Second Saturn Return
O, so long
since we last met
I held you gone.
But here you are
across pooled night sky
your palm weighing
the flat of me
then sending it skimming.
Hop. Hop. Drop.
That sinking.
Those turn tail fishes
and these lines -
the fading ripples’ ringing. . .
July 2023
Noctural Hyperhidrosis
Dip your hand in the wetlands wordpool
finger through weeds, feel
the brush-
ink black umbilical to the dark.
Or worse the whole
snaking river
moving
out of your depth.
Pause
an oxbow comma,
and dip your nib
in the lexicon
of land reclamation.
Abstract if you must -
Space.
Air.
Count
word-
Or wet, wake on tide marked sands gasping
to ask: What land is this?
What shall I do here?
July 2023
Autumn
That sound
and looking across rooftops
surprised to find nothing.
Waiting.
Then taking the gaze higher
and oh! Delight.
A flight of shifting geese
far off and high
writing the air
with remembered song
disappearing dots
playing out
on a pianola roll.
Oct 2021
Alchemy
Heaney would have liked the sight:
crescenting the lake’s paved edge
mostly men, booted and branded in their website T's
-
massive magnets into the dark.
The weight, wait and haul of it
and bubbles rising like Poseidon's farts.
Hypnotic to watch
just one more throw of the old rope
and out of cold black water pull -
scooters, dead motors and scaffold poles.
A cache on the goose stripped verge
caught like fairground-
For the scrap man.
Hands. Face. Space. (A pandemic poem)
Returning the Aldi trolley.
A bloke: Is it a pound or a token?
Will I take change?
Holding out my hand
he puts silver in my palm and,
stranger -
Touched.
Reminded of the time
I rushed from the heart ward
leaving mum with dad
to get her some food
and walk their little dog.
His harness, a faff, and he
used to walking slow,
unaccustomed to me,
eventually he ‘went’
so the flimsy nappy bag
weighed in my hand – warm...
Reminding me of the time
I heard an old lady talking
on the radio about her son.
She said when he was a baby
his bottom was beautiful.
It fitted in her hand
like two boiled eggs
in a hanky.
I carry this with me.
Mother’s Day
So many moons after
that snowy funeral day
I find myself
with a bowl of plain yoghurt
destined for the fridge, notice
the cling films green branding
and through
its stretched
transparancy
somehow
become you,
mother.
2021
Of This Tiny Thing.
A couple of days
after dad died
the trap he’d set
reluctantly
caught a mouse.
Mum hadn’t noticed
‘til I pointed it out.
She, brave, tried
to save me
from the task.
And so
we went together
taking it
to the bin
where, suddenly reduced
to huge tears
we stood gripped
in the weight
of this
tiny thing…
Reach, throw, wade and row.
Don’t go all mystical on me, please -
staring into the horizon smiling.
Don’t tell me the whale is
a mammal yin-
when I know
it’s a killer.
By all means watch
it splash. See the play
Of beaded light
But come with me – now, please
Get out of the water.
Jan 2006
Dusting for Fingerprints
There was that one time
Dad slapped me,
a tea-
stressed,
he’d said something
and, teen, I gave him that look -
I’d practised.
Unpractised, his hand struck
before snap-
and then ringing ears and tears -
his first, I think,
and him being sorry,
and me shocked -
his hand printed on my face.
The other month, at the hospital
when they’d told me he was dying
and he must have suspected,
the nurse whispered permissions for us
staying the night,
and he asked what she’d said,
and instead of truth
bared-
And I’m left
wishing he was here
for tears and ‘sorry’
or to slap me
and print the silence ringing.
May 2009
Solid State Aphasia
I’m wearing my memories
on a chord around my neck.
They hang closest to
my heart and sometimes
touch my breast-
pocket nested mobile phone.
My memories are on a stick
I can beat myself with.
They are storm proof, ready
to slip into any port.
I’m wearing my memories
on a chord around my neck
along with an identity-
card and its chip
that opens doors and
calls the lift.
So it is strange
to find myself
on the stairs
breathless and split-
second perplexed
wondering where it is
I’m going
and what I set out with
to forget.
Dec 2004
Loss and all that
The staff palled up Irene with your mother
blanketing then together in the lounge,
knees facing each other, sometimes sharing
the green footstool, or a joke – no bother
together. So that often when we left,
after visiting on Sunday mornings
and kissing our goodbyes, far from bereft
your Mum was keen to get back to Irene.
At Christmas when the stomach bug took hold,
robust, your Mum was quick back to her chair
while Irene fared less well, then not at all.
Your Mum cried and tried to find a tissue,
wiped her eyes, folded it up her sleeve – neat
facing darker days, and Irene’s empty seat.
Jan’06
Mr Anecdote.
I won the title back in sixty-
And, as they say, the rest is history.
It’s like that time
I was on my way
to Batley in the car
and just as it came on to rain
the damn thing stalled.
It was in the days before mobile phones
and so I had to search
for a phonebox wearing
only the shirt I stood up in.
Shirts were more lurid in those days.
This one, I can remember as if it were
yesterday, was all acid colours
and paisley print. The stuff we wore!
Anyway, I’m out in the street
in the rain, haven’t a clue where
I am or where the nearest phone box is
when I hear this car slowing down.
It’s Batley mind, so I didn’t look back.
I wondered who the hell it was.
I’d visions of God knows what!
And who do you think it was
but our kid and his mate.
They’ve only driven over because
They heard the match is cancelled
and they know we’ll all be waiting
in the rain like plums -
and that’s how it was.
Now getting back to your question:
Yes, it makes me proud,
it really does, it puts me in mind
of that time when I was trying to get
the top off a battle of sauce
there were none of your
easy squeeze bottles then…
Jan 2005
Personal Effects
Among Mum’s stuff,
a small brown envelope addressed to her,
post-
Bradford, April 16th 1973 -
when a stamp would set you back 2 1/2p
So, it must have arrived
four months after that Christmas
which outlasted our childhoods -
when Dad, in hospital, wasn’t there
and Santa’s generosity left
us unboxing guilt and undeserving.
Now, all these years on -
Mum gone – I refind this scrap,
resurrected,
and wonder at your hand -
stare at the kindness you still send:
“I came up on the bingo last
week and this is your share.
so treat yourself for easter.
a Friend”
19.03.24
In Praise of the Shed of Tranquility
Was it with the sound
of one hand clapping
that this window went
safety-
Once whole: now holed.
I see myself in this jigsaw
of an angel’s wing,
with camera and torch.
Behind me the washing line
and trees ask questions of the sky.
And will this thing remain a door
when opening it might
send the day thousanding,
into cells of fractured light?
10th June 2024
