Golden Oldies

Poem from the Cree

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Poem from the Cree

The Cree have retreated from the streets.
Their violinist has taken time out, leaving
his last notes dancing from a street lamp.
Only the Fire-Brave remains, inhaling thick
black oily smoke. He juggles twin balls of fire.

Bones gather together to gather dry dust. Hollow
metal buffalo: a cold wind blew and plucked out
his heart. Five climate controlled pedestrian
walkways cross the prairie, linking building
to building. A glass wheat field shimmers
and tinkles to the rhythm of air conditioning.

The black cow, cast iron hide set free from rust,
ruminates behind its plate glass window.
The night wind whisks white buffalo bones
pale across the sky. Oskana ka asasteki.

With these words, I will leave you, suddenly,
abruptly. A light going out. Now I am here.
Oskana ka asasteki. And now I too am gone.
Comment: Another Golden Oldie, re-discovered. I wrote this in Regina back in the nineties, last century, last millennium … how long ago is that? In our kitchen, an ear of wheat, purchased in the glass wheat field museum, still shelters in its gilded frame, a memento from that trip. So many memories, so many pictures, drifting … just drifting.

Losing It

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Losing It

When you lose it,
whatever it is,
your fingers pick at seams,
hankies, skirts, shirts, jeans,
or strip a label from a bottle,
or crumble bread, or …

There are so many things
you can do,
personal things.

On the table:
a vacant cereal bowl,
a silver teaspoon in a saucer,
an empty teacup
returning your round
moon-face stare.

Comment: I would like to thank everyone who joined in this discussion today (blog, e-mail, and Facebook). The poem transcribed above is the final version, subject to later consideration of course. Earlier versions, with selected comments, are set out below.

1

Losing It

When you lose it
whatever it is
your fingers pick at seams
hankies skirts shirts jeans
or strip a label from a bottle
or crumble bread or

there are so many things
you can do
personal things

on the table
a vacant cereal bowl
a silver teaspoon in a saucer
an empty teacup
returning your round moon stare

your hands
twist and pull
your nails
click together

blunt needles knit
then unpick stitches
trying to unravel
then to repair
this ball of empty air

 Comment: This is a Golden Oldie. It dates from the final illness and passing of my mother, thirty years ago next month. When I wrote it, I wasn’t punctuating my poetry. Nowadays, I prefer punctuation as it guides the reader in terms of the rhythm and flow of words. Leaving it exactly as I wrote it means you, as reader, have to wrestle with the meaning, the order, the pauses, the rhythm. My guess is that this over-complicates the poem. However, it was a difficult time, so the poetry I wrote at that time was also difficult. I will be interested in any comments on the following question: to punctuate or not to punctuate?

Comment from Judy: An out there idea: what if  for Losing it – you ended poem with first stanza?
Reply from Roger: What if, indeed? Then it would need a tweak or two, something like this: the poem changes, but does it gain or lose?

2

Losing It

blunt needles knit
then unpick stitches
trying to unravel
then to repair
this ball of empty air

your hands
twist and pull
your nails
click together

your fingers
pick at seams
hankies skirts shirts jeans
or strip a label from a bottle
or crumble bread or

there are so many things
you can do
personal things

on the table before you
a vacant cereal bowl
a silver teaspoon in a sauce

an empty teacup
returning
your round moon stare

Comment from Jan: Play it again, this time with punctuation. This time I have returned to Judy’s original suggestion, and just placed the last stanza first. Then I have punctuated the poem. Revision and re-creation time: this is fun! I punctuated the above version, then cut it down to the first poem published at the start of this article. Tank you all for the help.

Mice

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Mice

“When the cat’s away, the mice …”
they said, with a knowing wink, but
there was no play and you left me
with an emptiness I couldn’t fill.

It was our daughter’s fourth birthday.
She and I baked a cake, though to tell
the truth, I did little more than watch
and all encouragement from the side
-lines. So competent, she was, I called
her ‘Mother Two’ when she told me to
do all the things she wanted me to do.

Her cake turned out fine. She used
a whole packet of icing sugar, layered
so thick there was more icing than cake.
It was just a bit liquid too, and we could
not be bothered to wait until it cooled.

