Subtle happy

The afternoons are slow, nothing to do

between the end of morning and four o’clock

a kite swings a dead rat on the hot tin of the roof

or it’s a vulture, a swifter winged hawk

and it circles slow, breaking the normal cycles

the sun loses the wind in his sails by and by

no matter how slow the hawk chooses to fly

a lone eyelash falls, lured somewhere off the lid

and someone plucks it off and places it on my fist

now shut your eyes and blow hard and make a wish

but I can’t think of anything however hard I try

however tight I squeeze my closed eyes

nothing left to wish for, no secrets yet to hide

– a subtle sort of happy that can make one cry.

No writing it as it comes this week, a slightly older poem I wrote as I was thinking of my school holidays  a long, long time ago, as we waited for the offspring's school to close a few weeks earlier.  Home leave is always intense, and I have got by on other years by scheduling and planning ahead.  This year something inside the brain rebelled at that, so... no advance posts.  And it is about to get 'intenser and intenser' as Alice might have said.  Not only did I not schedule my holiday posts, but I have committed to an online creative writing course, which fits neatly into the home leave dates like they were made for each other! What was I thinking of?? But now that I've signed up, I can't leave well alone either, so this whole vacation is going to be one long juggling act performed by someone who is a committed single-tasker.  Well that's just an euphemism, half-tasker is more like the truth!! We shall see....

Hope you are having a great summer/season of fun and relaxation wherever you are. 

Speech Day

The lit up stage is way down front

the last row’s cramped, no leg space
maybe an afterthought just meant
for children, or those who came in too late

 

to find a spot in the coveted aisles

and I should fit, but I don’t;
the names are called of each child
and each one carries something to flaunt -
deepens a father’s applause, a mother’s smile

 

some things my son you’ll learn from books

others you won’t find on your page
you’ll have to go elsewhere to look
the speeches are made on the stage
the awards given, small and huge
markers of childhood, and coming of age

 

a sibling sits filming an event

with shaky hands and a steady pride
a polished routine draws to an end
then you are called to collect your prize
you walk down, gawky angled, unkempt
hair spiked, beautiful innocence
looking back once to catch my eyes.




 

Things fall apart and into place; and not always a comfortable place

I’d never thought about him till he died

without public drama at eighty two;
I’d carried his books tucked into my side
and flicked the pages as schoolgirls will do
and puzzled a little over the context
the abstruse climate and customs portrayed
and nothing in it bluster or defensive
a firm outline to the ancient and complex -
or so I chose to hear, so the teachers said
and it was enough to pass the exam, and live.

 

Sometime during the years that he wrote

I stopped being a schoolgirl, and I grew
my hair out, and even more remote
from nuances, and the immediate milieu.
The books stayed thrust somewhere aside
their pages rarely handled and splayed open
their spines slow faded, tight, still intact
their seeping fame spread slowly worldwide;
but the connect snapped with them way back then
and beyond that no memories, no impact.

 

It takes many random years to gauge

the words of a writer read in early youth
to reckon the deadweight of an unturned page
of letting a book dissolve in its own truth,
lie dusty and forgotten on the shelf.
The news streams its way around the world
and death is a sudden spike of interest
stabbing time, a leap across the wide gulfs
of my understanding, sharpening what’s dulled
but little point now that his hand's at rest.