I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

31 December 2017

Discovering Three Pratchetts Not Yet Read

I'm sitting up in bed last thing at night
reading Terry Pratchett – one of my grand-
daughter's books, which I seized on with delight
when I discovered it so near at hand.
I’m visiting for Christmas. It's all right 
that I'm in her space; she’s a good girl, and
is young enough to like the blow-up bed
she gets to use in the front room instead.

Or else she sleeps on a trundle mattress
in the study, but anyway I get 
her room and her bed and – what happiness –
three books of hers by dear Terry Pratchett:
Sir Terry, whose name I shall always bless
for Discworld and its inhabitants – yet
this is tinged with some grief. Though they live on,
their gently humorous author has gone.

They are ‘young adult’ books, a genre I
often choose for its own sake anyway.
I may be regressed, but I don’t know why
I need worry about that. Reading’s play
in my book (ha ha ha!) and I’m not shy
of admitting this. Could there be a day
without a book in it? No, not for me –
glad I’m still here, in bed with Terry P. 


Winding up the month (and year) with a final offering for the Poetic Asides Ottava Rima Challenge.

I'm also sharing this with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #384, the first after our 2017 Christmas break.


Happy New Year, dear readers!


30 December 2017

The Roses I Post on Facebook

My hobby is to photograph roses.
I like to find them growing in gardens.
The good God, whom we are told disposes
all things, knows how a heart sometimes hardens,
therefore is using me (one supposes)
to remind others of love and pardons.
Each comes with a message, unique each day –
yet all the same really. 'Be Love,' they say.

When I visit my family down south
in the temperate climes, I thrill to see
gardens full of roses. They spill and froth
and crowd and dance, and almost sing for me.
(Or is it that songs burst from my own mouth
in my joy that so much beauty can be?)
At home I photograph roses for sale
in hot-housed bunches … but still beautiful.

The words I add to these posts are simple
wishes for peace, for love, for happiness,
for a bright day – nothing original.
Yet people cherish them, feel that they bless.
I do go into my heart for them all –
risking banality, seeking sweetness.
Whether they come from within or above,
each message is really the same one: ‘Love!’


And again, an ottava rima for the form challenge at Poetic Asides.

Also shared with The Tuesday Platform for 9 Jan. 2018 at "imaginary garden with real toads".

29 December 2017

There's Nothing Now

There’s nothing now that I can do for you,
and how it hurts my heart that this is so.

My sky has darkened from its sunny blue
as I discern that yours is thick with snow.

I always held to what I knew was true –
only to wonder now if I did know.

We were each other’s shelters once; that’s gone.
Like swords: the cutting rain, the piercing sun.


A combined ottava rima / ghazal, for the Poetic Asides ottava rima challenge. (Or rather, a quasi-ghazal – since, among other things not present here, a ghazal should have at least five couplets ... whereas an ottava rima cannot have so many.)

28 December 2017

That Sentimental Place, the Past

She dreams of roses. Her father grew them
when she was a child, in all the colours
roses came in then. She remembers him
tending them closely. He would be outdoors
morning and evening, flexing his green thumb
(he hoped) outside his daily working hours,
and longer on weekends. The hues and scents
he revelled in, she treasures … and laments.

Yet another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides form challenge

Also shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #387

On Going Within

I speak into a void. He, Hermit, goes
so far into his cave, no-one can see
his lone attempts to heal his current woes.
I don’t know if he’s even hearing me;
he’s possibly so deep he never knows
that messages are sent at all. Will he
restore himself by hiding as in womb –
or does he pull around himself a tomb?

Another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides form challenge

Sharing this (nearly a year later) with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #428

27 December 2017

Time Off

for Julie

She’s gardening, before the weather heats
as morning widens into brightest day;
before the dense humidity repeats
its everyday assault. Meanwhile I play
indoors with poetry, creating feats
of formal exercise – the kind I may
do seated: scanning metre, choosing rhymes,
while she indulges in more physical pastimes.

We’re both on holiday, and catching up
with things which called us in the busy year
but were perforce passed over. Now, to stop
does not mean inactivity. The dear
preferred preoccupations fill each cup
with our own versions of post-Christmas cheer. 
She brings me a tomato, tangy-sweet.
I try for poems good enough to eat.


Another ottava rima for the current Poetic Asides challenge.
It came second!


