Dancing Feet

My friend Darlene treated me to wonderful gift today: she drove me into Bellevue for a pedicure. 

My feet were washed, pumiced, massaged and lotioned, my nails given a short, back and sides, emery-boarded, polished and buffed. 

As feet go, they looked amazing, and felt fantastic. 

As I was being primped and pampered, I thought about the places where these very serviceable and extremely reliable feet had walked:

The green hills of the Cotswolds, under the skirts of which I was born: the Welsh and Scottish uplands, the Swiss Alps, the Carpathian Mountsina, African Velt, Hawaiian rainforest, and Sinai Desert.

They have trudged, heavily through rain, and deep snow, plunged into streams, paddled in oceans, slipped down the banks of rivers, and tip-toed in and out of children’s bedrooms. They’ve been there for me, and apart from a spell in orthopaedic boot following a snapped tendon in my right ankle, they’ve never let me down. 

Above all, they have danced! The Lancers at speech days with school friends, The Dashing White Sergeant with sixth formers at the local public school, out-paced boyfriends at discos, accopanisd family members at parties and weddings, including my own, swayed and turned with Xhosa women in South Africa and with pulsed into sand woth Bedouin in Egypt. 

They once featured in a poem, about that experience:

Here am I, in the Sinai desert, with my dance troupe, at dawn, performing to the music of oud and drums. It is my fifty-first birthday. As I recall the magic of this day, I am reminded of my strength and my resilience and am full of laughter. I hope this comes through in the writing

A Work of Heart

To write this poem, I planted my feet, Strong, bare feet, 

Firmly, in the sand.

I raised my arms, then,

 Dropped them, as I was taught, 

To my shoulders.

Aligning my palms to the strengthening sun, I waited,

Alert, for the words

To drift, or bounce or slide Down,

Down

With the music.

I lifted my head and 

Listened, listening, For the deluge.

Quietly at first...

Trilling over my fingertips 

Snaking down my arms 

Shivering across my shoulders 

Thrumming through my breast 

Shimmying with my hips

Turning Turning Turning

Clapping with my hands 

Stamping with my feet -

The poem came! And

I DANCED. 

Poem

April

Eliot's an idiot

If he thinks April stinks.

I like April.

I get to write poems 

Tapping away without a care in the world beyond

Scaring a metaphor  out of hiding 

Finding a  a rhyme

(Which is as easy as tickling a simile

Out of my stream of consciousness.)

Lending an ear to assonance and 

Holding a meter to ransom.

Oh yes!

It's Good. All good.

Poet’s Think They’re It

First, you take a twinkle in God's eye.

I don't know, perhaps being the Only One was

Too lonely, even for a Deity. So ...

In an explosion of imagination, it all kicked off.

Did She have to think about, for, like,

Eons? Imagining the juxtaposition of quarks

The spin of electrons and

The mass of a boson?

I doubt it.

I'm alert to the possibility that

God thought, one day, of Me.

"Now THERE'S a thing!" He cried. 

"Let's do this!"

And out it came!

The firmament -

The waters above and below -

Stars, bears, whales and flowers -

(I am especially fond of flowers)

!

I don't expect that God had to gather, chop and stir

I'm Old School. 

I think They said,

"Let there be Light,"

And there was light.

And at the end of it all,

There

Was

ME! 

Rebooting Mondays

Flat-As-A-Pancake Day, bereft

Of froth and babble full of dread Mundane work-a-day

SOMETHING must be done!

Let's do it!

Smile. At everyone, some will stick ... And come flashing back.

Run up the stairs

Make coffee and

Hand round a crisp, white paper bag

Full of very sticky toffees.

Tip a beggar

Listen to a concerto

Or a rock band and

At the beginning of every email

Say something ...

Different. Kind, perhaps.

Remember, when you

Actually finish something,

How it felt when you were in the Juniors and your teacher

Pressed a gold star on your

Careful scrawl.

Good eh?

Pick a moment when everything

Would otherwise be too tedious to bear

Take yourself off to tthe Caribbean

Lie on on a beach with your lover

Let the surf nibble your toes ...

Or, if this is too much,

Be ten again and play

Hide and seek in a bright Spring wood

With your sister ...

See! It's working isn't it?

Already you're looking forward to Monday,

And have change jingling in your pocket

To buy toffees

And tip a beggar

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Just For Fun

Love popped his head round the door.

"Hi!" He said, and,

"May I?" Pointing to the bed.

"YOU!" I laughed, can take a hike - 

I'm not at home to you today."

Love, unabashed, closed the door behind him.

"We need to talk." (Ever the drama queen.)

I touched his cheek, tenderly, as a mother does,

And whispered.

I shall not  tell you what I said, but I WILL reveal:

Love laughed out loud,

And, before leaving via the fire escape, 

Bowed.

