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.

Jim Died Today

(or, The Beginning of Winter)

Jim, who was my age, died today

at 2pm his daughter's email said.

He was my husband Bill's best mate

since they were wild young lads.

Later, a good friend to me too.

Best man at our wedding. 'His family

was my family, and mine his,' he said

in Bill's funeral oration decades later.

His Joy went on ahead six months ago.

Since then I've phoned him once or twice,

exchanged emails ... the last few days

he was so much on my mind, I meant to call.

And Bill, too, has been around a lot.

Now I think I know why, for both.

I was remembering already, this last week, 

his words for Bill. A reminder?

There's only me left of the four of us, 

who married about the same time, 

whose kids were like cousins. They're all

in middle age, with children of their own,

still I resolve to travel the long miles

to help lay Jim to rest. I'm now

the only one of that generation here –

not blood, but very close family.

‘Aunty Rosemary,' the emailer 
called me. As always. 

I look back over the years;

I phone my son and cry.

The sun starts going down

behind the mountains.

The air develops a chill.

Grey clouds fill the sky.

(For those who may wonder – I was married to Bill for 27 years, before I was married to Andrew.)

PS Travel to the funeral from where I live proves complicated, costly and time-consuming, so after all I'll be staying home and saying my own prayers here instead.

The Unforgiveable

Of all the various things for which

I might have withheld forgiveness,

one remains. When we moved house

and that kid helpfully watered 

the garden beds along the low veranda

and also my just unloaded tea-chests of books,

I knew what to do. 'Give me a hammer.'

I was going to claw open the lids

and set the books standing upright, 

pages open to dry. But you were fierce

insisting I must not, while she, 

the mother of the boy, soothed: 

'Just see them safe, undamaged.

Just know they will be all right.'

No matter I begged and cried.

Apart from anything else, 

I couldn't find your damn hammer.

And no-one would help. You all acted

as if I was a foolish, hysterical child.

I don't know why you took that attitude.

Was it because she was pretty; did you 

wish to impress? Was it to spare 

the feelings of the ignorant boy?

You said there was no room

to spread the books to dry – but there was.

We could easily have shifted chairs,

made more space in that vast living-room,

anything – but it had to be done at once.

Of course, when finally I was allowed

to prise the crates open, I was lucky

that only some by then bloomed with mould,

only some had the ink running and blurring

on authors' signatures, only some

were water-swollen out of shape, and only

some were destroyed beyond legibility,

and so beyond keeping. And of those,

not all were irreplaceable. Many I had not

treasured from childhood. Most were not even

expensive volumes in monetary terms.

You never said sorry. I know that you never

let yourself understand why I didn't just

get over it, like a sensible person.

Written in response to Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Books.

I should add that it was a long time ago (1987) – and since then I have always owned my own hammer!

Once, on a 16-foot Trailer-Sailor

It was Broome to Darwin –

but we skipped 

part of the Sound,

and cut across

the top of the Gulf.

Not enough time

to hug and explore

those long, intricate shores.

It was 40 degrees plus 

(Celsius); only warm salt water 

to tip on ourselves 

from a bucket dipped over the side.

Fresh was rationed for drinking –

couldn't always find

pool or stream  

up the inlets.

It was clear nights 

lounging on deck;

uncountable stars

crowding the vast black dome overhead;

and one tiny, quick white satellite.

It was crocodiles sunning.

Waterfalls. Four-storey tides.

Beach sand inland, impossibly high.

Note: 40ºC is 104ºF.  (It was the tropics! But the nights cooled off somewhat).

Responding to a prompt at 'imaginary garden with real toads', to write on sailing in 100 words max (excluding title).

The Stars with You

To Bill

On a clear tropic night in summer,

from the deck of a trailer-sailor in the Gulf,
away from the lights of crowded cities,

we saw the sky crowded with stars of all sizes

and a small white satellite going over.

We were happy together, again, that summer.

It wasn't your fault that the stars never shone

so thick and bright again, and we lost sight

of that vast heaven. A seafaring man,

you were never meant to come to rest on land,

clumsily flapping about and struggling for breath.

The 6th prompt for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' is Seeing Stars

Victory

They are all

dead, my husbands, so now I can choose.

Tonight for the Asian Cup

it's Bill I invite

to come watch.

As we did

a long time ago,

late nights with the kids in bed.

'How good is that goalie?' I say now —

then we score.

A tense game,

the Socceroos against Korea,

tied at the last minute

so now we're into

extra time.

It's almost

as good as that match

when underdog Sunderland

won the FA Cup ('73).

Nail-biting!

Like old times,

my soccer-loving second husband

sitting with me here tonight,

barracking with me.

Like old mates.

Countdown's on —

Queensland election —

right now I don't even care.

We get past that goalie one more time,
and we've won!


Note: My late second husband, Bill Nissen, migrated to Australia with his family at the age of 15, from Holland, where he was being groomed to be a goalkeeper for the national soccer team.  In Australia he followed Aussie Rules football but still liked watching the FA Cup on TV.

(This poem consists of a sequence of mirror-image Maudern cinquains, alternating reversed and normal.)

