Fog

Fog today.

I could leave it at that.

Remembering G telling me how she liked fog.

The dampness on my coat, the tiny droplets that day.

From G's window another valley she often looked out at while I got my shoes and coat on at the end of the session. Even this time last year. Still then.

To be seen, understood, accepted and loved in one's rawness and vulnerability a rare and precious gift. To lose this a raw and aching loss. It goes on and I go on.

Nothing

When there is nothing to do that is what I will do
and try to do it properly, wholeheartedly,
not looking over one shoulder the whole time
as if to glimpse the shadow that may fall on me
darkly, and whisper sourly in my ear
about my failures, my omissions.

When there is nothing to do, count me in
and I will give myself completely to the project,
breathing quietly and bringing silence one by one
to the voices that kibitz from the sidelines,
bidding them surrender, relinquish all agendas,
be still, and let nothing prevail.

Ten Minutes Older

Finally

Fittingly this is the last of my previously published poems from the pamphlet submission. Written in 2007 but feels like it could have been written this year.

Over

In the end,

without explanation,

whatever the cause,

all the words will come crashing to a halt

on a Tuesday morning

or a Sunday afternoon,

in February or June,

as rain slides down a kitchen window

or sunlight casts deep shadows on a road.

We won’t have finished working out

the thing we really meant to say

when suddenly it will be over.

All the days we wore sweaters

and sighed; ate scrambled eggs;

searched for keys;

left the house, hearing birds

in the hopeful morning,

finally leading us to this.

Mirror

Me

The mirror

In 2007

 

 And circa 1987

Towards III

This one's from 2008 and first appeared in the also late lamented Smiths Knoll poetry magazine, as did Marking Time.

My Dad did love word play, and if it was funny once, well - it was funny a hundred times! His parents had a gardener called Willoughby and this had amused him since boyhood. 

Things can be hidden amongst the oats in the pan, amongst the coats on the bed...

Willoughby Porridge For Breakfast?

I put oats in the saucepan

and think of my father – the puns

whose repetition lit up his face.

I fumble through the mornings,

through all the afternoons and evenings

in search of something hidden there

as if beneath a pile of overcoats at a party,

thick, heavy, tricky to distinguish in the dimness.

How I long to open the window

and cast them out into the wind,

watch them fly like huge birds 

away and away darkly to the horizon.

Towards II

This is also from 2006, and was first published at the late lamented qarrtsiluni.

Hidden

My mother knows I’m here,

down behind the front seat in the dark space

where people in the back seat put their feet,

with gritty bits and half a rotting leaf

and a sweet paper sticking to my hand.

I just fit in here, hidden, squeezed in tight.

My father doesn’t know I’m here;

just off the London train smelling of the Times,

opening the car door tiredly climbing in -

he doesn’t know I’m here, and she pretends.

Crouching in my little place I wait,

my tummy quivering with a secret laugh.

I’ll wait until we’re driving up the hill

I’ll wait until I can’t wait any more

and then I’ll pop up just behind his head

and laugh out loud into his shiny ear

and listen to his marvellous surprise

Good heavens! I didn’t know you were there!

Towards

For Sabine. I can only post the ones that have been previously published, otherwise I will compromise the 'previously unpublished' status of the others, for purposes of submission to other publications. This I am delighted to do and it means a lot to me that you ask.

This from 2006, and which also features the white toy cupboard. The poem gave its title to the 20 poem pamphlet-to-be I submitted to the Mslexia competition.

Marking Time

Orange curtains hang

non-negotiable,

ornaments on the mantelpiece,

the pink duvet cover,

mono record player,

flowers on the wallpaper,

fish swimming in their heated tank,

the view down to where the dustbins stand

outside the back door quiet and cold.

And a woodpigeon’s meaningless call.

Nothing else but this world.

I imagine I could sneak a look

into my adult life,

but no pictures come.

I only wonder if I’ll still be here.

Alone with the white toy cupboard,

I feel my pulse beat

hotly in my ears, and don’t know

what it is I’m trying to find.

All these minutes and hours;

breaths and blinks and swallows,

the way your body marks time.

Hey Ho

Hello there, Thank you so much for letting us see your entry for our 2014 Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition. I am so sorry to let you know that your work was not selected on this occasion. Our judge was Amy Wack, who is the long-time Poetry Editor of Seren Press and will be publishing the winner next year. Amy asked me to pass on her overwhelming impression that the standard of submissions was even higher this year than in 2013 and 2012. This may be because you have been refining your manuscripts, adding fresh material and/or redrafting some of your weaker poems. Or it may be that the poets entering this year are a different, more creative and experienced, group of women. Whichever is the case, we all feel excited to think that so many exceptional female poets are 'standing in the wings', as it were, waiting to step onto the stage with a first collection. Amy especially admired the manuscripts she read that had identifiable settings, both in the UK and abroad. And she remarked that there seemed fewer poems this year that tackled traumatic, uncomfortable, or 'difficult' subject matter – she hoped this didn't imply that self-censorship was taking place! She also wanted to stress that the winner this year (now that she knows who it is and has been in touch with her directly) has been writing for many years –steadily submitting poems, steadily recovering from rejection, steadily working on her art, steadily improving... Some of the poems in the winning collection were first written over 20 years ago; so it's well worth archiving your poems, until a time when they can be either redrafted, or given new life as part of a fresh sequence. At which point, we hope to hear from you again. Very best, Debbie T