Drinking hot tea, munching  a slice of
her birthday cake, I sang a line or two
of Happy Birthday and then fell silent
as I wondered what you would be doing.
Later, we fed tiny cake crumbs to the dogs
who sat there, begging, not wanting their
own food, drooling, missing you, just like us,
and all of us waiting for you to come home.

Candles

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Candles

I love the flicker of flame,
the yellow light dancing
shadows on face and plate.
Let’s clear away the dishes
and bring the table back
to its pristine state: grained
wood. Now let’s talk of old
times back home when coal
fires roared and drafts ran
from dark corners, raising
hair on necks and sending
shivers down spines. It’s so
easy to believe in ghosts
when night winds howl
through windows, dogs bark
at nothing, houses are older
than families, and the land
snuggles down to sleep
in its winter blankets.
Beware of the sudden draft
on the oil lamp’s frail chimney:
cold will crack the glass, sending
us to bed by candlelight while high
on corridor walls old folk come
alive and frown down from
their sepia photographs. Cold
and frightened by their restless
afterlives, we shiver in the grave
cloths of our damp beds.

Love the Sorcerer

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Love the Sorcerer

“What sorcery love must be
to make such fools of men.”

There’s more to love than the magic
conjured from chemistry as eye
meets eye or flesh makes secret
contracts, body to body, in free
trade agreements that are remade,
over the dinner table, day after day.

Hands that plug in the kettle,
pour boiling water on the tea,
poach or fry the breakfast eggs,
brown the early-morning toast,
write out the weekly shopping list,
flick the switch on washer and dryer,
peg wet laundry to the outdoor line,
pack the children’s lunch boxes
and get them ready for school
day after day:
such love is truly a magician.

My cartoon speaks
not three words
but a thousand.

Ties that bind:
what more can I say?

What if …?

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What if … ?
Secret Garden 5

Here, between the hedges,
snakes the maze.
We can see the entrance.
We know where the exit lies.
We can even see each other
on our separate paths,
but we can’t come close
unless we break the rules.

Faced by constantly forking paths
we play the “What if … ?” game.
There are no answers,
just a series of trials and errors
where right and wrong
are paths we may, one day,
be forced to choose.

Forced:
for we cannot stand here
motionless.
Sun travels sky,
casts shadows long over
labyrinth and lawn.
Fish rise to flies on the lily
pond and life slips slowly by
as we ponder each decision,
over and over.

Time’s up.
The uniformed keeper
moves toward us.
Jumping low hedges,
we meet, hold hands,
and hurry to the exit.
Behind us,
the keeper smiles.
He rakes our foot
prints from the path.
The gates click closed.

Comment:

Fifty years ago today, Clare arrived in Canada. A friend drove me to Malton Airport, as it was then, and we waited for her to clear Customs and Immigration. While waiting, I played the “What if …?” game. “What if she’s not on the plane? What if she doesn’t like the apartment I’ve rented? What if she no longer likes me? What if she hates it here? What if she wants to go home?” So many questions stormed through my head. There were no answers, just a series of trials and errors where right and wrong were paths we chose; and we chose to get married, to stay, and to make Canada our home. Fifty years later, to the day, the “What if … ?” game goes on. The playing field has changed, the game rules are different, it’s a whole new ball game … yet we still ponder each decision, over and over. We have changed, both of us, over the last fifty years together. Changed, yes, but deep down we are still the same, for some things never change. And we are happy to keep it that way. Oh yes: and we still hold hands.

Wheelbarrows

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Wheelbarrows
Secret Garden #6

Once upon a time,
an inmate at Cefn Coed,
the Swansea lunatic asylum,
walked around the garden
with his wheelbarrow
upside down so nobody
could put anything in it.
Not so crazy, eh?

That’s what you and I are
without each other:
upside down wheelbarrows,
or wheelbarrows
with the one wheel missing,
or wheelbarrows
with the bottom boards gone
and everything falling out.

So here’s my card for you
on Valentine’s Day:
I’ve painted an upside-down
wheelbarrow missing a wheel.

There’s not a flower
or a heart in sight.
Anyone can give hearts
and flowers.
Only someone really special
merits a wheelbarrow,
upside down,
with the missing wheel
long gone.

