I carry them to your house on my back, uprooted 
flowers, I’m bent double with the weight of them.
(Aztec love song)

To you, I'm coming to you, to your house
with these uprooted flowers on my back
this golden rod, these willow herb,
the tall dying flowers of the moors and verges
in sheaves, in armfuls, tied into bundles
and slung across my back.
I'm bringing them to you with the earth
dropping in tiny crumbling granules
from their roots, to you, to show you
that their time is up and gone
no way to plant them again
in the ground, amongst the grass along the lanes.

They are uprooted and dying as I walk,
their roots exposed and drying
their leaves wilted and curling
they are for you, for you, and I will
bring them to your door, great mounds of them,
the weight of them bending me double
giving me backache, buckling my knees,
drenching me in sweat.
You need to see them, beautiful and dead,
smell their green sappiness,
smell the soil falling from their roots.
I will leave them at your door.

Enduring

Enduring Power of Attorney. We have this now, registered, for my mother. The strangeness of this state of affairs sinks in slowly, as I speak to the banks who look after her money, establish myself and my brother as its custodians. It seems matter-of-fact to walk into the local branch of her bank, and begin this process, just a bit of business, and then I catch sight of myself doing it, remember what it means. Or can't quite remember what it means...

She is doing alright at times, less so at others. Getting to know her fellow residents, but also telling my sister she's been there long enough now. Getting new hearing aids, but unable to manipulate them, needs larger ones, so a further delay. Getting a phone in her room. No idea how that will go, but I shall be able to phone her again. This is good, though I have, I will not lie to you, enjoyed the quiet time of her telephonelessness.

And I am thinking about my Dad, how much I loved him when I was a little girl, and he brought me picture books home from work and read me Edward Lear nonsense poems, how further and further apart we grew as I grew up, as my parents' marriage languished, died, was left behind. How we left him behind. How he let us. How he left the world. His choice. The last 25 years of my life marked by that choice. I can't explain to you how, or not briefly. But I think I have tried to know him in a way by becoming him, a tendency I have, a strength and a weakness in a therapist. To feel my way into people's skins, into their heads. Then you have to feel your way out again, regain perspective. I think maybe that is what is happening for me with my Dad. I am not you Dad. I am alive. I can live and grow and thrive. My life is my own. I am not doomed.

Racing

There's this thing, and it isn't dancing to strange music at a disco in a cricket club on a wet October night, but maybe some part of it, the moment when someone dropped a glass of aniseed smelling drink on the floor and we all had to dance away from that wet place, and the tiny pieces of glass and the aroma. And the young women who knew strange dance steps to music which might have been from another planet, so utterly unfamiliar to me was it. This thing, like catching the eye of someone for a moment, when some meaning you don't even recognise verbally is exchanged on the dance floor, which is still and always the dance floor of your youth on which miracles might have occurred but never did or not to you. And going to the bar to ask for a glass of tapwater please. Purest of requests and no money changing hands.

And as well, going to a poetry workshop and letting rip in a 15 minute writing exercise and feeling like you've snorted a line of speed, and the world and everything in it is yours yours yours. Racing.

Now red wine. Its seduction and the fire glowing orange and ticking gently.

Pyjamas

My Dad in my dreams and in the back of my mind trying to get forward, my Mum strange and out of reach, not sleeping very well, getting up at 5.45, the hour-long drive each way 3x per week, having to see clients without any break between (two and then two and then two - breaks between the twos, and actually I usually only book five not six, but still...), my tendency to merge and absorb. No, I don't want to go out tonight. I want to light a fire and put my pyjamas on, have a bath, open a bottle of wine, listen to music, go to bed...

Over Everything

Rain all over everything and I'm longing to say something without the least idea what. The nights are fairly drawing in and L is out extracting honey and I am too tired once again, as sleep has been troublesome a little again lately, though not in the same league as previously. I dreamed the night before last of my Dad lying dead face down on the green carpet near the French windows in the house where I grew up, which were flung open, a strong and somehow terrifying wind blowing the length of the room (which was long). I awoke with terror deep in my body, which seemed much more awake than my mind and to have far more knowledge of what was going on too. And then sleep was elusive as it took hours for the fear to ebb.

So, I'm here and I'm tired and it's autumn, clearly, with mists and mellow fruitfulness and all that, but not cold yet, not really, though we've had a few evening fires. I set off for work in the dark again now.

Heroine