Poems

Low little thick-walled stone cottage  on the dwindling, forest encroached old Usk road.  You’d catch it at your eyeline, squat above the hedgerows,  like a cup on its saucer; whitewashed, dim windowed,  slightly sad outer face. Dad’s last home.  His, more than hers, ‘a refuge place.’ After he’d died, Mum toiled in the garden that got too much; badgering herself, ‘no, she wasn’t the type to give up.’ Isolation hit hard, she feared the swamping no-street-light, larch-wood deep country dark; double locking the front door, when she was in, nervous, edgy to a panic, when I came visiting. Heedless of help. Five full years mustered on alone,  fought fears that finally tipped to overwhelm.

Nice to get rid of yourself in a few words,Not to think any further or say any more.Nice to conceal in a strange town, To say, I am this, I am that, to use wordsThat are fixed and ripe to ignore.Nice to dispose in a few words. Who wants to live in the woods where wordsAre unclear, their meanings too tall?Nice to conceal in a strange town. Certain things won’t be known, risky wordsOf your own, if you deny them. All in all,It’s nice to dispose in a few words. But who will you be if you live within words,Within worlds, not your own? Are you sureYour life will be real in a strange town? Can you properly say, I commit to this town,All its tedious works? Can you swearThat it’s nice to get crushed by a few words,Nice to congeal in a strange town?

heteromirafa sidamoensis Reminds me of a poet I knew, the lye-ben lark. That’s how I said her name at first, with lye-ben lark to rhyme with why-ben, ‘By the way, it’s Libben Lark,’ she told me at the door, ‘it rhymes with ribbon-lark.’ I’d taught her for an hour. I liked the liben lark. ‘You libben-learn…’ I murmured as the liben lark went reading down the corridor. The liben lark was like no poet I’d ever met, the liben lark just made a sound there hadn’t been, the liben lark had no idea. I told her, ‘Listen, Liben Lark, you make a sound there’s never been.’ The liben lark looked sad at that. ‘Two years I’ve taught you, Liben Lark, and now we’re done.

Grunting, you slipper-creep across the floor slower than a sailboat in a Force 1 breeze. I wonder whether in that ancient circuit board of a head from which so little intelligible has issued for weeks the Beaufort Scale still means anything or whether, if mentioned, you would as usual get totally muddled, mistake Force 1, under whose waftings the sea hardly ripples, for gale Force 10. Standing close in case of mishap I watch you grip the grubby Zimmer frame tighter, then tack hard to port and slump into the Stannah Lift that will ease you past prints and oils of your father’s ships until you reach the downstairs harbour.

Every now and then, during my late-nighttussle with rhyme and metre, I glance upat the top flat opposite, wondering whetherits male occupant, silhouetted and backlit,is thinking, each time he raises his headand seems to gaze back, how excitingit is to overlook on the ground flooropposite an insomniac poet constantlylicking his stanzas into shape, and maybeeven including him in his latest poem. Much more likely he is totally engrossedin a detective novel by Ian Rankinor Donna Leon. Imagining which I downtools and instead head for the sitting-roomwith a cappuccino, confident that gettingstuck into a good whodunnit will moreeffectively establish us as kindred spirits.At which point, seemingly totally obliviousto my presence, the man opposite risesand, leaving his room, turns out the light.

Working from hammock in Mexico, Watching how far centavos go, The beer is cheap, tequila strong, Here you can sleep and all day long. Hola to holidays in the sun! Don’t want to do it – doesn’t get done. From sunset strip to sunrise glow History runs deep in Mexico. Sipping a cola, eating ice-cream, Loving the colours, living the dream, Working tomorrow for a better today, Procrastinators that’s what they say. Chilli con carne, San Miguel beer, Well worth the journey, wish you were here! Am and pm, what about them? Mañana we say and carpe diem. Loving the colours, living the light, Enjoying the bright stars shining at night. The sound of the waves smells of H2O And seawater’s warm in Mexico.

Nearly sucking up a woodlouse in the vacuum cleaner, an unseen finger taps me on the head. Surely, it says, you have the time to find a bit of card or an old envelope and move this little fellow to the flower bed? Plucked from the wall,  it rolls into a ball and waves its legs towards the vast omnipotent above, as if to say I did not expect this of you.

I looked through the window and I saw a sunny day. I say sunny day, but the thing about sun is how it casts shadows. It draws the shape of the house across the patio, and what this shape is is a ghost house, here, creeping its way across these slabs, as the day lengthens, it’s a house completely in darkness, a house without words or windows, a house reduced to the shape of itself. And in this house  and under this roof, drawn there on the patio, live and breathe these ghost selves, these versions of us, feeling their way through darkened rooms, gripping their stubby candles out in front of themselves.

Islands, illusions,our dark wrecking spell,five twisted pins at St Warna’s Well.Islands, illusionsin a Bryher of mist,Bishop Rock Lighthouse serpent-kissed.Islands, illusionsfrom East to West Porth,seas without God, skies without north.Islands, illusionsnear this world’s edge,storm petrels circle the Tearing Ledge.Islands, illusionson lost sailors’ lips,the Dogs of Scilly devour their ships.

I was writing my doll’s name on the back of her neck  when Mummy caught fire — a noisy distraction.  She was wearing a loose blue flowered smock  (an old maternity smock, I now deduce,  from her pregnancy with my sister four years earlier,  being used as an overall, not to waste it);  the hem flapped over the hearth she was sweeping,  and caught on a live coal from last night’s fire.   I tore myself away from writing ‘Margaret’  to save her life. ‘Lie down, Mummy!’ I said,  and helped to smother her flames in the hearthrug.  So much is memory. The rest was praise:  What a good girl, how sensible, how calm!  But ‘how well-taught’ is what they should have said.

When we found them under the tree there were twenty-two men all dressed in white, packed in two boxes of rosewood, between ancient and brittle layers of yellow paper. We set them out in classic style, carrying their rigid bodies  up and down, up and down,  until the light began to fail; one motionless fielder forgotten in a corner of the room... After the years, what’s left? These wooden trays, brittle paper; more distantly, the smells of leather, linseed oil, mown grass, the batsman’s shout for one more run, the curving ball, diving catch, as if a bird was stopped mid-flight... Clapping hands. White numerals. High summer sky. All out. All out.