poetry

by

The Marathon

*For Corinne and James who completed the Bath Two Tunnels half-marathon last Saturday watched by a very proud mum and dad xx

I found a bench from which to watch
Sat licking ice cream til they came
The first lap they looked surprisingly
fresh, even the big ones,
those ones you wouldn’t take for runners
You could hear their breath though

So many it took half an hour for them all to pass
My ice cream gone I could clap and cheer now
awed by their fortitude
the digging in as they return for the second lap
Their faces contorted
grasping at the air with clenched teeth
Hair stuck to sweaty necks
Some resort to walking

The birds have flown
so all I can hear are the gasps
as they run back out to the distant marker
I wander back to the finish line
Its a nice day for a stroll
Sit on the grass in the sun
‘til the first ones find their final push
speed up when they see the sign
grin as they go over
then collapse
Exhausted, I need a drink.

 

 

by

A little bit of Green

The diggers have come and destroyed the daffodils on the green,
creating a vast hole in my childhood.
The rocket ships that looked like swings,
the slide to the bottom of the big blue sea,
the café and the benches where mums sipped their tea,
all gone.

That tiny park of recreation, a slice of nature nestling
between the buildings.
Football on Saturdays, cricket on Sundays,
and marigolds on a dismal day.
The place of get togethers and breaking hearts,
all gone.

Replaced with those tick tack wall to wall houses.
Their mean gardens room enough only for a
trampoline and barbeque.
Maybe the laughter from the past will reverberate
through the lives of the families living there.
Those that have stolen my space.

by

Woman in the Waiting Room

Hands clasped tight in my lap
I watch the child crying in the corner
while the mother tuts and coos
and the old man coughs
that old man cough of
clogged lungs and
failing heart

The incongruous laughter
leaching from the back room
is an insult
as a scruffy teenager sniffs
on the too close chair beside me

I study the ebbing of life
in the clock face
I can smell disease
feel it spreading
seeping in through my skin
I dare not fidget
for fear of contamination

People leave clutching their
life lines
I hope for one too
A pain easer
A mood lifter
A miracle
but when they call my name
despair drips
onto those clasping hands

 

by

The Shape of Love

There are no corners to hide in,
and no straight paths,
or sides to take

There is no long and short,
nor tip of the iceberg,
or points to make

No, love is a circle,
delicious, curvaceous,
a two tier cream cake

A full harvest moon,
a banging drum heart,
a promise you make

A ring on your finger,
a cuff on your wrist,
a hunger that wakes

A bowl full of spices,
a bouncing beachball
that gives, and, that takes

Oh love is a circle,
a merry go round
of tender heartaches

Yes, love is a circle
Two people conjoined
as endless soul mates

Unless, of course, it becomes a triangle…

by

To be Still

storm-sea-sky

She turned towards the greyness
of the thunderous sea and sky,
her tears lost to the wanton wind
as she dreamed of stillness.

The stillness of a frozen path
covered with that lazy snow
that drifts capriciously
smothering all beneath.

The stillness of an animal,
trapped in the gaze of a hunter,
frozen in its startled state
‘til it’s heart is stopped.

The stillness of an empty church
where the silence echoes
filling the void with peace,
while the cold walls seep death.

And while she dreamed,
the whirlwind world
whipped around her still,
amplifying her melancholy.

She watched as the waves
attacked the rocks below,
then, succumbing to the depths between,
felt the numbing embrace of water.

 

 

 

by

Getting Sticky

Well, in my pursuit of creating something arty, I have taken to sticking things.  Yes, collage.  I make an horrendous mess, with bits of paper, tissue and glue covering every surface, including myself, but I have to say I am quite pleased with the results.

The first one, ‘The New Forests’ was inspired by an item on the news that made me so angry and upset that I didn’t know what to do with the emotion.  They’d used a drone to film the extent of the camps in Bangladesh that hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugee people have been reduced to living in.  They showed the camps sprawling across an area bigger than Manchester or Glasgow.  The people, men, women and children, in those camps have little clean water, food, health care, in fact, none of the things we take for granted on an every day basis. It made me consider (not for the first time, I hasten to add) the quite appalling inequalities suffered by people around the world, and creating the collage became quite cathartic for me.  In fact, I got so much out of it (never mind the result!) when finished, I immediately started on the second, ‘Elusive Eden’.

This piece was inspired by poetry, and as with the first one, I decided to use relevant text within it – in this case excerpts from ‘I know why the cage bird sings’ by Maya Angelou, ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost, and ‘The Road not Taken’ also by Frost. The result was somewhat cheerier than I imagined, and the poems have all but disappeared, but nonetheless, I quite like it, and whilst I doubt anyone looking at it would immediately grasp its representational meaning as I intended, at least it’s colourful!

The third piece, is frankly, just a flight of fancy.  Using tissue paper, which proved much trickier, and generally messier than I could ever have imagined.  Lots of fun though!

The New Forests

The New Forests

Elusive Eden 1

Elusive Eden

By the River

By the River