I'm linking this to both dVerse OpenLinkNight and Poets United's Poetry Pantry #238, where you'll find lots of good poems by lots of good poets.

Kitchen Memories

My mother’s sugar spoon
that I lived with
all through my childhood
and live with now
stamped EPNS:
only silver-plated,
its deep, round bowl
already well-worn
by the time she died and I
souvenired it.

My stepmother,
the one they wrote about
in the fairytales,
feeding my brother and me
mouldy vegetables,
stews with bits of broken glass.
(No we didn’t eat; not silly.)
And the rubber-tiled floor
I had to scrub on my knees
with cold water.

Darling Aunty Ev
who rescued us
and took us to live
in her own house
showing me how lemon juice
cleans an electric jug,
and when you take lids off
always to put them upside-down
keeping the dirt and germs
on the outside.

Sitting in a rented kitchen
with my first husband, Don,
hearing over breakfast
the news on the radio:

President Kennedy shot
and taken to hospital;
President Kennedy dead.
Eventually we rose
and went to work as usual,
not as usual.

Dutch-born Bill,
the father of my kids,
teaching us to savour
salt herring out of a barrel,
sauerkraut and mashed potato
and the rich warm taste
of Rokwurt dipped in mustard.
Encountering that again
tonight after many years,
I think my palate sang.

Coming home with Andrew
(my third-time-lucky)
after Darrell and Lottie’s wedding
where they fastened hands
and jumped the broom,
to a supper of coffee
with wedding-cake.
He asked me to cut off
half the icing from his share
to have myself. I knew he would.


NaPoWriMo Day 30

Unpacking the Books

Did you think I would not
remember you?

Every time
I unpack the books anew

in the next new home,
I’m reminded. It’s true

I blame you for the damage.
That stupid boy too,

but you were the one
who yelled and stamped, who

insisted I not unpack
the boxes he’d wet through

watering along the edge of the verandah
where they were stacked. I knew

I could have saved them,
if I’d got them out quickly to dry in the sun.

‘There’s not enough room,’ you hissed.
I saw that there was. I’d already begun

prising the lid off the first. But I was tired,
you were loud and insistent. Well, done is done.

Or, in this case, not done, and when I finally
freed my treasures, mould and damp had won.

It’s long ago now, and here I am
settling in the final house with the final man.

I unpack the books for the last time,
observing the water marks yet again

still with the old pang, as sharp as ever.
You are fifteen years gone

and this treason not forgotten
among all the better reasons to remember you.


NaPoWriMo Day 3

Anniversary (to the ghost of my second husband)

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 10 
Use a letter count as a constraint for your poetry, either writing a brand new poem or rewriting an old poem to fit the new pattern. 

I found an old poem that hadn’t quite worked for me. The process tightened it up in interesting ways.

It's June 11. On this date       
in 1966 you married me.       
It was your idea. I wanted       
to live outside the law,      
had fulfilled the fantasy           
of the Cinderella day,        
knew how quickly all that           
collapsed – didn’t need       
a repeat. But you’d never        
been married; thrilled,       
wanted public celebration.       
And your mother told me       
how she was making – never   
questioning it – a new        
hat for her son’s wedding.       
At that point, I caved.

Poem from a Song

April PAD challenge 13. Today's prompt is to write a poem 'based off your response to a song'.

Ute Lemper sings Lili Marlene

on my friend's MySpace, my friend
who speaks with humour and courage
of her hair falling out and body slowing.

The singing swells and fades, rises again,
deep, soft, sweet notes, crescendos, and then
at the end quietly chilling: "Death is a Master
in Germany," she says. Bill who is dead used to love

that song, Lili Marlene. His father sang it
after the war in Holland; how strange
they all loved that song of Germany, the Allies.

And I love it too, in Ute's perfectly controlled
voice and diction. She plays me like strings
and transcends her own artifice. I am taken beyond

the pain of my breaking marriage, the awkward
rapprochement with my son by the man who is dead,
and my friend's journey of illness and recovery.

Many friends this year are falling seriously ill.
"Doc" who clears entities tells me, until December
we have to stay strong, after that the energy will turn.


13/4/08

Bloody Men!

That man – he comes in here
and dances all over my nice clean table
in his great big dirty bare feet.
He adds an unnecessary garnish
to my tasteful bowl of dahlias
pouring confetti upon their astonished heads
pelting them hard
with pellets of rolled silver paper.
(He’d just about need a silver bullet himself!)
Out of his pocket
he pulls unlimited
eggs and oranges
and one or two lit-up candles.
He juggles:
the oranges whiz round his head
till they turn into streaks
faster and faster – but the eggs!
they smash to the floor.
He refuses to mop them up with his spongey eyes.
(As for the candles,
them he swallows,
still burning.)
He strokes me all over
with his soft feelers,
tells me he loves me like love never was
and wants me like I never bin had.
Then he slopes out the door
and buzzes off blindly
accompanied by a cacophony of crackers –
leaving me walking on eggshells
very spiky
sliding and slipping in squash
and wondering what to do with my brand new coating of fur,
my uproarious red festoons.

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1975
5/2/75