Also sharing with The Tuesday Platform for 2 Jan 2018, at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

26 December 2017

And What If Light?

‘And what if light surrounds us like a song –
or what if we are made of singing light?
You cannot prove these propositions wrong,
no more than I can prove that they are right.
Yet what if we had known it all along –
that light and music meld beyond sound/sight?
What difference might it make to you and I?
Perhaps we’d live more lightly, perhaps fly.’

He whispered these reflections to the air,
sending them out upon a rising breath –
then bent again to tend the garden, where
beneath the plaques folk rested in their death.
A woman came towards him, crying, ‘There
is where I want my dears, in solid earth
where I can come and talk to them and pray.’
Her tread was heavy as she moved away.

Around the grave-beds, grasses, flowers and trees
firm-anchored in the soil, while stretching high
into the air, moved slightly in a breeze
as if they danced – as if they’d almost fly.
Wind in the leaves made soft noise; humming bees
thronged the flowers. The sun rose in the sky.
The insects and the birds moved through the day,
uncaring of what he and she might say.


Another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides form challenge.
Also shared at the latest Tuesday Platform, for 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Un-Scrooging

It’s Christmas time, and I do not believe
in all that crass, commercial carry-on.
I like to give. Most focus on ‘receive’
this time of year. The feasting, though, is fun.
I did that twice, the first on Christmas Eve;
then Christmas Day we fronted up again.
I must confess, the presents that I got
are great. ‘Bah, humbug!’ doesn’t hit the spot.

I had good conversations. One young man
regaled me with his fishing expertise;
I matched him catch for catch and line for line,
our heads together half the evening. He’s
a schoolboy, still a youth of just sixteen,
while I am far into my seventies, 
and yet we found such happy common ground
each counts the other now as a new friend.

On Christmas Day we dined with son’s old mates
(several I have known since they were small).
The hours of well-spaced courses, fun debates
with smart, like-minded people did not pall –
music, movies, books, fish, cheese, desserts …
we rose reluctantly as evening fell,
and drove home peaceful, happy and replete.
So now, goodwill to all! My life is sweet.


Another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides challenge.

Later: Although it is now far past Christmas (February, in fact) I am sharing this one with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #390

24 December 2017

Secretly Super

These copper cuffs that ornament each wrist
are solid copper, not mere coated tin.
I trust that my arthritis may desist
as this good metal swiftly does it in.
And look – they also help me to resist
all evil, crime, wrongdoing, error, sin.
Raising my crossed arms like Wonder Woman
deflecting bullets, I’m an Amazon!














Another for the Ottava Rima challenge at Poetic Asides

Prodigal Friend

I had not looked for him these many years.
It seemed I must resign myself to fate.
Despite a sense of loss, there were no tears,
and certainly no reason to await
a reappearance. No-one reappears –
do they? – after such a lengthy absence,
such an unrelieved and total silence.

Yet here he is, with thanks upon his tongue
for all the truth we shared a decade past –
and suddenly I’m roused, as after long
and peaceful slumber, opening eyes at last ...
awakening to dawn and daylight, song
of early birds crescendoing, and vast
blue skies unfolding to the spreading sun.

Written for the Ottava Rima challenge at Poetic Asides

(12 Aug 2018) I've just removed first and last lines, which were banal and unnecessary, so it's no longer a proper Ottava Rima; maybe I could label it a truncated one.

(Oct. 2018) Also linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #423

23 December 2017

A Masterpiece Takes Time

My son and grand-daughter
are making gingerbread,
wearing matching aprons.
Crisis: unsalted butter left out
went soft – but they find enough.
When mixed, the dough must go in the fridge
three hours – like short crust, they say.
They tell me the ingredients:
things I can’t eat, but they’ll give me
a tiny piece. After all, it's Christmas
The next item mustn’t be added 
until the last is measured.
‘Mix slowly into the wet stuff.’
The beaters whirr and grind.
A knife scrapes a spoon. I hear
deliberations, and laughter.
expect to enjoy my taste when I get it.


At 'imaginary garden with real toads' Gillena invited us to write on the theme 'SLOWLY' in only 100 words. And then, fortuitously, this gingerbread-making began.  And here is a sample of the finished product, later:



22 December 2017

‘May the Road Rise to Meet You,’ I Said, and She Said:

What does that mean? I feel like 
I just climbed a mountain.
What you want from me?

