beauty

flat christmas moment

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The parents are out.
The nephews and nieces
play elsewhere.
The presents are opened.
The lunch has been eaten.
The papers have been read.
The presents have been
perused.
The calls have been made.
The texts have been sent.
The run has been run.
The sales have been scouted.

It’s not quite dinner.
Etiquette does not yet
demand thank you notes.
No decisions are pending.
No-one else is in the office.
It is silent
beside the fire hush.

Time flattens out,
contours settle and
knots of muddle
unravel into
ordinary peace.
Tea goes cold,
expectation hovers,
then concedes.

Life drifts.

Front door scuffle;
they’re back.

Christmas exhaustion

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Eighty home-made
Christmas cards
for friends and clients
alike wing their way
across the world,
Russia, Poland,
Luxembourg, Italy.

Forty presents,
be-tissued, wrapped
with Father Christmases
on sleighs and in chimneys
carrying sacks, all
tied in (matching) ribbons,
cherry red and
snowy ice-blue.

Ill friends, one, two
three, visited with
cheer and gifts and
hugs (I didn’t lean
in too near).

Three family
dynamics
navigated, care,
honesty, tears,
grace and hope that
one day things might
change.

Four little niece-
and-nephews imagined,
researched, added to,
subtracted from, and
last-minute flash of
inspiration,
of course.

One carol service
invited to, sung at,
giggled in,
got distracted by
small children’s
wonder, and several
glugs of cooling
mulled wine in
too-warm weather.

Five invoices sent,
fingers crossed for
payment (no),
money switched
between accounts.
‘what d’you mean
five working days?’

One to-do list
half-crossed,
neighbours’ gifts,
tick, more ribbon,
tick, pine and
eucalyptus spray,
tick, but
packing, taxi,
picnic still to do
tomorrow morning.

One poem written.

My weariness
rests
on a bed of quiet
contentment.

 

overheard joys

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‘Oooooh!’ ‘wooosh!’
‘Look at you!’ A
grandmother neighbour
greets her family
in the street outside
my house.
Laughter percolates
towards my bedroom
window. I hear the pause
of hugs exchanged.

On the café table
next to me, two
cashmere women
discuss a favourite
dancing show, the merits
of the ‘last man standing’,
the northern darling, the
East end lass, the tinkling
delight of little girls
let loose in dressing up
clothes. I feel their
inner twirling.

Returning from a
conference, three women
(unusual in Eurostar
Standard Premier class)
tease a colleague. Tall
tales, tender taunting,
their warm laughter
embraces the whole
carriage, washes me
with gladness.

We are a humanity of
constant hopes and tears,
and yet in streets, and
trains and
public places, there is,
it seems,
for a moment,
more than enough
joy to go round.

 

 

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).