[RAIN AND WIND WAKES ME DREAMING BEFORE DAWN ON GOOD FRIDAY, SEVEN DECADES ON FROM WHEN I WAS BORN. I LET THE HENS OUT, SET TO WRITING AS LIGHT FILTERS THROUGH CLOUD]
ALL I CAN GIVE
I write in the silences.
I write in the space where no one seeks me out.
I write in the hide, listen to rain.
I write in the wind, head down, arms pinning the page.
I tell you the March storms have blown
blackthorn blossom on to the muddy track.
I tell you the wind’s so strong
the birds have stopped singing.
A deer stands shivering by the pond
that is deep now, will be dry in summer.
A hare runs from the woods towards
the long grass at the edge of the field.
It’s no longer safe to stay where trees
thrash about, fling branches back to earth.
It’s no longer safe to stay where
what I write is all I have to give.
AUNT LIL AND POOR ALICE
I found a Found Poem but can’t remember where I put it.
Your trouble is you never stop making things up, says Aunt Lil,
her cigarette never-ending. You’re dangerous, young man.
I’m not young, I was seventy last birthday, I say.
Look, I tell her, if you watched West Bromwich Albion,
season after season, never miss a match, you’d go mad too.
The ghosts of my ancestors drive sheep through Bedfordshire lanes
on to the common lands where the farmers want to grow crops.
They’ll be arrested, put on trial, miraculously acquitted.
What that’s got to do with anything in a time of war?
says Aunt Lil. I don’t know what your father would do with you.
If he were alive, he’d have a thing or two to say, he would.
I take a long walk by the locks, watch ducks.
Aunt Lil’s at it again, her voice echoing in the labyrinth of my skull.
It’s like the time, she says, when you made up the words on that plaque
on the cathedral wall and lied to poor Alice who never learned to read.
Guilt and shame come pouring back, yes, yes, I did tell her
‘Here lies Sister Atrocius of the Priory of Pathetic Fallacy,
Previously Known as Miss Decorum Devotion O’Reilly
of Halfway, Oregon, Authoress of Dying For Beginners,
Who Expired During Cabbage ‘N Sprouts Hour
at the Saint Augustin Home for the Chronically Flatulent.’
I didn’t expect her to believe me. And looking back,
it wasn’t even that funny. Yes, I have an unkind streak,
I know, and if I could apologise to Alice now, I would.
I heard Alice married, settled in Cornwall, had two girls.
A straggle of tourists file past on a walking tour led by a Roman centurion.
Surely, I say, it would be better to have the guide in Elizabethan dress,
perhaps even as Shakespeare.
It is Stratford-upon-Avon, after all.
There you go again, says Aunt Lil, you know very well it’s Chester.
Stop it. Or better still, take yourself off on a walk on the city walls.
It’s only a couple of miles and it really does calm the mind.
If I go, will you leave me alone? I say.
Aunt Lil’s cigarette bobs up and down, clinging for dear life
to her bright red bottom lip.
Off you trot, then, she says. I’ve got housework to do.
On the city walls I forget where I am again
and stand flustered. The ocean laps at the stones.
Or is this a cliff, a red cliff? And those beach huts.
Down there, look. They’re going in for a swim.
They’ll have to be careful, the tide’s going out.
These cliffs will have to reach out and save them.
No, that’s too dangerous, the land would crack
and the whole country would split behind us.
Oh, I know it’s going to happen, I know it is.
In a matter of minutes the island will fall apart.
People everywhere will fall off the edges.
East, west, north, south, won’t mean a thing.
And out there on the waves, the beach huts
will bob about, not worrying where they are,
where they’re going or how long it will take.
I don’t know what to do about any of this.
Maybe the Found Poem will find me,
help me down to safer ground.
Find me a place to shelter,
watch the football.
It is Saturday after all.
Maybe…
A FIELD
On the tenth day of storms our grandson’s long-lost boot
(bright green with a tractor painted on it)
rises to the surface of the field.
I put it in the back of the truck to dry out.
I splash my way up to the pens to feed the hens,
shovel dry gravel from the shed to give them grit
now the land’s too wet for them to scratch about.
One finds a worm, another a frog. I leave them to it.
I lean on the fence to watch Mark next door
ride his expensive horses round in circles.
It’s what he does, all day, day after day.
Sometimes girls with blonde pony-tails join him.
And the old dog watches from the edge of the menage,
then falls asleep to the rhythm of hooves on stone.
ANOTHER KIND OF MADNESS
Autocratic aromatic Jabez
Bestowed upon us all the time of day.
Call it uncertainty, call it reflex,
Does the process affect anything now?
Ev’ry day’s a sham to that shining spiv,
Forget his preposterous ‘deja-vu’,
Go back and begin again, find the start,
History’s just so hard to re-assess,
Implausible? Drink some of this water,
Just a little, it’s bottled in Iraq.
Kelp – eat! Not any old seaweed, this kelp,
Let’s just say, it’s caused a hullabaloo.
My word, it’s forced a storm all over town.
Now lie back down and listen to the hum
Of honey bees, let the songs of birds heal,
Pour it out, empty yourself, go right back,
Question, ask why you still dream of the Raj,
Rethink. As for that Jabez, he’s semi-
Superstitious, scared of dying a death
That will not amount to a bloody thing.
Understand, please try, he’s not even half
Valued any more. Maybe it’s a shame –
Whatever you do, don’t travel his road.
Xander, remember him, all perfumed chic,
You can see him now, broken down, a stub.
Zero’s what they know. Now, let’s take some tea.
LINES FROM A DREAM
You come to me in a dream and tell me you’re a poet now.
You tell me how the brain sends reflex breathing patterns through the body as death approaches, which some misinterpret as the death rattle.
I say I’ll find out soon.
Perhaps sooner than you think, you say, staring, your whole body stiff, your hands tight around your mug.
You tell me you would be useless at sailing around the world single-handed because you can’t mend stuff.
I say, I’m like that. I might do a temporary fix with an elastic band or sock but I know it won’t last. And so does whatever’s broken. I can almost hear it groaning with laughter at the attempt to tie it up with string. I can almost hear its delight as it waits for the chance to spew out another fountain of oil.
You wait for me to finish then tell me how you would love to be one of the one hundred and fifty six people who are long-listed for the National Poetry Prize.
I say that one hundred and fifty-five of the one hundred and fifty-six won’t win.
You tell me it’s almost fifty years since it was required that we read Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon.
No wonder I’ve forgotten it, I say.
You tell me that for many years you walked the road of the fashionably Bohemian, that you married once, for convenience, and believed the mantra ‘We are what we eat’ but that now you have found holiness and peace.
You tell me of a stained glass window that depicts Ranulph The Good kneeling with his gift at an altar, with monks gathering around him.
I ask if he was still wearing his sword.
You reach across the table of the dream and tell me I am not a hopeless case.
I trace the lines on my face. On yours.
Bob Mee poetry and more 