routine poetry

I woke in my bed
voile curtains adrift
at the open window.
Perfect tea.
Absorbed in a magazine
that never disappoints.

I sat in the garden
to eat breakfast –
a courtyard really,
five metres by three,
maximum, all my
flowers are blooming.

I swept; faint scent
of rose petals,
of sweet peas,
which I picked.

I ran at the seaside.
It was easy on the way out,
due to the wind, but I didn’t realise
this at first and thought I
could run faster.

I wrote my journal with
tea in a thermal cup that
tasted – just – of washing up liquid.
I’d used too-old cherries
for the rock bun.

I bathed in the
bath that used to have an
uninterrupted view of sky,
until my neighbour
moved the television aerial.
I try to pretend it is a bird’s
perch.
It’s not often.

I dealt with email;
at the garden table, to
an old friend, after ten years
distance, at least.
His children are grown up.
Clouds sniffed past
cool breezes.

I ironed sheets and
pastel clothes that
wafted comfort,
listening to Chopin.

I wrote a poem.

missed you

Dear extraplorer,

I’m home. You may not realised it but I have been away a long time.  I have to tell you that everything I have been doing while I have been away has been very important. I have been working all over the world, helping people to grow. I have been writing at home for weeks, finishing off a book I hope will make a difference to the world, and bring more courage and joy and delight (but will anyone ever read it, I’m not sure). And I’ve been keeping hope alive wondering what someone else is doing in a far away place. I have been cooking and eating and seeing friends and doing pilates and running and sleeping. Sometimes I have crept in here to see you and I have wished that I had something to write here. But all my thoughts have been in my book and all my energy has been on planes and trains and in classrooms, and I have wandered around in my heart but not been ready to share what is in there, not yet.

extraplorer, I miss you, but I am here now, and I will be back. Be patient.

x

smell of petrol

Smell of petrol and sea air;
a scrappy dirt-grey rubber dinghy
purchased by my father, secretly,
wildly overdrawn, while at home
our empty cupboards were
filled by kind friends.
Falling off backwards into
barely choppy seas,
hemmed in by boats of plenty.
Three children, bobbing about in
in buoyancy aids, our very
own, wild with
unfettered delight.
Utter freedom,
Shrieks of laughter.
Wild, alive, free.

(If my mother had had her way,
we would have been playing
in the back garden.)