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.

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)

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

Dear Filing Cabinet

You look so square, solid and ordinary.
A bit battered in places, the paint wearing off.
You are two, looking like one, side by side
so closely touching there is no separation.

This half belonged to me, that was Andrew's,
used in our own offices in every home we had
until after he died, and what was his became mine.
So I placed you together. You always matched.

And yet the contents are different now, re-arranged.
I made the occasion a big chucking-out
of obsolete bills, and receipts that even the tax man
no longer wants. Detritus of a lived life.

I spread myself, my records, over the whole space.
Some of it still isn't filled, all these years later.
There are gaps. And there are secrets. Old poems
written in code, by a man I loved before.





I'm linking this to the Tuesday Platform for 7 Feb. 2017 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'

Again

‘Are you well?’ they ask. ‘You look tired.

Your energy seems a bit down.’

‘It’s August again,’ I don’t say,

and don’t add, ‘My “cruellest month” ’.

All those remembered deaths,

none of them old yet – and the new one.

It creeps up slowly, even though I think

I’m well prepared. I forget hollowness –

until it insinuates itself, again, inside

my bones, my veins, the cavities of my gut.

The empty spaces in me, which are me, are

microcosms of the great spaces in the world

left by your unique absences: holes that can’t

be refillled. Can’t ever. But the weeks pass

again, and I move again past your passing,

your several passings, as I did each first time.

Perhaps it is as well, my dears, you die in August

or the first edge of September, or the last day in July.

The Spring arrives again, the world looks up

and thrives, filling itself with life, that starts anew.

And my life too goes on. So far. Of course

I feel myself immortal, as we all do – as you did

(most of you). But now again it’s August.

I don’t go out much, get dressed late.

I buy myself wine and chocolates

and romantic DVDs; indulge alone.

And nothing fills the hollow, lights the dark….

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Just busy.’ Again and again.

Written in response to Voices, Spaces & Songbirds at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

The Dead of Winter

My house is my cave today. 

It's drizzly out and my blinds are drawn.

But weather is not my reason, 

it's my opportunity.

I fold this cave around me 

like a cosy dressing-gown.

I hope there will not be visitors. 

I disconnect my phone.

This is my bad time of year 

(though none, now, are good).

This is the death time, doubled — 

the recent and the old.

Which should I count worst? 

The man I was with for 20 years,

truest of all companions, 

slowly ageing, ailing?

Slowly losing his mind —

though never his love ... our love: 

our resolute, practical love — 

as I lost power to help.

Or the violent, sudden end

decades past, of one

linked to me, mind to mind,

a week short of his 25th birthday?

******

Such outwardly peaceful events. 

Holding a hand as known as my own,

murmuring to him of love and memory, 

all those hours with his eyes closed.

All those hours until his breath stopped, 

just as his eyes flew open

to bless me with his last look. 

And I, that one instant, not looking.

Or to sit down with a coffee 

on a lazy Saturday afternoon

and open the day's paper 

to the headline I'll never forget.

No-one knew I was someone

who would need to be told,

who would most need to be told —

no-one who had the telling.

(And I’d failed to understand

my inexplicable tears the night before,

the lines of poetry filling my thoughts

in words of love and goodbye.)

******

“There are some," my psychiatrist said, 

“Who break down very quietly.” 

Mostly that's what I did 

in all the several breakdowns of my life.

And in these hurts too. Mostly. 

"You mustn't grieve," I was told.

"It holds the dead back." Too bad, 

I said in my head. You owe me that.

I went long walks alone 

in Melbourne's hottest summer,

haranguing the pitiless, empty sky; 

returning calmly to cook dinner.

That's when I started 

always having too much to do,

keeping busy against 

bottomless rage and despair.

******

"Live my life for me," he seemed to say 

through the pages of a book.

For a while I tried but then I knew, 

that was not his message.

Live your own life, he'd have said.

Write your own poems. I'm outa here. 

And he'd have laughed. 

I went on. Life is long.

As my life with my last love was long, 

sweetly long, and now is done.

You won't see me scream and sob. 

I withdraw. I do it all alone.


Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #212

Lament: Sweetest Love, I Go (April Challenge 15)

Prompt: take the title of a poem you like,
change it and write a new poem.

“Sweetest love,” wrote Donne,
“I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;”

and I spoke that often
in silence in my heart
to a man I went from,
after I went,
believing it true.

That was twenty-seven years ago
and the world has shown me
loves that are surely fitter,
and in their own ways
no less sweet.

What sweetness could there be
loving a man in prison?
And it was not fit.
I was married
with young children.

And so I left.
Months later, so did he.
It was no “feigned death”.
I spent that night, though ignorant,
inexplicably in tears;

and through my mind
the words repeated:
“Sweetest love, I do not go,
for weariness of thee…”
Next day I learned.

Did he reach for me
in loving thought,
to tell me that his choice
had other reasons?
I believe he did.

And every love is fit
and every love is sweet.
That blinding smile,
that husky voice….
Donne’s “Song” is my Lament.