SpokenVerse | "Eden Rock" by Charley Causley (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded January 2012 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
A projection of the afterlife, drawn from idyllic memories of childhood. He pictures his parents as they used to be when he was a child.
Most parents take photographs and videos of their children to provide lasting memories to treasure in later years. But very few take pictures of themselves - and it is pictures of the parents that the children will want to see: that is what THEY saw at the time.
Women grow conscious of the toll taken by passing years and become more and more reluctant to be photographed, often unwilling to admit that any photograph is a good likeness. Some even go through the family photograph album and destroy nearly every picture of themselves. Yet, the way they are is the way their loved ones see them, every day, and exactly how they want to remember them in times to come.
Incidentally, there's no such place as Eden Rock. Charles made it up. Sounds like something Elvis would sing. And, of course, Eden was a nice place according to the Bible.
About Charles Causley
cornwall24.net/magazine/memories-charles-causley-cbe
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.
She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.
The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, "See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think."
I had not thought that it would be like this.
A projection of the afterlife, drawn from idyllic memories of childhood. He pictures his parents as they used to be when he was a child.
Most parents take photographs and videos of their children to provide lasting memories to treasure in later years. But very few take pictures of themselves - and it is pictures of the parents that the children will want to see: that is what THEY saw at the time.
Women grow conscious of the toll taken by passing years and become more and more reluctant to be photographed, often unwilling to admit that any photograph is a good likeness. Some even go through the family photograph album and destroy nearly every picture of themselves. Yet, the way they are is the way their loved ones see them, every day, and exactly how they want to remember them in times to come.
Incidentally, there's no such place as Eden Rock. Charles made it up. Sounds like something Elvis would sing. And, of course, Eden was a nice place according to the Bible.
About Charles Causley
cornwall24.net/magazine/memories-charles-causley-cbe
They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.
She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.
The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, "See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think."
I had not thought that it would be like this.
