love

smell of petrol

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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.)

all kinds of twilight

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A moment in the lit night
Appliances hold their breath
while order turns the house
inside out.

Dying, toes in heaven,
whispered conversation
trust eternal trust
and a fleeting goodbye.

Just-born tiny being
paused a long moment
silently sleeping –
were you even there? –
the ward’s time teetered.

6am on Christmas morning,
we played outside the door
to bliss, unheated in a cold
December grey.  You didn’t need
a jumper.

A glance and moment’s wonder
forty years light-sped
into a pause, fleeting,
richly full and awkward in
pregnant expectation.

Long silhouettes spear
dazzling sun.  Lunchtime
crowds turn mysterious
My city is haunted.

All kinds of twilight.

red helium heart balloon – a poem for a cousin’s birthday

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I was thinking of your birthday;
‘A helium balloon!’  I cried to myself
(internally as there was no one
around to hear me).

I waited til the day before
to buy it as I did not want
even a sniff of helium to escape
or bring it too soon
down to earth.

That day, I forgot where
the helium balloon shop was
had to double back on myself.

I walked in triumphant
‘A birthday balloon’, I asked the
shop assistant.  The store was
filled with valentines

that crowded out the ‘normal range’.
I didn’t think you would like
a balloon loudly proclaiming ’40!!!!!’
or Olaf or the one from Planes.

A momentary qualm assailed me;
was my helium balloon plan to be
thwarted by the patron saint of love?

On the contrary!  The saint of love
smiled down fondly; a red heart
helium balloon perfectly fit the brief.

a heart for love,
a heart for hopes and dreams,
a heart for passions and adventures,
a heart for you.

‘Oh, that one please, on the
longest red string!’  The jaunty
foil heart balloon reached boldly to the sky.

I could not bear to
imprison it in a plastic carrier.
It is not what helium balloons
were made for.

I basked in the smiles of passers-by
as I wended my way home
thinking of your birthday.

‘She will be so pleased!’  I said
to myself.  ‘No one else will have
thought of such a thing.’

The happy balloon, full of love
and excitement, bobbed up and down,
couldn’t wait to meet you.

It was a windy day; perhaps I should have been wiser.
In a moment, the companion attached to my wrist
was gone.

Oh!  I looked up: A red heart took flight
into the street, up, up,
above the silver birch tree lines.

Up, up, UP, riding thermals beyond
the multi-storey car park.
Up consorting with the seagulls.

I saw it last as it bobbed behind
the church spire; a heart and a cross.
To infinity and beyond.

I wanted to give a heart
for your birthday – for love, for hopes,
for passion, for you.

But the heart wanted to give you a poem,
Show you that your hopes and dreams soared to
dance with the angels,
to mingle with the stars.

Show you that the heart is free;
and alive and full of grace
and beauty.

That nothing can hold it back.

lost journal – the journal’s tale

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Only slowly does it dawn on me
that motion has ceased.
It is silent for the first time
in a long while.

I cannot make a sound
to attract attention.
I wait so still,
hoping.

It is warm between
the Financial Times
and Vogue.
But I shiver.

Swoop, arms gather the
newspaper and detritus
of flight BA0589
from Milan Linate.
I slide out under the
seat in front of you.

Will they come with vacuum
cleaners?
Not this time.  I hear the
hum of new arrivals.
Distant first,
then nearer.

Am I going back to Milan?
I recall cosy bedrooms,
grand galleries
and a few moments at a café,
when I was loved.

I miss the motion of her
pen, the flicking of my pages
and the close attention of her
eyes rereading and sometimes
looking away.

I miss the triumphant tick
in a small blue box
the sigh of satisfaction
and the sometime quick
snap-shut of a distraction.

What’s that?  Far from being
cornered by another
bag, I am being retrieved
by a total stranger.
I hold my covers tightly
shut through sheer willpower
to no avail.

Alien eyes peruse my pages.
I hope her writing turns
to scribble just in time.
My pages are flicked back and forward.
‘There’s no address’ I observe
unnoticed.  Only ‘private’ and
maybe hidden clues, who knows?

With relief, I remark
a kind of gentleness of touch.
Hope glimmers – perhaps I might
be restored to my owner?
I know she is looking for me
amongst the other
lost possessions, can hear her
hopeful tap-tapping of her plea
to find me.

I am being
slid in
to someone’s business bag.
I smell leather and Apple.
My pages snag on chargers.
For the first time, I am afraid of the dark.
I want to go home.

And I know I won’t.

in the goldsmith’s workshop

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Last weekend, tucked away in a corner of my city, surrounded by beautiful handmade jewellery, a goldsmith friend and I worked together to create something in writing about her work.

A goldsmith’s workshop is a metaphorical and literal treasure-house.  Scattered all over the place were tools, little bags of silver wire, strange little ladles and dishes.  As we talked, she showed me gem stones from distant mines and pearls from seas in far flung places. As our conversation explored the events and moments in life which are marked by things made in precious materials, the goldsmith told me a story, one of the many secrets of the workshop…

The goldsmith had a customer who had recently become divorced.  Still distraught, she brought her rings to the goldsmith; could they be remade, she wondered?  Hidden in the liminal space of the goldsmith’s workshop, the customer and the goldsmith worked together to melt down the engagement ring and the wedding ring that had symbolised love, and commitment and hope and friendship.  As the metals turned liquid, so tears flowed down the face of the customer.  Something was dying; pain, disappointment and loss seeped out of the cracks of the broken heart.  In the crucible of the molten gold, impurities from the former life of the rings burnt away.

And then the process of re-creation started.  Moment by moment, the customer and the goldsmith designed something beautiful from the raw materials of the old.  What had been was no more; what was left was a becoming.  Slowly the customer watched the goldsmith work with her designs and her hopes to create something new.  Wonder took the place of tears, and then joy and hope and delight.  The new ring slipped onto her finger and with it new meaning, shaped from the wisdom of experience, for a new life.

The fire crackled, the conversation went on…