Beds for Writers

It’s no surprise I should
dream so many dreams
when I sleep in beds
where many dreamers
have slept – their images
free as imago butterflies,
their poems, precise as
Greek pots and their stories
rising like Escher’s staircases
all invade my own word-filled
head – but why, last night,
did the blue bus, full of people,
tip into the river, why did
I know for sure, I would drown?

Ty Newydd, 23rd November 2010

Visit

The dog’s excited, whimpering,
pouncing on the upstairs landing –
I see what looks like a leaf blown in,
a flat brown object on the carpet –
can’t understand her excitement –
until I retrieve it and the flat brown
opens to reveal a thorax, antennae,
quivering colours of a red admiral butterfly
alive and fluttering in my clumsy hand –
a gift of summer flowers on a November day,
a tiny oriental carpet of vibrant red silks
in Cornwall’s damp and grey –
a moment of illumination in a dark hour –
all I can do is release it from an upstairs window –
hoping it will hibernate, not perish in the cold –
it was the gift of a moment, just a moment.

1st draft from Hilary Farmer’s Lapidus Cornwall workshop


18th November 2010





Prague

Death is always in the background

in this city where graveyards rise

to meet a low sky scarred with steeples
and towers, the past is a castle high on hill

to get there, we pass sighing over sluggish
water watched by death’s statues and sadness -

here and then gone, like my younger self
visiting a city that no longer exists,

like us, briefly in that old hotel
on Wenceslas Square, before the something

that held us died – yes, death’s here like the rain
dotting the river with her little black dots.

Reprise

Summer seemed over
gales, wind and rain here to stay -

until this almost-September
morning rolled in golden and bird-filled -

early thrushes catching their worms
gleam of turning blackberries

making way for blue bloom of sloes
blue sky scoured of clouds touching

blue sea and scattered white wings
of little boats, sailing again suddenly

on the waveless water and so much dew
on the grass, bathing my feet

heavy dew, drenching the grass
baptising my end of summer feet.

29th August 2010

Inventory - Kitchen

Five dinner plates, white with blue patterns
love their arrangement on the table

The green plate with its patterns of birds
holds the frittata blissfully

Grapes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries
have an end of summer song and sing it sweetly

Cheese smoked on the Roseland is some way
from the French cheese oozing its aromas –
but they both delight in being cheese

Rosemary bread is prickly and oily -
we need that too.

Someone’s brought ‘herring in fur coats’
gleaming beetroot, merry spring onion

at one with the ‘salat iz crabov’ – all claws
and cold-water Northernness, looking for light

Oh and there’s bits of this and that –
frivolous spirals of pasta, pureed apples

in floral tea cups, one saying ‘Mother’ ...
And it’s all part of our laughter,

our woman-ish talk, our love for each other

Coming Home To Poetry

Summer’s been calling me outside
to walk her paths, smell her flowers
hear her birds, love her sea, explore
the whole world that’s her garden

prose invited me to visit her big country
where I can drive for miles
explore the hinterland, get myself lost
hang out in city bars, chatter to strangers

but today I hear poetry’s small voice
saying Don’t forget me ...
today I’m visiting that house in my head -
those corners and cupboards need
cleaning, a light held up to the cobwebs.


25th August 2010

Falling in Love Again

Spring, at last, returns to Cornwall

Her drabness was boring me

her grey dresses day after day

until this afternoon’s gowns of blue
celandines strewn through her hair

chaffinches and skylarks landing
on her shoulders, wild garlic

shooting out little white stars and scent
as I kiss the ground with my boots –

falling in love again – how could I
have not seen her beauty? How can

I not fall rapturous in the spring grass
drown in the wide blue sky,

slide silently onto her shores in obeisance
like the swans on the beach at Durgan?

Gold

Answering the call of early sun

they grow where they will,
turn their faces upwards
and smile at the sky –
showing me how simple it could be.

Silver

Like shaken metal

like a polished mirror
the sea is where wind
meets water, water yields
to moon and I simply watch.

Tulips

Tulips

give us lessons in dying

the beauty of sink, drop

fall, every day they move

closer to loss approaching

from another angle, testing

what's left of their light

always beautifully tulip.

Flowers

My birthday, house full

of flowers and cards

each one a small thing

together reminders

that great love is made

of many small things.

Marmalade

I thought I had nothing to show

for January's long dark days

but then remembered the house

was full of the scent of oranges,

that I'd stirred bitterness and sweetness

together, as grandmother always did -

the full jars gleam with light and memories.

Flame

Stippled with flame
the great fish of the sky
flashes its silver-pink belly

it’s a new day, again, luminous
we, it and the fish swim, sun-
dappled across the wide ocean of sky.

16th February 2010

From This Height

after Tony Hoagland



... of my second floor bedroom
window, I confront the clock
on the church, its round face
watches my waking
spies on my sleeping –

no, I don’t deserve the pleasure
of this simple rented house
overlooking the wren-filled
sycamores, the wide water
with its busy boats and castles

nor do I deserve the pain
of this loneliness, lasting
til dawn, when light slips in
creeping over the supple sea,
drawn by the slow clock of the sun –

everyday, as I climb the hill
behind my house, up granite
steps, over the old cemetery
where history’s bodies lie
lost and unmarked, I commit

an act of forgetting the sadness
I let the morning make me new
celebrate the wide world around
me as the church clock chimes
its first hour of the day, below.

Sometimes

... the world is so grey

and so sad. Sometimes,
the tree weeps whole rivers
grieving for her lost leaves.

13th January 2010

Music

Music

Today’s clouds were music
a melody in a key I’d never heard -
a song called New Day
on the staves of sky - its refrain

‘Pink, Blue, Grey
and Colours You Can’t Name.’

11th January 2010

Winter, Falmouth

Surfers, tadpole-black and slick
slide easily towards land on freezing sea –
free as fish, they tumble in the waves -

while I slip and stumble on the icy path,
tentative like the silver light tracing
the fields, frilling the scallop-edged waves.

Swanpool, 7th January 2010

The Same Old

Every day, the same walk with the same dog
Every day, the same headland, sea and sky
Every day, the same sun rising

Today, the dog and I are a day older
Today, the sky's smeared with pink, the sea's a pearl
Today, the sun is a red wound on the horizon, bleeding.

First Day

New Year’s Morning

I didn’t bring my camera today -
wanted to be in the brightness

of sea-sparkle, sky-sparkle
light touching everything -

let my heart leap like the Dalmatian dog
jumping the waves, over and over -

the black dots of his coat
are small puddles of darkness

he’s carrying in and out of the water
dousing them in diamonds of spray.


1st January 2010