I don’t wanna climb anymore …
can’t I just walk downhill please,
to the next flower maybe?

May the road be winding and wonderful
(Feels like a tightrope at the moment.
Talk about straight and narrow.)


Found poem: found in a comment on one of my facebook posts. I couldn't resist shaping it into the poem I thought it wanted to be.

Later: Linking to The Tuesday Platform for 20 Feb. 2018 at "imaginary garden with real toads".

Random

Letting the pen flow
any old where across the mind
(you thought I’d say ‘page’, but
no, it’s the mind that the pen
– my pen – traverses at
random) I find myself
in glades of light, filtering
through tall, leafy trees –
in this country, we don’t
do deciduous, and anyway,
now is summer, and we feast
on and in the sunlit green.

Or I find myself (at
the tip of my flowing pen)
in deep, dark caves, which
nevertheless spell ‘home’, being
womb-like. Or else I wander
to a phone-call from a brother,
wishing me Happy Solstice.
(Will you fly? he asks.) 
I like the randomness of things,
of scribbling, though we pretend
there is order and reason. Ha!
My pen knows better. And my mind.


Written in response to a prompt from Karin Gustafson at 'imaginary garden with real toads', Writing Exercise (For Days of Little Time/ No Muse) in which we are asked to think of a letter, then a word, and go-go-go. 

18 December 2017

Early and Late

Initially, passion shocked 
my mouth open,
made my toes 
curl tight, uncurl….

Finally, your touch
in its lack
chills my skin,
slows my blood.


A belated attempt to respond to the recent prompt, Micro Poetry ~ Fire and Ice, at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. 
Also written for THE POETRY OF THREE, Three Words Per Line on facebook. 
And linked to The Tuesday Platform for 30 Jan. 2018 at "imaginary garden with real toads".


3 December 2017

January Moments

In my dark garden
wind chimes clang faintly, I breathe
the smell of the sea.


Steamy nights
on this tree-thick hill;
my grey cat 

sits silent 
on the top step, keeping guard
while we toss in heat.

Like my cats
the plants are very still
this hot morning.

The heat revs up
as the morning brightens.
What time today
will humid rains kick in?
Summer at full throttle.


Downpour.
At last a bud
on the rosebush.

Quiet –

the rain pauses
waiting.


Trying to come up with a poem for the new year, and uninspired, I looked through several years of micropoetry written in January, selected one from each year (with a bit of tweaking to some, on seeing them anew) and found that they could be read as a sequence. 

19 November 2017

Doors

To visit Melbourne
re-opens a door
on a life,
on a man –
your father, son.

Well, it would.
When I visit
I always stay
with you, dear,
and I remember….

He’s dead now.
It’s 23 years
since he went.
How on earth
can that be?

As for you,
suddenly you’re 50!
The blonde curls
of the boy
no longer exist.

The old doors
to the past
open and close.
We’re still here.
New doors open.


Linked to Weekend Mini Challenge: Doors at 'imaginary garden with real toads' and to The Poetry of Three on facebook.

17 November 2017

Change and Light

As spirit animal, the dragonfly is connected to the symbolism of change and light. – Elena Harris: Dragonfly Spirit Animal and Totem

When she came to see him in the hospital 
when we knew he was dying, she said,
'On my way here I received a message.
I am to tell you to arrange with Rosemary
a sign, so that after you move
to a different dimension, whenever
you are with her, she will know. It might, 
for instance, be a butterfly.'

After she left, we talked and decided
butterflies are too common. I could easily
explain them away as not really
signifying. I had to be surer, so
we chose instead the dragonfly – 
seen in these parts, yes, but so rarely    
as to be significant. And it has been so – at first
those moments when I missed him most acutely.

Dragonflies would burst from a bush
right into my face, or land on the door of my car
just as I was about to open it, or skim across
a rocky pool ... always in immediate
response to my thought. Sometimes I would even
open a magazine straight to a picture.
Then, at a Sunday market in a strange town,
I found an antique mourning brooch.

It is crafted from woven hair, in the shape
of a dragonfly with all four wings outspread.
I took it to mean he is always with me, 
or can be any time I choose to bring him present.
I wear it seldom now. My need is less. Assured
that he is close, I can live without reminders. (Only
sometimes, still, if I have a moment of sadness,
a living dragonfly appears from nowhere, and I know.)