Rainbow

Here I am, keeping on keeping on. Keeping faith with the daily imperative to get up and do it all again. To climb the hill again to find myself up there with heather and stone and grouse, and muddy puddles, looking out over the valley. Today a perfect rainbow over the tops. The rain began just after I'd set out thinking 'ah, the sun's shining, maybe I didn't need to wear my mac after all...' The rainbow a symbol, a message according to M that you are not alone. I saw one, at first partial, then growing gradually, inching to fullness, then finally disappearing, the morning of G's funeral, and it gave me hope, as I stood with tears and rain running down my face. I remember it every time I walk that way, look at that view. Remember G's rainbow. So, today's one, in a different position, of course recalled that too. A blessing. Still learning, absorbing, digesting that I really won't ever see her again.

What Difference Does It Make?

Umbrella

The sound of drips falling from the gutter
onto a windowsill, the motion of rain
passing through air on its way to earth,
the deep hiss of tyres on wet road
and I am remembering your funeral,
my mother's umbrella, hearing
some bone-achingly simple piano music
as they slid your coffin from the hearse
and lifted it high through the door of the chapel,
and a boy I knew long ago who
tormented his dog with the language
and gestures of play, so that we were confused
about what he was doing
with his foot on the animal's soft belly.

Still

This is from my notebook dated 20th May

Now, a sloping field peppered with yellow buttercups,
evenings light til after half past nine
and me in sandals taking down my summer clothes
in bags from the loft
and you still dead.

Now, when the date on the newspaper says May
and there are lettuces and radishes to bring in from the garden
and we sit outside with cups of tea, and rub in sun cream
you're still dead.

It's still December, it will always be December
or maybe the pouring rain of January
when we stared as your pale wicker coffin
emerged from the back of a hearse
and knew you were inside it.
It was you.

Now, when I cannot work,
when I stay at home and try to learn what healing is,
try to find a way to feel safe again, to feel joy again
I can't talk to you about it because
you're still dead.

Sand In Your Eye

13.16 From Manchester Victoria

Grey seat backs like funny stiff people, their little grey arms sticking straight out in front. The sound of the heating system blowing hot air into the train. Men in hi vis work on the new parts of the station, walk slowly, work slowly, as if they mustn't get it done too soon. Two men are building a grey wall, the wind gently rippling the backs of their luminous orange tabards. One sits on a crate to work. And a yellow tram passes. The sky is grey to match the dull grey breeze blocks the wall is made of. Rain threatens.

Slender silver birches bend beside the railway line
their small leaves lemon yellow, one or two still green.
A green slope, a brick bridge,
more silver birches, a grey corrugated warehouse,
a tall pylon towers over horses in a field.
A row of semis, a field of sheep,
a pool surrounded by tufted clumps of marsh grass,
a church with a pointed spire with a cross on top
and a clock that says half past one.
A factory chimney with the word ARROW in white letters near the top,
pallets stacked in a warehouse yard,
B&Q, a car park, streets of terraced houses and
we're at Rochdale; a park, a children's playground,
and Haji Cash & Carry est 1955
and the Catholic church that at first glance
looks like a mosque until you clock the cross
on top of its white dome....
and the hills, concrete silos, plumbing trade supplies,
a large blue and silver graffiti tag on a brick wall,
the dark line of the hills beyond all this,
and we in the bowl whose rim they form,
a bowl of fields, horses, houses...
and Littleborough Co-op and the church on the corner
where I used to see all the funeral flowers
lined up along the wall, as I waited at the red light
to turn right, then right again
and up the hill to therapy.

How Far

I stood on the busy platform (11C) at Leeds station, waiting for the delayed 17.05 to Blackpool North, surrounded by commuters. As the train pulled in, people tried to anticipate the position of the doors at the end of each carriage, collecting themselves in bunches, poised, ready to get on board and secure a seat. My estimation of the likely position on the platform that would correspond to the end of a carriage and its doors, was a few feet off, so I was not in pole position, and had to edge up behind a group of people, come in from the side, wait my turn as people stepped on board one at a time ahead of me, hoping that all the seats wouldn't be taken by the time I got there. And as I stood, and as I took my turn, I saw myself there, and I talked soothingly to myself about what was going on, and remembered not to hold my breath....

and I remembered the trip into Manchester back in April for my supervision, when I began to cry in the street as I came out of a Chinese supermarket having bought light soy sauce, and did not really know why, at that moment I was crying, and was not able to stop for a while. Sat at the tram stop blowing my nose, wondering what was happening to me, and wishing very much that I was at home. On the tram began to feel ill, and recognised the signs of impending panic attack, told myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, and to get myself to the cafe round the corner from my supervisor's house, get a cup of tea and a Danish, and keep breathing. All of which I did. Then got myself to C's and cried a lot more... That was when I knew I was in real trouble and needed more time off work. A lot more time as it turned out.

