Almost Home

Burnt House Lane, Stubbington, 26/8/13

We came to the top of the footpath
carrying the bag of luscious ripe blackberries,
picked at cost of a few scratches and nettle stings.
At the point where we traded woodland for concrete,
left the untamed and returned to the civilised,
two pigeons,caught in a frozen moment,
still as if carved by a skilful hand.
They sat atop the sign board
outside Meoncross School,
unfazed by our passing,
not a feather stirring.
And then the rain began.

Burnt House Lane, Stubbington,Hampshire.

Finding my Place on the Wheel

I  am a filler of spaces,
a splicer of sundered things,
an artist in the art of wedding together
disparate things that seem not to connect.

Mr role is in the background,
organising the tea cups
and remembering who has what.
My place is in the shadows
finding the light switch.

I am the curator of dusty shelves,
the one who knows what is in the cupboard,
brings the lost to light
and restores balances and equilibriums.

I am an explainer,
an informer,
an information gatherer
a teacher,
the archetypal back-room girl.

I am the cog,
the widget,
the unseen but never still part of the whole,
unremarkable and unmarked,
noticed only when the machine breaks down .

There is a place I must go.

Dedicated to my beloved son,Michael, who spent two hours helping me shape an idea into the final poem. The words are all mine but many of the images were suggested by him.

There is a place I must go,
must find if needs be,
for my heart’s sake.
It would call me back
to this island
even from a thousand miles away.
A footpath through an English Wood.

Like Ariadne’s thread
it leads me,to the centre
of my life’s labyrinth
via all the places I have known
back to my beginnings,
on the land my father worked,
back to the free ranging child,
as much part of the countryside
as the animals he tended.
 To this place blood and memory bind me.

This place of birdsong and silence
of pine cones, brambles,
and quick, often unseen, creatures.
My refuge from the relentless urban,
a place of solace.
a place to commune with God
and touch the earth.
This deeper need a complex mystery,
as the shadow play
on swift running waters.

There is a place I must go,
must find if needs be,
for my heart’s sake.
It would call me back
to this island
even from a thousand miles away.
A footpath through an English wood.

Photograph by Adrian Purser . Licensed under Creative Commons.

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This Is For You ….

Written after seeing the Under 10’s football team practising in the park.

This is for you – the kid with specs, the kid with the asthmatic wheeze,
and the fat kid with parents who do not exactly help.
This is for you – the clever kid who likes books and wants to learn.
And for all of you who dread the playground and for whom PE lessons
are a very particular kind of torture.
This is for you the self-conscious, the gawky and the geeky, the autistic,
the misfit and the just plain different.
Individuality may be a hollow sounding prize, but listen closer.

Because this is also for you – the footballing kid,  the kid with the right jeans,
and the kid with the smartphone and the latest X box .
This is for the popular kid who always gets picked first for team games.
This is for the kid who can run and has a pack to run with.
This is for you because you are already paying the price for fitting in.
Conformity means never having to say you’re different.

Love is an Action

The elderly couple two seats in front of me on the bus ,
ring the bell and stand ready for their stop.
She is not so steady on her feet.
and he turns back to watch,
checking she is safe
until the bus stops.
He gets off first,
turns and offers his hand to help her down
onto the pavement then at once let’s go
Solicitous not suffocating,
concerned not controlling
watching over her but not overwhelming her.
I wonder if she realises how lucky she is.

The Spirit of the Waters

I  wrote this for a friend who lives beside  the  Susquehanna River and post it here with her permission.

She grew up beside the Atlantic,
gave her sister’s ashes
to the waters
of Long Island Sound.
Water is in her,
like a second stream of blood
flowing in her veins.
A felt thing,
an intuited thing,
something to which she had to return.
And when she returned,
settled beside the Susquehanna,
she created a tribute to the waters,
like an offering to the river gods
of the people who knew it first.
Rusted, undulating cor-ten steel,
sinuous as the body of a lolling odalisque,
mirrors the curves of the river’s banks,
carved by the caress of water,
on the body of Mother Earth.
Aluminium rippling,
riding in a cascade of sun-catching silver,
from end to end,
like the racing whitecaps,
on days when the wind plays horses with the water,
driving the currents,
Faster! Faster!

And when the sculpture is only
a memory in the stories of the very old,
the river will still endure,
so too will the spirit of the woman who captured,
a vision of its strength and power,
part of the flowing Susquehanna,
one with the water that is in her
like a second stream of blood
flowing through her veins.

Freeze Frame

Flurry of pigeon’s wings
disrupts the evening stillness,
from my kitchen window The Moonlight Sonata plays out its  last notes

.

A Parable of the Imagination

No one told me girls cannot be pirates
so imagination was a beast without fetters,
a bear that danced just because
it felt the sun on its fur.

And there really were unicorns
and dragons.

And somewhere Rumpelstiltskin still hops up and down in fury
because the miller’s daughter has finally guessed his name.

A moment of mindfulness.

We take the long way home,
past the field of rescue ponies,
and the pussy willows,
grey, furry buds insisting it is spring
even though I am still in coat, scarf and wellies.
I am thinking of hot tea and the next chapter of my current read,
then I remember to be here, in the ever-present now,
and I see the wind, like a frisky young animal,
playing in the branches of the hawthorn,
making the new leaves tremble
and stirring the old dead leaves to momentary life,
before racing off to chase clouds away from the face of the sun
so that we walk home in a sudden burst of light that is
trying to warm the day.

Tell me

Talk to me about the lost things,
The never found things,
Of water under the bridge,
And that place beyond the rainbow’s end.
Speak as the voice of many rivers,
of clouds and distances crossed and calamities met and avoided.
Tell me tales of truth and gentle lies,
And confessions whispered in dusty midnight rooms to no one.
Spin old tales from new yarn
Then I may know what it is to be the woman who lives in this skin.