Written in response to Bits of Inspiration ~ Dragonfly at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.


5 November 2017

With Great Anticipation

I will come and join you
at the end of the week
and then we’ll catch up
and I’ll find out
what’s been going on with you
since our last encounter –
and that will be good, but
even more I want to know
what will happen next,
your future, how you will
navigate your crises
at work and home, and whether
you ever will meet that great love
we're all waiting for,
to whom you have come so close 
it seemed, once or twice,
only to discover
that Whoever decides these things 
had other plans,
such as death, betrayal ...
which of course
keeps you on our screens
week after week
as we agonise with you
and watch you grow,
both longing for and dreading
the final dénouement.

4 November 2017

Women's Craft Circle

They are making ‘soft blossoms’
from pieces of fabric
that used to be clothes –
hot pink, shiny blue, 
variegated browns,
pale green, warm orange –

cutting them in circles
traced around cups,
then threading cotton 
on fine needles, running it
in and out around the edge
and drawing it tight.

As they work, they talk
about growing trees,
keeping chickens,
and whether they like
being addressed collectively
as 'you guys’ (not ‘you women’).

They are making soft blossoms
to decorate the rims of buttons,
attach to hair clips, 
dot around belts,
edge the pockets of shorts,
adorn the frills of skirts.

Brooke is smiling wide,
demonstrating ways 
to make them tiny like daisies 
or full and bulbous; how to leave 
enough thread at start and end
to knot them off, complete.

The tip of Kymmie's tongue 
is held between her lips.
(I do that too
in concentration.)
Bronny is showing us
photos of her drawings.

Suzie is holding up
her first circlet of flowers.
She thinks it's clumsy (it's not). 
Everyone notices, also, and craves
her necklace of iridescent blue
glass that she treated and fired.

Me, I’m making a poem
of what I see, which is:
intent or laughing,
open or focused,
all of their faces 
are soft blossoms.

Shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #385

23 October 2017

Petals and Thorns

They burn, oh!
my petals burn

light has elapsed 

only these briars
glow eerily now

the setting sun
reddens the thorns,
their pointed tips

in the garden –
a garden enclosed
in dying light –

my petals flame.


Written for Micro Poetry ~ Binding with Briars at 'imaginary garden with real toads', and for facebook's The Poetry of Three. (Inspired – loosely – by Blake's 'The Garden of Love'.)


Published in HAVE YOUR CHILL, July 2018.

19 October 2017

Full Moon, Dark Moon

The Full Moon
huge and golden
seemed to bounce
to our rhythm
as we rode
that tiny motorbike, 
hired from strangers,
fast and eager
alongside the paddies –
to make love
our first time,
in dreamy Bali.

Many months later,
back in Melbourne,
I heard you
that last time –
riding away forever,
further and further,
your own bike
large and purring
across the night,
while I lay 
awake, listening long,
at Dark Moon.


Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Dark Moon, New Moon

Also written for the facebook group THE POETRY OF THREE, Three Words Per Line

16 October 2017

My Favourite Metaphor for You

(courtesy of 'The Little Prince')


I didn't keep
the fox poster
that spoke of
you / our love /
your death, in
a secret language
made of images.

I had written
the fox poem.
I thought that
pain enough – more
would be wallowing 
but now seek
other fox pictures.

Their different landscapes
are immaterial. For
it's the fox
I crave, vivid
against any backdrop,
coming towards me
shy yet purposeful....

Bit by bit
I tamed you
with my words,
with my love;
but could, finally, 
not save you
from the hunters.

Written for The Poetry of Three facebook group.

Joining This Site

(Poetry of Three)


'You do know
this is not
a dating site?'

How I laughed!
Yes. Anyway, I'm 
not looking, thanks.

All the same,
a sweet fantasy:
partnering through poetry.

How utterly romantic,
if somewhat old-fashioned.
But after all –

there is that
obligatory number three.
No, better not.

Just think of
those messy, eternal 
triangles we'd generate.


'Poetry of Three' in which each line must have three words (no other restrictions) is a facebook group I just joined. They asked several leading questions including this one before accepting my application – and fair enough too, but this one did amuse me.

When I Came Here (Shadorma)

When I came
to this place of trees
their welcome
embraced me
and when I lay in your arms
enfolded us both.