And here I am seven months on, Leeds today, Manchester tomorrow and no, it isn't always easy, but I am regaining my confidence, my basic life skills. My ability to manage the world.

Toy Cupboard

And so I stand again in front of the white toy cupboard
its broad doors flung wide
to reveal its two shelves and its floor,
the etch-a sketch, the humming top,
the wooden truck with the barrels on the back.

I know it all so well, want none of it,
want instead to pull them all out,
leave them strewn on the floor
like a ransacked toy shop,
climb inside the cupboard,
close the doors.

Chair

Today we went to IKEA, and I bought a new chair. I have for years been sitting on a chair that is several inches too low for my long legs, when I am working as a therapist. I have even been aware of it for a couple of years. Finally action! What a joy to have my legs bent in such a way that my thighs are parallel to the floor, and not sloping up towards the ceiling. Also my old chair has arms which used to make me feel constrained, hemmed in. My new chair makes me feel comfortable and spacious. Result!

This chair had to be paid for in the main IKEA building, and then collected from the warehouse round the back. Here, we waited forty minutes, waiting for our number to arrive at the top of a list of numbers on a screen, surrounded by bored, restless or fed up people. We could have gone and eaten meatballs and chips if we'd known how long the process would take! But somehow it made me appreciate the final acquisition all the more, and I drove home chanting hurrah!

Bob

Those eyes...

Unfathomable

All these years of living in this place inside,
knowing and not knowing its contours and walls,
temperature and tightness.
The long hours of each day spent in here,
yet still sometimes the total mystery
of waking up and finding myself
in half-light, dawn eating through thick curtains,
the outlines of cupboards or chairs emerging.
That coming to consciousness;
suddenly finding it unknown,
unconnected, unfathomable.

Rain

and I walk up on the moors in the cold damp air, water dripping from my hat brim, trouser legs growing dark, the colours of the grasses shining out of the fine mist, shining ginger plumes like fire, and I walk in deep muddy puddles of old rain like cold tea, my hands in black and orange mittens grow pink and moist, warm at the palms cool at the fingertips, and I see no one

Another Train Song

This train swaying slightly,
sunlight strobing through the trees
then gone - as we plunge into a tunnel.
This train our means of locomotion
from H to L, along the rails
predictable, preordained.

This train bound for Leeds
and all that is in it -
shops, museums, dog shit,
fading Victorian splendour.

A silver birch, its trunk wrapped
in white paper, shines
like the flashes on your jacket -
everything reflecting glory
this brilliant day
swaying on this blue train.

Remember Remember

Down to the allotment in dazzling sunlight this morning to pick kale, broccoli and chard. Then under the trees behind the plots with my big blue IKEA bag to collect firewood. It is more hidden now than the last time, a thick carpet of russet, yellow and gold leaves covers quite a lot of the wind fallen branches, but still it only takes twenty minutes to fill my bag to the top with kindling and some slightly wider gauge wood. I love this, scanning the ground, bending down to pick up sticks that can go straight in my bag, long branches I have to break into smaller lengths, with a series of satisfying cracks and snaps. I love it too because at G's funeral, her partner F spoke about the first and the last time he saw G. The last time, a few days before she died, they gathered firewood in Heaton Park in Manchester, slightly expecting at any moment a '50s style park keeper to come and tell them off. G full of delight at getting something for nothing! Gathering wood for the fire will always be one way I can feel close to her.

Now, I am making a mixed vegetable soup - onion, celery, carrot, parsnip with a little fresh red chilie - for tomorrow's lunch, when my friend C will be here. Listening to Bob Dylan's Modern Times.

Yesterday something loosened its grip on me, when I remembered that it is five years ago exactly that I was suspended from my job with corporate-style-children's-charity-which-cannot-be-named. My birthday was on Sunday that year. It was the end of half term. I went in to work on Monday morning, and in a team meeting the shit began to hit the fan, and later copiously in a one to one meeting with one of the big managers from London, who explained that a complaint had been made by one of my team about my private blog (the late lamented Smoke and Ash). The floor fell from under me, my stomach followed. The next day I was suspended on full pay. I never returned. My body is incredibly sensitive to the return of the times of the season, of the year, when traumatic things have happened to me. I knew I was beginning to feel unease and a renewed grief as G's anniversary approaches. But I had totally forgotten what was happening to me in November 2009. The last time my world fell apart. It all makes sense to me, or to my body at least, and I feel an easing in me I can't rationally explain, but it is so. Remembering rather than repeating.

Afternoon

Afternoon, and the low sun floodlights the fields.
At the same time an intimation of the coming darkness.
Schoolchildren in blue uniforms arrive back on a yellow bus.
I eat fudge and wonder at the size of a lily flower,
my eyes sore again from crying.

Willowherb V

52

So, I've been 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,
14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,
23,24,25,26,27,28,
29,30,31,32,33,
34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,
42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51
for a year each. Now it's the turn of
52
for me to be it,
or have it as the French say.