

Listen Will, I could keep going but what is the point of repeating the whole poem back to you?

And so to meaning.

But as I can often say, to whom? To you, to me, to your partner, to your best friend or to us all?

For me, this is a very simple and personal piece that applies to us all in life.

Precisely in the end it focusses on the fact the simplest things, when we REFLECT are the most important.

As in one of my poems 'No more need for complex thought' a line in ' 'For simplicity's Sake'

What you do here is in all simplicity liberate all of us from our woes and focus us largely on the most important thing in life.

Perhaps you and I both need to find simplicity in life after living the complexity of the Troubles. That's how we may all have survived them I think.

Thing is Will, when I get to the end of a review, I never feel I have said enough. I feel I may have disserved the writer, when there is much more to say than I have said or rather better things to say.

The problem with the length of my reviews is that I limit the number I can do.

The other problem is that the more I say, the more there is to examine and critique. I assure you my review here is as open to critique as this lovely lyrical piece of song.

I have said genuinely Will all I can say on this piece.

Except this:

It moved me.

Your friend

James

Rating /100

View 0 more replies

9 Years Ago

James it has been while, and I have seen you float in and out like me, I have evolved past the need.. read more

9 Years Ago

And from one Belfast boy to you too. I understand your point of view about this site. All I would sa.. read more

9 Years Ago

I know you did and have.
Will

Jamestown

Perfect title, and wonderful write. Yes reflecting on life needs to be done
sometimes, thanks for sharing.

Posted 9 Years Ago

9 Years Ago

Thank you I am humbled by your comments.
Will

Tiana

Beautiful reflections in those quiet moments in our lives ... Wonderfully written ...

Posted 9 Years Ago

9 Years Ago

I love your avatar picture, thank you for reading and commenting.
Take Care.
Will

9 Years Ago

It was my pleasure, Will :) I really enjoyed :)

Patricia Wedel

dear Will... These lines are things that make me
believe in the wisp of a butterfly wing... and the
melody the gifted birds sing. As long as we have
rain and sunshine and bees to pollinate...
we are blessed with beauty and love.
Beautiful poetry. truly... Pat.

Posted 9 Years Ago

9 Years Ago

Pat how kind you are to come and read and enjoy my poems. Thank you.
Will

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Shelved in 2 Libraries

Added on August 21, 2014
Last Updated on August 22, 2014
Tags: family, love, birth, death

Author

Will Neill

belfast, United Kingdom

About

Will Neill is an award winning Irish author, poet and amateur musician; Born in Belfast in the late fifties. Will has established himself as a prolific writer all over the world for both his prose and.. more..