Still Raining

I have an Idle Moment, before a very busy week, which I am spending  riffling through my anthology of poems, seeking one I might post. I fell upon “Still Raining” with delight, having completely forgotten it. 

In this poem I reflect on a childhood game I used to play with my younger brother, Adrian, who died before the Millenium, which was too soon. Too soon. 

So here we are, a rainy day, indoors, tracing the rivulets of raindrops as they meander down the window pane. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_QQnwrbaUBNsQJs4W2kgiASjtLJAA6qD

On My Mind

On my mind

I am going to tell you what I have been about.

No need to brace yourself, it is mundane stuff, but,

Deserving, I think, of record:

I wonder, I thought, ( and here, this being a low-budget poem, I advise insertion of your own quotation marks)

I wonder if I might garden in my pyjamas?

It's Warm, and Humid, and I considered it

OK, weather-wise, at least.

Besides, I reasoned, why bother to change? The hedges are high and the neighbours about their business. 

From pyjamas I came, and to pyjamas I will return, so,

It's just a matter of cutting out the trousery-bit

In between.

So I gardened in my pyjamas.

I hoed the herbs with careful attention to detail. 

With new hoe.

(£15.95 from Spear and Jackson, good for another nine years, eleven months, and twenty-four days ..) 

Coming close to a blooming foxglove, I turned up it's trumpets

And marvelled at the multitude of ants also

About their business. 

The cranesbill leaves I noticed, not sure that I approved, are laced with bug work.

And so on. 

There's something a little sixty-sixish about gardening in pyjamas. 

I think, when I was younger, I would have looked upon it as a worrying sign. 

Now I know, and I am laughing, it's no such thing.

When the hedges are high, and the neighbours about their business, you can do

What you bloody well like and really, REALLY not 

Give a damn. 

:)

Fun With Iambic Pentameter (For Fans of Downton Abbey)

The Elopement

What a kuffufle: Hear the tirade!

The chef's ran off with the scullery-maid!

Her Ladyship's fainted, and when she comes to

No-one'll escape the hullabaloo!

"How could these ingrates do this to me? 

They KNEW Lady Westmorland's coming to tea!"

The chauffeur, who loved her, won't leave his bed

And Pardoner, the gardener's, locked in his shed

(He had a crush on Monsieur, though nobody guessed

He stayed in the closet, at his lover's behest.) 

His lordship has wisely left for his club

Constitutionally unable to withstand the hubbub.

He was wounded in the whatsits during The War,

And leads a much quieter life than before ... 

Bounty, the mastiff, rolls over, plays dead -

And King Henry's armour now stands on its head.

The Tweeny, when quizzed, swore not to know

That Nancy (the hussy) was planning to go.

And what, you might wonder was the fate of this pair?

Decamped, with no character, they might have despaired!

But no! Holed up in Brighton, renowned for it's crooks,

They're living off the proceeds from cooking the books! 

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Today Is A Good Day To Write A Poem

Turning Up For Work: Me and Trump

"Inspiration is for amateurs. Professionals turn up and do a day's work." 

So here I am, a newly-turned  professional poet, showing up for work. Given that it's 12:39 pm, it's hardly a great start, but it's a start. 

The Poet 

I am given to self-parody. Many poets are, you'll find.

So, when I call myself the Coleridge of Culver St, you'll kmow

I am not being serious. 

Though - give me my due - if you're calling Donald Trump a President

It should be easy enough to call ME

A Poet.

Poem: Still Raining

 

 

Still Raining

 

My window looks in on me

Still raining.

OK, I like the rain, apart from it being cold and wet:

Those attributes I am not so fond of.

 

I like it's absence of colour and it's

Complete indifference.

 

The speckles it's makes on the glass and a memory of rain- drop races with Adrian.

 

Then.

 

Now:

 

None of my current crop of children would have the patience to watch a raindrop obey the laws of physics and meander down the pane.

 

I can conjure up excitement and laughter and

Small fingers tracing their favourites. Sometimes I called THAT cheating.

 

When I lost.

 

It's good isn't it? To have a cupboard full of moments. Mine is so crammed they spill out.

 

As for this one: I hold it before it goes. It's January 1st 2017, and right here, right now, I am happy.

 

Even

Though

It's

Still

Raining

 

Happy New Year

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I Haven't Written A Poem About Damon Runyon

I haven't written a poem about Damon Runyon

This, is an omission, so

Without his permission, (being impossible to obtain because

Nothing remains except, this figure in my head:

In short, he's dead)

 

I am thinking, as would he, eternally, In the present continuous, of mobsters

And their molls. Those Guys and Dolls, who are singing and dancing and murdering each other

With rampant inhibition - it being Prohibition - through

The highways and byways of New York

Through Speakeasys and Vaudeville,

Racetracks, playhouses and

This and That on Broadway:

Anyhow: here and there.

