Displaced Men and Faded Wives ©
All the displaced men and faded wives who walk their dogs
Across the park
While the dew is drying in the morning sun
Strike a pose of defiance
To the system
Which bore them, supported them
And gave them their parameters
For their unquieted rebellion.
They sport the green wellies
The barbour, the navy blue
The Labrador or spaniel
And bark their commands
Across the heath only peopled
At that hour by their own kind
“Alba, come here!”
Nelson – down!”
Comfortable that in their
Discomfort and empty lives
There is still a boundary set for them -
But now only by Nelson and by Alba.
Fear of the Day ©
This heart, no MY, heart
Surely has to break before
It can melt.
Hard like a tortoise shell
Tough, impassive, impermeable.
I can feel the break is coming, it’s long overdue
It will break and when it does
When my life long love darling dies
It will break, first a crack, then a splinter
That will grow into a chasm. Irreparable.
It will reveal the soft inside, that I have protected
Fearing this day.
It might also die, there might not be enough time
For me to grow another shell
To survive this harsh world.
Half of Me ©
Half of me, no all of me, sinking down and down
I stare at the garden from three floors up.
Denuded willow, desolate houses, windows shut,
Cold, cold everywhere.
I sink lower, get colder, further away
From all I know I have to do.
Left to myself I will do nothing
I will retreat, it’s where I want to go
Away from this too difficult world
I’ll find a corner, I’ll hide, I’ll make a bed like a hamster
Out of wool. I’ll be warm there, I’ll be ok.
No of course not ok.
I’m retreating further, want to go deeper and deeper alone
Maybe there I’ll find rest from all the strivings to goals
I’ll never make.
But even on a gentle helter skelter down and wanting to go on
I know it won’t do – because I’ve been there once before.
Loneliness never had a name till that time.
It was as though voices spoke through post office glass
Or I had plugs in my ears.
Hands reached out, but they couldn’t reach me.
I didn’t want them to reach me.
And yet I yearned for a hand that would pull me up the cliffside
And save me that last drop.
The memory of that time stays with me and stays with me
The ghostly legacy being the permanent change in perspective.
Nothing, really nothing much matters.
Life will close over my head, like water over a drowning man
And they’ll say ‘do you remember?’
And that will be
All that was left.
I’ll Think of You ©
I’ll think of you as I’m dying
I’ll think of you as the blood falters in its flow
I’ll think of you as it grows darker
I’ll think of you, your smile
Meant for me
I’ll think of you and the joy you brought
The meaning you put right in the heart of me
From within your own.
I’ll think of our youth, our passion, our bond
I’ll think of you as I’m dying
And I will wait for you.
Little Love ©
Little love, so animal smell
Sweet and sweaty
Breathing even
So devilish when awake
I almost despair of you.
I hold your arm, your hand
The gentle springy flesh still warm
And pudgy – a line around the wrist
And as you slip between here and there
The arm goes lax
Slips from my hand
Heavy on the pillow
But I could rouse you
If I wanted with
A kiss, a word, a touch
Bu I fear the time
Like cold lead in my heart
When I cannot
Rouse you from your sleep.
Sleep well- sleep well.
Living and Breathing ©
I think September is here and winter
Coming soon.
But I undo the garden windows
And feel the sweetness of the dying thrust
Of life autumn has to give
Sweet and warm, the ground moist and luscious still
But at the back of my mind is
The threat that I might have miscounted
And winter might come sooner.
Love ©
Buttered toast.
Getting lost in the rain.
Running down a Paris street
With your jacket over both our heads
Back to our warm bed.
A spoon of cough medicine
Third rate videos on a dark night
Warm and safe,
Searching for his hand in the bed
Waking up to making love
Holding each other tight,
Bellies touching,
Silent loving, no talking, no questions,
It meant too much for that.
Bacon, fried bacon and tomatoes
“I can’t see you for a long, long time”
“I know.”
“You will always be the love in my heart
No-one can take that away.”
“I know.”
The Patronage of Pyjamas…. ©
Brilliant, revered, perfectly dressed in every detail,
Tight control, polished shoes, focused,
Upright, disciplined, lover of life,
Lone sailor of high seas
Tetchy for respect
Mighty and kind in a feudal way.
He was struck down on March Seventeen
Like a punctured plastic doll;
Crumpled, half dressed on the bedroom floor
Shirt half tucked in.
(Like Pompeii – the victims caught in secret detail
Of their brief lives, or like a house
Where demolishers lay bare to the weather
What was once private, just yours and mine.
Which one knows where death will degrade us to prying eyes?)
Limbs useless – odd directions
Face demented, brain silently screaming with pain
Inside the paper skull. Cells dying, quite dead
The patronage of pyjamas
Making only a token gesture at life to please
Those around the bed; they,
Once fighting, now bonded in grim despair
The only face of which lay n the bed
Eyes with no memory, rolling, despairing.
Pyjamas put on him, for him,
They were too busy to see
The buttons out of synch;
Stubble growing, hair a little long, nails unfiled.
“I’m here Dad” No response in the silver mirror of the eyes.
Perhaps a flicker, but no, only deep despair.
He could not comprehend, but somewhere he knew
He had to hang on, but he could not speak.
“All right Harry?” The nurse was cheerful, mindlessly kind
This and that, tidying, sorting “All right Harry?”
He smiled from habit, a child’s knee-jerk habit
Its passport to mother-comfort.
There was a mad desperation growing in his silent plea.
I watched in horror.
Last week it would have been “Sir” – today it was “Harry”
And the patronage that goes with being dressed in pyjamas.
Snow ©
Snow
Still
Falling
How
much
whiter
will the snow
get
when
it’s deep and soft
and covers
you
and
buries you
when it buries you
your eyes are closed
and the white
is black.
We Never Grew Old ©
We never grew old
You and me
Our eyes still met and we travelled
Far away
Held there while the world
Went away
We never grew old
I love you safely, deeply now
Where once the giddiness of
Passion held sway
Now I love you like a river whose
Source you and I will never find
But I fear now the river finding
The sea.
In a Flash ©
By the Brandenburg Tor,
I stare at the bear
In its loose fitting fur
Looking like a man who lost
His weight too fast.
He beckons me to stand by him
He points at the camera, back at me.
Worlds collide, soldiers, guns,
Peter ebbing on the wire,
Watched by his teenage guard,
Night whistles, shadow forms,
Concrete wall, barricades and fear,
But now the Russian soldier
Repeats the mime.
He beckons me to stand by him
He points at the camera, smiles at me.
We are on the same ground as those
Who died for their freedom,
It makes no sense.
A girl beyond the Gate
deep astride something I cannot see
Smiles for the snapshot at which
Her grandchildren will point
And ask ‘What’s that?’
Would she know
That between her sturdy feet
were two shiny cobble stones
Set in a line around the city
For all the world resembling
A Game, a Puzzle, a Pretty Thing,
But that was where it had been - that wall.
Where the pretty line followed had been
The rough midnight concrete that tore
Into the hearts of those who had lain together,
Brought young mothers to hold their babies aloft
For their own mothers
To grasp a picture for their mind.
I looked at the bear, the Russian guard
The grinning teenage girl,
Was it always all just a game?