the poetry of outfits

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Occasional blogger – bobble hat, brogues,
pointy-out skirt,
grey tights,
red headphones.

Christmas auntie of
small children – jeggins
(don’t tell anyone), soft top, long
cardigan and (still) Uggs.

Urban gardener in a hurry –
shorts with tights, wellingtons
a parka and pink gardening
gloves with polka dots.

Runner in disguise – dawn-coloured
vibram five fingers (yay!),
black thermal tights (too hot),
blue long sleeve top and
large white plastic sunnies.

Businesswoman with recently
adopted ‘flat shoe’ policy – suit
dress and jacket,
New York snow scene
silk scarf (for winter) and
silver pointy flats.

Writer on the weekend –
stripey slogan top
‘believe’, cream
coatigan with enormous
sleeves and collar
(cosy), grey suede boots.

Woman pretending
to be French – pencil
midi-skirt (striped again,
horizontal), light grey
cashmere jumper, gold
zigzag scarf, just so,
peacoat, maybe Le Monde.

Faux-nonchalant
party-goer – black silk
tracksuit bottoms, gold
lamé linen vest,
leather flip-flops,
enormous studded
clutch.

The endless poetry of
outfits has possessed me;
(spring christening of
new friend’s son, grey
print dress…)
how can I escape? I can’t stop
thinking about
(grown-up beginner
ballerina – …)
the poetry of outfits.

This will have to be
‘Part One.’

(What’s yours?)

 

 

Winter walk – question

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When I wrote ‘Winter walk‘ poem, I tried it with a final stanza to answer the poem’s questions. But then I could not tell if I had closed down the poem too much.

Here is the stanza I wrote, so you can judge for yourself.

If I make the world
stop for a moment,
and listen,
I can hear the sap
stirring, feel the
explosions of the
tiniest seeds,
almost reach out and touch
the promise of spring.

winter walk

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The trees are dying
Leaves yellow, brown,
drop, rot on paths,
trodden underfoot.

The air is dank,
Sullen November
skies weigh
wearily on the eye.

Passers-by,
preoccupied,
gaze into middle
distance, dodge
all greetings.

The birds have
given up and gone
south; anywhere
but here.

Is this what my
summer beauty has
come to?
Dare I ever hope
for more?

 

wild night run

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We were wild women
that night, when the
trees waved, whistled
and wove their spectral
shadows in the night.

Howling, a gale
streamed past our
spindly lines. We called
out to each other, another
runner shrieked in my ear.
I jumped higher than you
might think.

Dark, though only
early, but blackest
winter made the
lamplight dim. A
late-walked dog a tripping
hazard that might prove fatal;
the head-torch glare
seared my night-sight.

‘Whole trees in motion,
effort needed to walk
against the wind.’  All
ordinary cares cast
sideways; office politics,
lacklustre lovers, let
loose and hurled about.

An eye, a calm, a
freedom borne of
drama outside the
domestic sphere.
We were wild and
free, we ran faster,
we ran
like the wind.

 

Note: The quotation in the third stanza is the description of ‘land conditions’ for number 7 on the Beaufort scale.  This scale has captivated me since I learnt it as a little girl.  Now I realise this is because it is all poetry:  ‘Large branches in motion. Whistling heard in overhead wires. Umbrella use becomes difficult. Empty plastic bins tip over.’ (number 6, but it wasn’t dramatic enough for the poem).

poetic history

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Every now and then you catch one of those moments, flitting about tiny as a dust mote, but golden and shivering off a tiny glimmer that you can ignore or chase.

I caught it.

There is a poet friend of mine and knowing him has helped me to realise that I might be a poet too.  Maybe one day.  He writes poetry and about poetry, introducing me both intentionally and not to poem-mirrors that make me wonder.  Perhaps I can do/am doing this?  These moments are a kind of equation, a logic that appeals to my maths-geek brain.  If fragment of poem (x)  = fragment of poem (y) and x is the work of a ‘real poet’, is perhaps y the work of a ‘real poet’.

Reading my friend’s new book (about poems, of course), I come across this thought.  When was my first poetry experience?  In fact, what is my poetic history?  These questions have literally never occurred to me before.

(What is more, these questions answer the matter I pondered in happy birthday extraplorer:  whether to write about creative living.  The answer, I think, is not to write about how to do it, but to discover more about my own creativity.)

So another avenue of extraploration opens up…

To answer the first question (and to hop over nursery rhymes, songs, my parents’ banter), my earliest poetic memory is not of reading a poem, but writing one. This makes me think that I must have read one, otherwise how would I have known what a poem was? But it seems that the poem at the heart of my own poetry has vanished.  What is left is a memory of creating tiny poetry books, maybe an inch and a half square, hand-illustrated and stapled, with rhymes like this:

My mummy is very kind
when you’re hurt she’ll bathe and bind
she wraps me up in bed
and kisses me on my head.
I love my mummy.

As far as I recall I was about six or seven years old. (I also wrote songs.)

While I must have read poetry at primary school (and maybe it will come back to me; I have a vague dusty feeling thinking about it, as if the poems I encountered must have said nothing to me), my first memory of a poem is from an English class age ten or eleven.  There is a line in it I still recall, although extensive googling does not retrieve the poem. It is my first memory of being stirred by poetic magic:

‘interminable flocks
hives of the archipelago’

The captivating five syllables of ‘interminable’ have never left me and I see flocks flying still as I breathe these lines, as far as the eye can see.