 

Cheesecake at Mindy's, out of town hucksters

Young ladies with high hopes,

Dealing them off the arm -

 

Safe-crackers. Pie-eaters, old ladies with attitude

Babies with Pop!

 

I

 

Love 'em all. New friends in a New World.

Delightfully, deliciously, sailing close to the wind

In a world of Romance and Danger. To which

I remain,

 

A stranger.

 

(Funny, where inspiration comes from.

 

Don't you think?

 

And now

 

I HAVE written a poem about Damon Runyon.)

Postscript:

I have also made the cheesecake. All the better for having ' a story that goes with it'. So this is for the cheesecake experts out there:

http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Lost-recipe-for-legendary-cheesecake-found-3631242.php

:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I Went For A Walk

Squirrel Time

They they were, the little buggers,

Clasping - whatever -

Acorns and whatnot -

Between tiny paws and SCAMPERING 

Hither and -wherever.

Myself, I did a bit of foraging on

My own behalf. For I live

Amongst orchards, hemmed in by hedgerows

And there were blackberries. 

I have no more words for this yellow day,

So what I have to say is here in 

Photographs

I Do God...

It's Tuesday Again!

Which is when I ALWAYS remember MicroblogMondays!

Thank you Mel and fellow bloggers for all your support.

Today, a poem:

 

I dreamed

I lived in the attic

And you, in the cellar

But we never passed on the stairs

This was just the way of it.

 

Then, last night,

You heard my laughter, and you opened the

Door to your subterranean apartment

And sat on the stairs with me.

We didn't talk.

There didn't seem any need.

 

Besides, I couldn't stop laughing.

 

Some dream eh?

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Sixty-five

28th October 2015

 

Have you noticed how the colour of the morning is yellow

Now that the days are shorter and the sun hangs low in the sky?

I mention this because it is Wednesday, and my birthday. If you have

Become sixty-five, or passed it, you too, will know, that

It is necessary to savour days like this one: hold it,

Not too tightly, and dare enough to venture out alone in

Solitude. There's a commodity not of this century, and conjoined with

Silence, a fitting present. I walk across the ploughed

Field peeping winter wheat, thick with Midland mud.

I rattle through the gate causing hopeful horses to canter up, whiffling for an apple..

I am for the woods. The yellow-light is amber here, and what space there is,

Is tunnelled by low-hanging boughs.

This is a day to remember all my golden days,

And anoint their beauty with an outpouring of thankfulness.

 

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Easter Poems

1. The King Sleeps

I will mine the agony of my God with a pick and a lamp.

I will hew the stones and teach them to cry ‘Hosanna!’

I will fashion a tomb to bloom in a garden

I will fracture the face of Israel with a blow

That will become an earthquake

To awaken the dead.

I will set my lamp beneath a splintered tree

I will close my ears against the forsaken cries of the Holy One

I will seal my mouth against the acrid taste of blood

I will shut my eyes to hide the corpse that hangs above me.

His eyes, not -closed. His body, not-clothed.

‘IT IS FINISHED!’

It’s over. God -

Adored, outpoured - passes over.

Numbed, beyond fear, I whisper a lullaby into the dark:

‘Be still. Be still.

Night dawns.

Death dies -

The King sleeps.’

2. God Awakening

I will celebrate the victory of my God in silence, and in song.

I will gaze upon the likeness

Of the one-who-was pierced.

I will touch the mystery

Of the dead-one-living.

I will trace his signature over my heart:

North to south

East to west:

King of Kings

Lord of Lords.

I will open my mouth to sing the serenade of the stars,

The song of the angels before the throne of God.

I will shout into the sunrise, a canticle for my King:

‘Rejoice! Rejoice!

The Lord is Risen -

Alleluia!’

I will bury myself in his joy,

And, with laughter,

I will rise again.

 

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Sometimes

You have to remember

You're a POET and

Stop rooting about on the

Internet for - oh whatever -

Forever.

Time, some would say,

To sit with words for a bit

And let them shape themselves into

Metaphors and because,

If you hadn't noticed,

It's Autumn,

I thought I might allow

A pale yellow melon stand in for the Sun

And a fragile veil fall across my garden

Like a mist.

THERE! That'll do.

 

(With apologies to purists, who will know that the reference to 'mist' is a simile not a metaphor. I know! I love you too!)

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Sitting With Rumi

One

Mine me then, O God:

Cry

"Tarrah!!" When the treasure that I Am

Reveals itself - and

l, (you know me)

Turn in wonder and say,

"Why, there you are!"

 

Two

It wasn't that I was waiting for you,

No. Such futility is long past.

So, your kiss, and real enough

To be called, "KISS", surprised me.

Something, I could tell, has broken in you

And I, though not the cause of your disquiet,

Am forgiven.

 

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