Written for 'imaginary garden with real toads': Fussy Little Forms: Shadorma.

12 October 2017

Return Journey?

"How was it, coming back
after hard adventures, 
to normal?"
                     I've never 
known normal. My path leads 
ever on; a wild track.

8 October 2017

Games Cat

is chasing for toy,
dangling for toys.
Playmate must be me!

Solution one: there’s 
miaow. A try. Maybe even
(soon) me-against rubs.

Door. To - it - from: circles.
Chair (my): around she prowls.

Myself, I won’t risk the Her.
(Health / ill conflict ... as
food would relieve it too.)

I think she’s me-like.
She thinks me her-like.

Outside’s wet. It is.
Bored is She.

Although people enjoyed my recent poem Cat Games (because many people love cats) I myself soon came to the conclusion it was banal and boring. Under the influence of Carmen GimĂ©nez Smith's chapter, 'An Exercise in Derangement' in the book WINGBEATS II, I wrote it out backwards (incorporating two photo captions from that earlier post) and needed very few further changes to arrive at what I hope is a more dynamic poem.

7 October 2017

In the House of Love


In the house of love 
I am but a decoration. 
I hang on the wall, 
ignored for the most part. 

When anyone does notice, 

they smile. I am pretty. 
But I count for nothing. 

I would like to be a book, 

that people would open and read, 
exchange thoughts with. 

I would like to be a spoon, 

to be dipped into food and brought back 
full of nourishment and sweet tastes. 

But I am a mere decoration, 

useless, unnecessary, 
with nothing important to do. 

Occasionally someone dusts me off. 

No-one ever applies polish. 
No-one ever takes a photo. 

They moved the mirror opposite; 

now I am even forgetting what I look like. 
I cannot see myself. I cannot hear myself. 
Perhaps I will cease to exist.


This is a fictional character, NOT autobiographical! Written in response to a prompt in a writing group, which consisted of the first two lines of this poem. They are from a piece of writing by Kyminy Cricket.


Linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #376

I Sing

I sing softly and sadly
I sing sadly and softly

I sing in the middle of your delight
and at the edge of your last anguish

I sing as if the day would never end
I sing slowly at midnight and quickly at dawn

I sing to the wind and the stars and the dark
I sing to the treetops and to their trunks

I sing to small frogs in the rainwater pipe
also to the bees that visit my clover

I sing in the cities, among their towers
I sing in rainforests and alongside rivers

I sing with the sea and with thunder
with jagged rocks and rising mountains

I sing in the language of a cat
and in the colours of a butterfly

in the pouring rain I sing
in the burning sun I sing

I will never stop singing

6 October 2017

The Ground from Under

You are falling roses,
you are patches of darkness,
you are words unspoken.

Into the gashes between
your forms and seemings 
I plummet. Cliff walls are stone.

How can now an arrival
happen, let alone pertain?

Black and bloody, drifting,
I consign me to endless.

Slightly Broken

Slightly broken by being 
so deeply misunderstood
(divine light fractured
lying spilled on the roadway)
I crawl off into invisible.

Mixing with grass and scrub
and thick leaf-litter, lacy fragments,
torn off, remain briefly. Soon 
the weather will turn them into
part of the earth and the air.

Resting alone tempts the wounded
into further silence. Today
you become far away, you become 
the nothing you would make
of me. And I am merely gone.

4 October 2017

Pretty Pierette

Some people hate clowns,
think them murderous 
with wide, round, staring eyes 
and crazy grins.

I, myself, despised
the lumbering, stupid
circus clowns of my childhood.
Then I found these others.

Now I am in love
with the clowns from the Carnival,
their patterned costumes,
their shapely masks.

Here at my left hand, overlooking 
the desk whereon I make poems,
there sits the loveliest of all –
a gift from a knowing friend.

Her white porcelain hands and face,
her elaborately painted eyes,
her bows and bells and glitter
show me she is beautiful but sad.

I know sad. Those frozen tears
on her blank, helpless face
remind me. They are for love lost:
remembering a different beauty.


















Written for Poems of Garden Gnomes. The prompt: to write about whatever is just out of reach of one's left hand.

Also linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #389

2 October 2017

Cat Games

She is bored.
It's wet outside.
Like me, she thinks
to relieve it with food,
but I don't inflict on her
the ill-health I risk for myself.

