December 8th 2013: One Year On

Mum and Us

I don’t often post poems here, always mindful of competitions and submissions, but sometimes life’s too short, and this is for my mum…

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In-between

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Walking winter fields today,

the world all hushed and still,

I wondered was it down to you,

until a high-pitched waspish

Slingsby Firefly whined

across the limpid blue.

.

I admired its acrobatic moves,

its stalls and dives,

its loop-the-loops,

and then remembered

something you once said:

.

during the blitz

the nightly buzz and hum

of Luftwaffe Messerschmitts

became quite comforting –

it was the hours when skies

were hushed and still,

the in-between,

that everybody feared,

.

and I remembered

how accustomed I became

to drones – the warming fan,

the bleep of monitors,

the arm-band squeeze,

the rhythmic white-noise-blues

beneath the rattle-n-wheeze

of your pneumonic lungs

.

and, as the pause

between your breaths

grew longer and more frequent,

I would hold mine, waiting

for when yours began again.

.

Now, exactly one year on,

I see that’s how it is:

.

It isn’t what we’ve heard

that wakes us in our beds –

the in-between,

the white-noise space,

the what’s no longer there

is what we dread.

.

 

A small thought…

Yes, these small thoughts are coming thick and fast…

You can read my first ever published short story here.

Scroll through until you find: The Dress. 

You’ll discover shedloads of other loveliness on the way, and perhaps you might even pause to read my  poem: Red and Green.

Enjoy!

 

 

Wednesday 19th December 2012

Ma and Pa were married 57 years this October 1st. Almost reached the Diamond. Within a sniff of it. A life time together. More than mine, at least.

He died on October 15th, she on December 7th and after an always and a forever of knowing they were there, suddenly they’re not. I’m an orphan and I don’t yet know how that should feel. Is it the right word for someone of my age? I’m not sure, but it really feels like the right word tonight.

There was a good turn out for Pa’s funeral. It was a celebration. We had fireworks afterwards and a bit of a do. (It was November 5th after all.) He was a very charismatic man, easy to love and consequently everyone loved him – strangers on trains, troubled souls, co-workers and colleagues, the postie, local shopkeepers, banktellers, neighbours, the doctors and nurses that looked after him in his last weeks, all his friends and his family, both close and extended.

Mum’s funeral is scheduled for the end of this week. Even the timing is shit. Everyone made an effort for Pa, but with Ma it’s so near Christmas and she was more… complicated… And I don’t think anyone is going to come. I wish it was like a party you could cancel and postpone when you realise you’ve stupidly arranged it for the same night that England plays Germany in the world cup final and they’re absolutely a dead cert. Or the night we’re scheduled to find life on Mars – live. Or the night the world ends, just as the Mayan’s prediction, only we know it’s going to happen for sure and it’s going to be televised – in real time.

Life’s an unfair twat of a thing to get through sometimes and it seems death is too.

I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I’m still scared shitless Ma will somehow see that no one came and she’ll feel like no one cared and that no one loved her.

Thursday 8th November 2012

It’s been an age…
My father became ill. He was admitted to hospital. My mother came to live with me. She needs 24/7 care pretty much. Then my mother became ill too. They both have heart failure. They’re both 84. She was admitted to hospital also. But not the same one. Then she came home to live with me again. And then my father died. In between my father’s cremation and his funeral my mother became unwell again. I took her to the doctor’s repeatedly. They didn’t listen and they didn’t DO anything. And then she had a fall. Now she’s in hospital again. She missed my father’s funeral. It was beautiful. I hope she’ll become well enough to join us, in some way, once more.
I’ve not been able to write. I’ve not been able to think. I’ve not been able to live.
When I last looked at this blog I had well over three hundred followers. I see now that I have only 101. I’m not sure if I mind or not. I think, maybe, I do, but I can’t change it. Sometimes life takes over from everything else and you just have to accept it, and get on with it.

Here are two poems I wrote just before they were both hospitalised. I wrote these while on a writer’s retreat in Spain with the wonderful TLC and my parents were both uppermost in my mind.

 

Voyagers

Then she tried to anchor him –

his bold and brazen bulk

buffetted and broken

by repeated storms

of his own making,

 

dealt with the flotsam

that rose on the tide

of each new wreckage,

 

catalogued damage,

instigated repairs,

raised his standard before

launching him once more,

 

turning her gaze inwards,

unable to witness him drifting

so swiftly from the safety

of their small harbour,

 

the fear he would not return

running deeper than the dread

of his next reckless voyage.

 

Now, he tries to tether her –

her frail and fragile frame

tossed by night-squalls

awakening each day

a little further from the shore.

 

 

 

I Must Learn

I must learn to say goodbye

to a woman I have always known,

a body lithe and lean,

a spine of toughened steel,

a wit so sharp it keens.

 

I must learn to say hello

to a smile that spreads with ease,

settles in a grey-green gaze,

flushes softened cheeks,

spills to words that please.

 

I must learn to take my leave

of a woman I have always loved,

learn instead to greet

this saccarine imposter,

this child, this thief.

 

 

How things have changed since. How this is a record of how I felt, right then, with no knowledge of what was to come. How must I move forward…

Slight

 
 
 
She came up for air the night you were born,  
black leeching from under into the sloe-dark of over,  
one small star reflected in each punctuated eye.  
 
So small were you, she had not felt you in utero.  
So viscous were you, she had not felt your birth.  
One small cough, it took: no sweat, no act of will.  
 
So dark were you, her blind eyes did not see,  
but she smelt, then she felt the scratch scratch scratch  
of your fine, pink bird-feet hands on her fine, pink bird-feet feet,  
 
popped you in her apron pocket where she hoped  
you would be safe, where she hoped she could protect you;  
dirty work, all this tunnelling, and everyone likes to be clean.  
 
You fed on the scraps that tumbled from her mouth,  
picked at them daintily, held them in your delicate grasp.  
And now you sleep together in that cold, rust-toothed clasp.