Humor

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.

 

 

Ice Pack

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Ice Pack

Downstairs at 3 AM with frozen French Fries
stuffed down the back of my jammies and
tightly pressed between chair back and spine.

Yesterday, when the pains in my lower back
ran rampant and I was too stiff to bend,
I lay on my back in bed, begging you for help.

Seventy-two hours flat on my back with my feet
on a chair did nothing to improve my temper.
I thought of my mother lying hopeless,

of my father being dressed, washed, shaved,
cared for as if his return to a second child-
hood was accompanied by a necessary

humiliation, a lowering of every inhibition
that gives a man his manhood and allows him
a minimum of dignity. Lying there, helpless,

my feet stretched out before me, I saw my
future as if it were an endless pack of ice
barring the horizon, groaning when I moved.

I must learn to lean on the closest shoulder.
This is really love, my love, your gentle hands
pulling sock over foot and ankle, lacing my shoes,
standing by my side, letting me lean on your arm,
refusing to discard me in my time of trouble.

Secret Garden 3

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Secret Garden 3

Good times, bad times, sun and rain:
only the robin knows what passes
through my mind at times like these.
Head on one side, looking at fresh-
turned earth for wriggling worms to take
to his new nest under the leaves, he’s not
telling anyone anything. So why should I?

“Once I had a secret love,”  but secrets
aren’t secrets when the heart is worn
on the sleeve or a shining ring adorns
the loved one’s finger. I remember
the warmth flooding through heart
and mind as I prepared for our secret
meetings. The Silver Gift Shop in Bath:
many’s the afternoon I waited there
while you finished your shift in Boot’s.

Then off to the Monk’s Retreat for sausage,
egg, and chips served in the frying pan
at the table: “Careful, my dears, it’s very hot.”
The Robin nods his head and winks a knowing eye.

There are voices in the garden. We lie
close to the ground hoping we won’t be seen.
Your state of undress is something
you’d want to hide from your mother,
even now, after a quarter of a century.
Would you encourage your daughter to make love
out of wedlock? We did. There: the secret’s out.

At least, I thought it was a secret,
but now, as I sit in the classroom
watching pair lovers, side by side,
I read so many signs I once thought
unreadable: sudden warmth in a smile,
a blush, eyes locking then looking
quickly away, a change in a person’s
breathing, hands touching lightly,
loves messages flashed swiftly
from eye to eye, along the secret pathway
that unites and ignites two souls.

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Anniversary Poem

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Anniversary Poem

“Hoy cumple amor en mis ardientes venas
veinte y dos años, Lisi, y no parece
que pasa día por el.”

Francisco de Quevedo

“For twenty-two years my captive heart has burned.”
Christ, what crap that is. The only heart burn
I have known came from your cooking: African
Nut Pie, as detailed in the cookbook I bought you
for Christmas on our first wedding anniversary,

remember? And do you remember the ride to Kincardine
on the train? A dozen coaches left Toronto and one
by one they were shunted away until only you and I and an
elderly man ploughed through the snowstorm in the one
remaining carriage. Deeper and deeper piled the snow.

You looked through the window and started to weep:
“What have I done?” you cried in shock and grief. Outside:
Ontario lake-effect snow. Headlights from two waiting
cars lit up the station. We drove to the homes of people
you didn’t know, third generation cousins of mine.

You’re the only bride I know who was carried to church
in the arms of the total stranger giving her away
in place of the father she never knew. The snow lay six
foot deep (eighteen inches fell on your wedding day
alone) and you, with a white wedding dress and black boots

up to your knees. Cousin Walter carried you to the altar:
how they laughed as they chanted that old song to us.
Later, when they tapped the glasses and fell silent
at the meal, I didn’t know what to do. And you, my love,
standing up, kissing me, married after six days in Canada.

S.W.A.L.K.

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S.W.A.L.K.

Where did all the sighs go?
The love that would last forever?
The tears that stained the letters?
The everlasting? The undying?

The eternally yours? The initials
we wrote on the back of envelopes?
SWALK, OXO, PHTR, RLN, ILYE,
ICWTKY, or was it ICWTMLTY?

I forget so much. But I do remember
how the windows steamed up
in your mother’s car when we sat
together for hours with nowhere to go

and nobody around to disturb us.
Combe Dingle, Wotton-Under-Edge,
Weston-Super-Mare: these were our
favorite places, do you remember them?

Just being together was more than enough
to keep us happy. We don’t hold hands
anymore. It’s not something grown-ups do,
especially in front of the children or the late

night news. Nor do football games inspire
passion and send us into ecstasies the way
the white spot did as it lit up your mother’s
TV, with us alone, and her asleep in bed.

Comment:
There are so many things packed into this poem, old things, perishable things, memories that will vanish, if they haven’t vanished already. Who now remembers writing regular letters, not e-mails or e-cards? Who remembers sealing them, perhaps with a loving kiss? Who remembers rushing to the front door as the postman pushes letters through the letter-box to see if the beloved has written back? If you didn’t go to a boarding school, you will know nothing about the 11:00 am break when we rushed back to our houses to go through the mail and see who had written. I’ll never forget those perfume-soaked envelopes I received from the local village girls. Nor will I forget a wrathful house-master, my scented letters stuffed up under his nose, sniffing at my letters like a bloodhound tracking me down.