She prowls around my chair,
circles from it to the door,
rubs against me; soon
may even try a miaow.
There's one solution: 
I must be playmate.














Toys for dangling
















Toy for chasing


Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Also linking to Monday Writes #125 and to Midweek Motif – Animals at Poets United

A Conversation with My Late Husband

He tells me, "You need 
male energy around you. It's OK
if you have new relationships. Later, 
we'll be together forever. 
But for now ..."

"Listen," I say, "I like 
being with me now. (And 
with you, still so present in spirit.)
For the rest, my little cat
is my new love, my sweet, my treasure."


Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Promises

I signed, 'Love forever'. He replied:
'Forever is a long time to love. How about, 
Love – as long as you're still
the person you are today.'
(It was a promise, not a question.)

He died soon after. 
Decades later, 
love appears to be forever ...
after all, he is still 
the person he was that day.


Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Re-reading Martin Pippin*

I have been rambling for days
in an apple orchard and a daisy field, 
in the fine company of Martin Pippin
(introduced to me by Eleanor Farjeon).

I was a lonely girl, unlike those
who stopped their play to hear these tales –
yet my childhood too, I recollect,
had its daisy chains, its golden apples. 



* "Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard" and "Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field" by Eleanor Farjeon: classics still available in print and as ebooks.

Written for a 55-word prompt.

28 September 2017

Autumn on the Tweed

As I drive alongside the river
under a sunny sky,
the air seems blue and golden
up and down my way – 
my way along the river
now, and spreading forever.

Always it seems forever,
unbroken days of perfect weather,
Tweed River sparkling lazily –
untroubled, expansive,
mimicking Spring or even Summer. But
no, it's Autumn; that rich, warm season.

Autumn was always my favourite time
under Heaven, as the earth rolls around
to repeat its cycles over and over
until time spins to a standstill and stops.
Must we think of that while the sun is shining?
Never! Let's rest in the heartbeat of Autumn.


Note: This Tweed River is in Australia, not Scotland!

A triple acrostic, written for Form Friday – Acrostic (with Autumn theme) at Poems of Garden Gnomes. It is a hot Spring in Australia just now, but I love to celebrate Autumn in this sub-tropical part of the country. Not many coloured leaves; just glorious weather.

24 September 2017

My Boat Song

Once was a boat that was called after me,
named as the Mary Rose,
tiny but strong to fish in the sea.
How the wind blows, who knows?

Once I was small, lived on an isle;
Dad called me Mary Rose –
his special name, making me smile.
Who knows what stays, what goes?

When I grew up, then I could see
feet made of clay, not gold.
Gone was my god, gone from that day –
old stories long grown cold.

Jack was my new step-father who
never usurped that name,
yet built a boat, showing me true
new ways that love became.

Once was a boat that was called after me,
named as the Mary Rose,
tiny but strong to fish in the sea.
How the wind blows, who knows?


And no, you are NOT allowed to call me Mary Rose! Seriously. The only other person who did was my favourite uncle, Tommy, who died in his nineties a few years back and who doesn't belong in this poem. It's a special name, not for general use, not even by best friends, lovers or husbands.















(I don't have a photo of the Mary Rose but she was something like this, with a pointier bow. This is from the Antique Boat Centre. As the image is marked as available to be saved, I am assuming Public Domain.)


At 'imaginary garden with real toads' Kim's weekend mini challenge is Boats, and she quotes many people's favourite boat song – certainly mine – The Skye Boat Song. Check out the link to find more boat poems.

I grew up on an island, often 'messing about in boats', and was later married for 27 years to a professional fisherman, so had many possibilities to write about ... but perhaps we all have one boat that is more special than others.

14 September 2017

Ghazal for —

Where shining joy was the most blended with piercing pain;
of many loves – all true, all lost – you are that one.

We meet in dreams, and in my memories, again
and yet again. It seems, briefly, death has not won.

‘Shall we meet once more in another life?’ I asked.
‘Nothing surer!’ declared my friend the magician.

With that I must be content as the slow years pass.
I was angry a long time that I must go on.

How full and rich life became for me after all.
Yet, still haunted, I never say your name, dear  —.

You owe me something. I will hold you to it, soul-
bound of old. I am your love. I claim reunion.


Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Reunions