How I Deal

Child me saw ghosts

no-one else could see.

Night after night

I lay rigid with fear,

until at last I wrote

the poem of the ghosts.

Then I owned them.

It made me brave.

When I fell in love,

my poems were pink roses

soft with romance,

and my poems

were yellow roses

bright with celebration,

and my poems were

deep red roses rich with lust.

When love fell out with me,

my poems curled

into balls of weeping,

or shrieked their rage

or hissed poison.

Some brandished knives.

And they brought me out

to the other side.

When my first cat died —

my dearest, from kitten

through 18 fond, full years —

I made poems of her life

and poems of her death.

Readers said, 'A noble animal'

and, 'You can be a great poet'.

I was glad I served her well.

When government

betrayed the people,

and we marched

and we demonstrated,

my poems raised their fists and yelled.

The fire in their bellies

inflamed other minds and hearts —

but those poems burnt out fast.

When my first great love

died suddenly, shockingly, young,

my poems took me on long walks

to talk to the sky, to send

invisible messages aloft

and visible ones to the world.

I wrote him such fine poems

after he was dead!

When our Mother called to us

and we saw she was hurt

and could be dying,

when we knew we were killing off

whole tribes of her other children,

my poems evoked green Nature,

a blue, unique planet,

and the great love of the Mother.

When my husband Andrew,

love of my life thus far,

died at his time, old,

my poems held my hands

and mopped my tears.

'This is right,' they said,

'But you are allowed to grieve',
and afterwards brought me peace.

Prompt for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads: how to keep balance in the face of life's exigencies?

Calling Into the Void

Who are my ancestors?

The trail goes cold

after (or rather before)

Léon Pereira, apothecary

somewhere in India

in the State of Orissa

or past the Colonel,

the sandy-haired Scot

with pointy ears in his one photo,

like my son's and my brother's —

the hidden ancestor, that page 

torn from the parish records.

Where are all you wild ones

further back — you rebels? 

I must have got that 

from somewhere,  

along with my contradictory loves

of tropic heat and craggy rocks.

I know the witchery came

through my mother's mother,

the Indian line; and from her

the healing touch.

But surely the magick must come 

from those pointy-eared Celts as well?

Ancestors, I can only know you

through myself and my cousins,

my aunts and uncles,

my sibling, my sons —

in us I find your faces.

But I long to know your dreams.


The 10th prompt for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' is to address our ancestors, descendants, or both.

Young Lovers in Central Park, NY

Young love, first love
Filled with true devotion

—  Perry Como song

After Andrew died

leaving nearly everything to me,

I didn’t give his photos to his children —

that’s an item for my own will —

I wanted to live with them still.

These which hang on my walls

he took before I knew him,

and blew them up and framed them.

We were old lovers 

(and no worse for that)

meeting late in our lives,

but our hearts were young

and we saw each other’s beauty.

The photos were 20 years ours

and he told me their stories:

how he composed or fluked them.

Young Andrew wanted to be

a professional photographer,

arranged his own apprenticeship —

but his father said, ‘No,
'there’s no money in photography.

'You will work in a shop.'
Junior salesman Andrew soon left,

became film editor and journalist.

And that was a happy working life.

But he took good photos

without any training.

I like this one for its tenderness

and the light coming through the trees.

Words vs pictures is the latest prompt in 'Poems in April' at' imaginary garden with real toads' We are asked to choose a work of art, write about why we chose it, and include a quote that 'reflects a sentiment of the art'. (I found it hard to photograph the photo, and this doesn't really do it justice.)

My Dear Volkswagen

What a little hero you were

in the poem I wrote you.

I gave you a voice,

dreams, a personality.

I told your story —

how you almost drowned

going all the way under,

spluttering, but hauled back out.

It was a fine poem. 

It even rhymed.

It was published several times —

twice in anthologies for schools!

Dear Volkswagen,

it isn't your fault. It's me.

You are the one, if any,

I shall be remembered for 

(though it's actually you

who'll be remembered)

so I should be grateful, but

our relationship's gone stale 

after so long reciting you by heart

on any and every occasion,

knowing just where to put 

each pause and inflection

just how to use

and manipulate you

parading you before the crowd,

stripping you to your soul

then smiling for applause

which really belongs to you.

The thing is, dear Volkswagen,

you are Everyman (Everywoman)

and everyone relates. Only I

no longer love you. It's very sad.


Today's prompt for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' we are asked to write about a poem of our own that we've fallen out of love with.  At dVerse we are asked to write a letter poem. I've combined them. 

The original poem is The Day We Lost the Volkswagen

Through the Hours Around Dawn

Through the hours around dawn

dreams grow more vivid.

You have a chance of remembering —

get nudged or startled awake

rich with swirling glimpses,

clues to inner space, pointers

to its inhabitants and tales.

What are they but messages:

your own mysteries to solve,

soul-deep, hard to fathom. One

knows the secret truth

and that one, in spite of caution,

wants to tell you what your heart holds.

If you lift your head to listen,

this message could change your life.

Is that your deepest desire?

True, you have said so — but now?

Why are you trembling, why turning away?

Does this revelation threaten a longer journey?

It might take you so deep, you will not

seem or be the same person when you emerge.

So beware. You are at a crossroads. 
Scary? Oh yes!

Today for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' it is Open Platform. There is no prompt; we can submit any one of our poems, new or old. This one is new because I wanted to try one of Debi's first word acrostics. 

But what phrase or sentence to choose as its basis? I am currently reading Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner. Also a recent dream revealed to me how and why I was subconsciously resisting something I consciously thought I wanted — after which I came across these two (non-consecutive) sentences in the book (my poem puts them in reverse order):

If this is true, why does it seem so scary?
Through dreams you get rich clues to what your soul knows and wants.