Lover

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Lover

Love, what little boys
dwell in grown men’s hearts,
struggling to break free.

I want to spend the day in bed,
buried beneath the blankets.
I want to call out for attention.

Will you boil me an egg?
Bring sweet, sugared tea?
Cut my toast into tiny soldiers
so I can march them through
the boiled egg’s yolk?

Upstairs, downstairs, I want
to keep you running all morning.
Will you straighten my blankets?
Will you tuck me in so only
my eyes and nose are showing?
Bring me my dog: let her lie
beside me, warmth and comfort
in her wet tongue washing me.

Suddenly, my world’s caved in
and there’s so much missing.
Lover: be a mother to me.

Secret Garden 4

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Secret Garden 4
Pause for Thought

My love, are you my muse?
Or do I write to amuse myself?
I don’t know any more.

I only know for sure
that every second is precious
here in our secret garden
where we cultivate these creative
moments when the world stands
still and our breathing makes
light of the void within us.

Right side, left side: who cares
what’s dominant when our bodies
are tuned like strings on a lute
and you blend with that blood-
red body space beneath my ribs
until my heart beats to your rhythms,
Princess of Paradise, fair of face.

We must never permit these memories
to fade. All too soon chaos will serve us
its tainted apple, tunneled by surging
worms, dark-serpent heralds fore-
telling death’s angel, the night to come,
and the cold of our ultimate separation.

 

 

Overnight Rain

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Overnight Rain

Do you remember sharing the single
bed in my room in Bristol? It was
not so much the sound of raindrops
falling, but rather that of water gurgling
through gutter and pipe that kept
us awake, turning to each other, rest-
lessly for comfort and dreams.

Downstairs, in our little yellow
house, the dogs are quiet. Upstairs,
rain drums its rhythms on our thin
tin roof and I cannot go to sleep.
The grass will be much too wet
to tackle and scrum: tomorrow I’ll
call around and cancel practice.

Funny how this season winds down
to its end. Tomorrow, no practice.
Then two more games, three maybe,
and a portion of my life will fade
into history. How many forty minute
periods can the human mind retain,
with wins and losses all crammed in?

A strange thing, memory. Even now
I can sing the tunes from the kiddy
shows I watched so many years ago:
Bill and Ben, The Woodentops, Andy
Pandy, Muffin, The Magic Roundabout.
Some nights, in my wildest dreams,
Mr. Plod, the Policeman, still comes

into the tv room with shiny handcuffs.
He leads me to my childhood cell,
high beneath the eaves, and I am
condemned to bed with nesting birds
rustling beneath the roof, rats and mice
scratching, half-heard waters whispering
off-beat lullabies: all oddly disturbing.

Comment:

This is one of my favorite poems from the sequence of love poems I wrote for Clare back in the nineties. It recalls the persistence of memory: how all things are linked throughout our lives and how one thought triggers another. The phenomenon of rain is the starting point for a journey back to a time or times that still remain firmly embedded in the writer’s mind. Memory is indeed a strange thing. I am certain that no two people recall the same incident in exactly the same way. How could they when viewpoint and memory create such wonderful and different links?

One thing I will never forget: the rats and mice in the rafters of our bungalow in Gower. My father and grand-father built it in 1928 and my uncle was the caretaker who took loving care of it throughout his life. They did their best to keep the bungalow vermin free. But we closed it down in September and over the winter all manner of things found their way in. Those first spring nights, until the rafters were cleared again, were full of the sounds of nature’s revolution against humankind.

The other thing I remember very vividly was the lack of running water and electricity. Wood stoves, a fireplace in the dining room, an enormous cast-iron kitchen range, wood and coal burning, on which my grandmother cooked and did the baking. Then there were the cows that wandered through the bungalow field. They would be there, all night, nurtured by the bungalow’s warmth. Many’s the night I wandered out to the outdoors bathroom, the out-house, in fear of a meeting a nocturnal cow. One of my worst memories: walking barefoot through a cow-pat, warm and wet, and the moisture rising up soft and squishy between my toes. Those were the days … the stuff of which memories are made …