Making the Gaps Wider

She knew my kind.

'You want to show off,' she said.

'If you think you can here, you’re wrong.'

'No no,' I said, 'I only came to play.
I came for the games, the fun.

I don't expect anything else.'

But she was crying. (She'd felt scared.
The boys had been fighting just next door.)

'Leave me alone!' she said.

All her pain

came into me and filled me.

It felt like mine.

'Stop pushing in,' she said.
'Anyway you're late. It's over. 

I'm closing the gates now.'

I should have shut up then

and gone away. But I wanted

the hurting to stop.

The more I tried to explain, 

the more she closed her ears.

And her mouth. And turned away.

I thought I heard her say,

'I never invited you 

to this party.'

Next time I went to look,

they were all playing again

inside her garden.

I suddenly realised

they spoke to each other in secret code.

I went away.

Dark Emerald

The large green stone,

square-cut, was mounted

on simple gold: a plain setting.

I crept in often to gaze –

sitting at her dressing table,

tugging open the heavy drawer.

My mother must have known

it was my dream of beauty,
never told me it was only glass.

Written for Micro Poetry ~ Dark Emeralds at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

14, at Trevallyn

I always liked to go alone

on the path through the bush

down to the Gorge and the peacocks.

I would find a staff to help me over the stones.

On the path through the bush

there were many fallen branches 

the right weight and length, firmness and give.

Down to the Gorge and the peacocks 

the way was uneven and steep.
I swapped my skirts for pants.

I would find a staff to help me over the stones,

test the grip, and set out like a legendary explorer,

with no-one to see me as just a weak girl.

Linked to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Path

My Life in Words 1. Childhood

My life was a circle of enchantment, 

a vast back lawn

edged by flowers, ferns and berries

and a stand of skinny bamboo,

where I played alone

but not alone –

with friends no-one else ever saw.

It was books and stories; my Dad

reading me poems at bedtime
(Longfellow, Masefield, Rupert Brooke).

It was grownups who said I was clever.

Then it was school, and failure

at sport, art, numbers and song

(myopia, astigmatism, infected tonsils

diagnosed much later).
Only my words held good.

It was loud, popular queens of the playground

who didn't like me; the ritual bullying; 

the crack of the teacher's quick cane.

It was a few intense friendships,

serially exclusive enclaves of two.
It was going within to survive.


Linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #307

My Glass Swan

My glass swan

sits above the computer now

so I can still look at it often.

Its first home was my bedroom

when I was a child. It lived

on top of the bookshelf then.

The top (or back) is a lid.

I keep, inside the cavity of its body,

soft, very tiny feathers.

It shows me all the serenity,

grace and beauty

I always longed to have.

It is like a promise …

though I’m sad to see that one wing

has become chipped.

But in a long life, that is perhaps

to be expected. Its calm beauty,

nevertheless, remains.

.

Submitted for dVerse Meeting the Bar — poems about things.