Memories

Dandelion Flowers

IMG_0174

Dandelion Flowers

My flowers fly bright flags as if trooping their colors
for Her Majesty, the Queen of England. They drink water
dosed with chemicals to keep them healthy and alive,
refusing to fade, flourishing in their vase on the table.

They withstand both sunshine and shade, neither wilting
nor fainting under the hot summer sun. In this house
there dwells no queen, just a domestic pussy cat
called Princess Squiffy who knows she may look at a Queen.

“Your Majesty,” say Cape Daisies as the pussy cat passes.
“Ma’am,” say Peonies and Pansies, bending knees, bobbing heads.
Outside my window, the garden fills up with onlookers,
still green Tomatoes, Clematis, and a tall Hollyhock.

A multitude of weeds crowds onto the lawn. Dandelions
standing splendiferous, waiting to take plebeian selfies,
for plebs, they are, vox populi, people’s voice, people’s choice.

Some ancient god must have loved them very much,
for they are ubiquitous, and totally indestructible.
That said, you must never trust them in your flower bed.

Book Burning

IMG_0192

Book Burning

A sharp-edged double sword,
this down-sizing,
this clearing out of odds and ends.

Library shelves emptying.
books disappearing, one by one.

So many memories
trapped between each page,
covers, dust-bound now,
dust to dust and books to ashes.

Sorrowful, not sweet, each parting,
multiple losses, characters
never to be met again,
except in dreams.

Heroes, thinkers, philosophers, poets,
their life work condemned to conflagration.

Alpha: such love at their beginnings.
Omega: such despair,
with Guy Fawkes celebrations
the means to their ends.

Word-fires:
the means of forging
those book worlds that surrounded us.

Bonfires:
the means to end them.

Steadfast, the book-fires,
flames fast devouring

all but an occasional volume
snatched, burnt fingers,
from the flames.

Fire Storm

IMG_0038

Fire Storm

Yesterday, it was difficult to breathe.
We inhaled dust and ashes as smoke
from forest fires scuttled towards us,
carried piggy-back on a strong west wind.

Today, the wind herds clouds into aerial castles,
pinnacles and pyramids piled upwards,
tall ships’ canvases painted dark, thundery,
raised by fierce wedges thrust beneath them,
lofting them into darkening skies.

Beyond a certain height, water becomes ice.
Particles group together. Hail stones form,
small at first, growing ever larger
until the very air can no longer bear
their weight. Golf ball big,  they tumble down
the sky’s steep ladder and fall to earth.

The dry drum roll of distant thunder rumbles.
A scissor-slash of light shreds black skies.
An executioner’s hay wain rolls towards us,
a runaway train destined to tear our lives
apart. It leaves us helpless, clamoring for safety,
our world torn apart, our earth sore wounded.

Death scythes away downing rich and poor alike.
Who now knows which way thrown dice will fall?
The dye’s sharp edge, once cast, cuts like a blade.
Hailstones clatter, battering us down.

 

Love at First Sight

IMG_0181

Love
… sometimes comes at first sight

A teenage apprentice with a little plastic badge
bearing her name asked me to reveal my birthdate.
This apparently confirmed that I knew who I was,
so she bound my arm with a thick rubber thong.

My veins swelled up, long thin leeches, slowly fattening.
She told me to make a fist and pouted as she probed
with slender fingers, feeling in vain for a fresh vein
from which to extract, then bottle the necessary blood.

I watched my body’s sap pumping out in tiny, sad spurts
driven by that tired flesh-and-blood machine known as
my heart. Drip by febrile drip my blood accumulated.
The young girl smiled with youth’s perfect lips and teeth.

My heart was a time-bomb ticking beneath her fingers.
I dreamed for an instant of walking upright and free,
a stranger in the paradise of a long-promised land.

Then she handed me my gifts: a throw-away plastic potty,
three disposable spatulas, and an air-dry sample card,
with written instructions, date stamped, bearing my name.

Loss

Books

Loss of …
… something just beyond my fingertips
that I can’t quite remember

By the time I remembered your name,
I had forgotten your face.
Then I couldn’t recall why
I wanted to talk to you.

I trace dark landmarks
on the back of scarred hands:
blood maps,
unremembered encounters,
dust covered photographs,
grey, grim, not belonging in any album.

At night I cruise among islands,
emerald green against sapphire seas.
Why did I never visit so many places?

Golden sand trickles through
night’s hour glass as stars, planets
dance in Platonic skies.

My memory fails.
I wake each morning
unaware of where I have been.
I track the sails of drifting ships,
white moths.

I think I have caught
them in overnight traps,
but they fly away each morning
in dawn’s forgiving light.

I give chase with pen and paper,
fine butterfly nets for wild thoughts
waiting to be caught,
then tamed.