This exercise made me put my words together in a somewhat different way from my usual patterns.

Also linking to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Enlightenment

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

What We Take For Granted

Now that I can, let me tell you

about the brand-new absence of pain.

You savour your body

being just a body,

doing what bodies do:

automatic, spontaneous,

not remarkable.

You notice this as you never did:

the walking tall and free,

breathing deep, and again.

The sun shines. Your heart
silently becomes a choir.

The latest prompt for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' is to write a poem in exactly 55 words. (My 55 words do not include the title.)

Pumpernickel Bread

Is not blackness. Is not. Is deepest brown, harder and redder than chocolate.

Crumbles on the tongue and up behind the back teeth. Tastes of that redness, that deep brown malty redness.

German palaces. Thatched cottages in woods. Going home to sit by the fire.

Today's 'Poems in April' prompt at 'imaginary garden with real toads' is to write about food (or objects or a room) in the style of Gertrude Stein. Only Gertrude Stein can do Gertrude Stein! But I've done my best.

Sea, Land and Sky

The sea is my mother, the womb of my heart.

The land is my father, my perfect support.

The sky is my roof, and my walls as well.

They all make my home, wherein I dwell.

They are my companions, always with me.

They help me to live, they allow me to be.

They contain me, yet with them I can be free.

They are my companions, always with me.

The sea is my feeling, the truth of my heart.

The land is my body, which gives me support.

The sky is my mind, whose thoughts serve me well.

They all make the person, where spirit shall dwell.

They are my companions, always with me.

They help me to live, they allow me to be.

They contain me, yet with them I can be free.

They are my companions, always with me.

For Poems in April, in 'imaginary garden with real toads', today's prompt is to compose song lyrics. At the same time, for a course I am doing, I was reflecting on land, sea and sky, and the two things came together.

The House That Built Me

The house that built me

was my grandparents’ house

where all the family gathered

for Christmases and big birthdays

in a warm, bustling mass

of aunts, uncles, cousins

flying off in all directions

to raid the orchards

or play with the dogs,

then gathering around the fire

for soup and stories.

Or sometimes just us,

father, mother, little brother and me,

driving down from Launceston

on country roads that were slower then.

The long driveway,

alongside the dark creek

and the waving pampas grass,

up to a real vine-covered cottage.

Nana at the door, beaming,

her arms wide. And inside

silver-haired Grandpa

rising from his writing desk

or his rocking chair.

Decades later, in my own home,

I had such a rocking chair.

Not the same one, but like.

I got it on purpose, of course.

I had the same typewriter, Grandpa’s own,

a black Remington he left me

when he died, when I was nine.

He wrote me so many letters

on that machine.

He knew I would use it

to write poems, and I did,

as well as letters.

The house that built me was surrounded

by trees of orchard and forest

and borders of tall, dark pines.

There were hollows with red bells of heath

where my cousin Suzanne and I

(the oldest two, near in age)

made secret places

to commune with fairies.

I saw my first blue-tongue lizard

when I was five, and screamed —

we’d been warned about snakes —

and my first shy, soft splash of platypus.

We kids knew we mustn’t wander

too deep into the bush

for fear of the hidden well,

camouflaged like a trap

under fallen leaves and scrub.

Legend said a child long ago

had fallen in and drowned,

others had disappeared

and were never found.

Of course we sneaked away

to hunt for the well, every year,

but none of us ever discovered

that deep, deadly place.

The house that built me

had a sunken bath, pale green,

the rim at floor level,

easy for kids. The kitchen

with its huge unpolished table

was full of the smell

of bottled fruit and rolled-out flour,

and the rise and fall of women’s voices.

I never took to the cooking,

though my cousin Suzanne did.

Me, I was listening

to the cadences, and the stories.

I was watching the sleek black fall

of my Aunty Franki’s hair,

my Aunty Ella’s pale gold bun

heavy on the back of her neck,

and my Nana’s ample lap

covered by a thick white apron.

Around the fire of an evening

I heard our histories passed down,

strange and magickal to me

as fairy stories in books —

as the books of family photos

mixed on the wooden shelves

with novels and poetry,

encyclopaedias, travellers’ tales

and fairy stories too.

In the house that built me, I sat

curled on the floor, with my head

resting on my father’s knee.

I knew that my mother

was the prettiest woman there,

my Nana the kindest,

my Grandpa the wisest man,

and my Dad a sure, safe haven.

Linked to 'imaginary garden with real toads', Poems in April: 
The House That Built You

A Choice, A Destiny

My father read me poems when I was young —

long tales of Hiawatha, night by night

while I lay in bed entranced,

fighting to stay awake to hear it all.

I loved the stirring highwayman

and his brave and tragic Bess,

cringed at the goblin coaxing the nymph

to give up her green glass beads (he loved them so).

I watched, in Flanders Fields, the poppies blow

over the graves of soldiers who were young.

By the time I was seven, I knew:

I wanted to create beauty,

to spend my life on that.

And the greatest beauty I could create,

being human and not God,

was, to my ear, poetry.

Later, I read it for myself, on the page,

learned to appreciate the nuances, the craft;

discovered freer, subtler ways.

But then I was a child

in the days of no TV, only radio.

I listened to songs

to find out rhyme and rhythm,

I experimented, explored …

and never looked back.

April is Poetry Month. This year I am responding to the 'Poems in April' prompts at imaginary garden with real toads, the first of which is, What Sparked Your Poetic Heart?