poem

someone I don’t know well

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Betty

Scoured by grey metal catering pots
and pans.  Grown by the
runner beans incessantly.

Worn in by ninety-two
pairs of size four slippers
(latterly, velvet).

Lit by infinite log fires
sussex beech and oak
no longer chopped by him.

Read by books, new, secondhand,
or borrowed, suspended by
an embossed
red leather bookmark.

Captured by photos of an
African safari, Andrew’s family
from Australia and ‘our dear friend’
Nils from Norway.

Fed by a marathon of meals,
fish finger breakfast butties,
roast lamb (fat included),
homemade fruitcake on
forget-me-not plates.

Pinned neatly into position
by a slowly diminishing
grey-white bun.

Loved.

Note: This poem is from the ‘poetry retreat series’.  We read ‘On hesitating to depict my grandmother’ by Gillian Allnutt (amongst others) and were asked to write a poem about someone we didn’t know well enough in six minutes.

Waiting

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I am waiting
for spring to emerge
from the pavement
laid for
work, business, invoicing,
fee discussions and
constant demand.

I am waiting
for cracks to widen
suddenly and maybe
even causing
horror filled with wonder
as I fall in-
side out.

I am waiting
for you and for them,
and for looking back
bewildered on
the past order,
full of tired and
worn-in happiness.

Note: This poem is from the ‘poetry retreat series’.  We read ‘I am Waiting’ by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and were asked to write a poem in six minutes about something we were waiting for. This is unfinished and I would like to go back to it and bring the image of ‘breaking through’ into greater clarity and power.

portrait – writers

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Fourteen writers,
heads bent, pens
scratching, grey hair,
blond, dyed (mine, that is),
imaginations aflutter, fleeting
competition resolutely pushed
aside. Faint mewing outside
‘shut up, Ted’.  Is our four
minutes up yet, we thought,
breathless.

Note: This poem is from the ‘poetry retreat series’.  We read ‘The Bean Eaters’ by Gwendolyn Brooks, noted the Van Gogh-like style and tone, and were asked to writer our own painting-poems in four and a half minutes.  As my first attempt ‘portrait‘ took only one and half minutes, I spent another two on this.

portrait

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one child much smaller,
party skirt, top with
‘3’ and dried tomato
sauce (is it?) lags
lags behind, pulls
herself up, tries
to follow, eek, slips.
She is no match for her
brother (batman outfit  –
probably pyjamas) and his
new shoes.

Note: This is from the ‘poetry retreat’ series.  As our first exercise we read ‘Subject Matter’ by W. Hart-Smith and were asked to write poem that paints a picture in four an a half minutes (this took one and a half, I think). 

washed up

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She set sail
for distant shores
from home.
She stayed indoors.

And all the world
unfurled in that
small hand and
took shape as
large as life could be.

Her poetry, afire
set out to sea.
Glass bottled
tears adrift on
waves of time.

And laughter too,
And beauty, loss
and tiny sparks
of tender feeling
rolled up and tied

with lines of pen
and ink
bobbed as currents
pushed it to and fro

and so to me, in
my small hand,
a visitor on distant
shores where she
would never tread.

Where Emily would
never go, her
poems went
instead.