Lost Angel

IMG_0055

Lost Angel

One day she was there,
the next day she was not.

She slipped through our fingers
like water or fine sand,
here one day
and gone the next

We looked away for a moment,
and when we looked back
she had disappeared.

The wind whispers secrets
that are multiplied
by grass tongues
wagging on deserted dunes.

The wind thinks she left us
to join the children
who play hide and seek
on empty September beaches.

“Hush now,” says the wind,
“if you make a sound
the children will know you are here.

They will slide through clefts in the rocks
and hide in silence, waiting
until you too have disappeared.”

Comment: Another Golden Oldie, this one from my book All About Angels. I wrote All about angels in homage to Rafael Alberti’s book, Sobre los angeles, one of my favorite poetry books in Spanish. My angels are not Alberti’s angels. How could they be when his angels are Spanish and mine are Welsh and Canadian? Do you really  believe in angels, you ask. Well, you’ll never know, because I’ll never tell you. That said, I did write a book about them.

Tigger’s Return

Avila 2008 003

Tigger’s Return
aka
Recrossing the Rainbow Bridge

I opened the car door. He ran across the parking lot,
jumped into the back seat. “Where have you been?” I asked.
He thumped his great tail, sniffed, and licked the hand I held out.

We drove back home with his head thrust between the seats,
his paw on my shoulder as he licked my ear and my face.
I pulled into the garage and let him out of the car.

He raced to the road, surveyed the neighborhood,
and drilled an invisible hole into the snow. I whistled.
He ran to the door, whimpering impatiently.

I opened it and he bounded in. “You’re home now,” I said.
He ran to the cat’s bowl, lapped some water, scoffed her kibble,
and curled up under the table in his usual place.

At night, he lies beside me, a fluffy spoon carved into
my body’s curve. Each morning he walks through the kitchen
and doesn’t make a sound. The cat bristles and hisses.

He’s sitting beside me now, head on my knee, as I type.
I haven’t told anyone that he’s back. They’d think I was mad.
It’s good to have him here even when nobody else can see him.

Dawn at KIRA

IMG_0021

Dawn
at
KIRA

1

A fiery wedge, fierce beneath
black-capped clouds, alive
the firmament with light,
breaking its waves over woods,
waters, tranquil the bay, grey,
yellow-streaked, then blue,
the new day dawning,
driving night away,
false shadows fleeing.

2

To rock this new born babe,
to swaddle it in a cloak of cloud,
disguised for a moment its promise,
nature nurturing heart and mind,
filling the flesh with memory’s
instantaneous flash breaking its light
into the dark where no light shone,
fearful, the dream world,
gone now, dwindling, as day light
shafts its arrowed flight.

3

How thoughtful My Lady
 who placed me here,
at this desk,
at this window,
 at this moment of time.

Glorious, this day-break:
words no justice can do
to peace and light,
this early morning,
filtering sunlight
through the waking mind,
relighting the fires
within the heart,
and glory
a word’s throw away
outside this window.

The Return

IMG_0087 (2)

The Return

This time last year I returned to KIRA for a visit after my one month artist’s residency. I have been back several times since, but each return is always more difficult than the last. Memories are golden and the reality of the return is never quite the same. Here’s the link to last year’s post on my first return to KIRA: KIRA Return July 2017 .

You can never walk in the same river twice (Heraclitus). This is what makes the return always so difficult. It is like the spoken word that, once spoken, can never be reclaimed.

I guess the return is more difficult for some people than for others. There are so many places to which I have never returned: Cardiff, Gower, and Swansea (Wales), Bath, Bournemouth, Bristol, Christchurch, Frome, Gloucester, Hengistbury, and Wick (England), Oaxaca (Mexico), Avila, Bilbao, Elanchove, Madrid, and Santander (Spain).

These place names scratch memory’s surface, no more, for there are places within those places, also never to be seen again, save in old photos and dreams. Yes, my dreams are tinged with sadness, the sadness of remembering. There is also the great joy of having been there, of having borne witness to this moment and that. Time and memories slip through grasping fingers like water or sand. The ephemeral: it will never last, even though we catch it for a moment in a photo or a verse.

 

Daybreak

IMG_0018

Daybreak

… early morning sunshine
creepy-crawly spider leg rays
climbing over window and wall
my bed-nest alive to light
not night’s star twinkle
but the sun’s egg breaking
its golden yolk
gilding sheet and pillow
billowing day dreams
through my still sleepy head …

… the word feast festering
gathering its inner glimpses
interior life of wind and wave
the elements laid out before me
my banquet of festivities
white the table cloth
golden the woodwork’s glow
mind and matter polished
and the sun show shimmering
its morning glory …