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.

30 July 2017

An Ironic Little Tale

How hard he strives to make her proud — 
chasing worldly success and money,
proclaiming his triumphs aloud.
If it wasn't sad it might be funny.
When he was young, he was a honey —
idealistic, kind and giving.
She was proud then of her sweet sonny.
Now she deplores his way of living.


Written for A Glance at Narrative at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. (And I wanted to try the huitain form.)

26 July 2017

An Old Love Story

 A friend on facebook wonders, what is the event she’s marked in her diary as ‘My event’ for August 8. I can’t help her. I can’t guess what significance August 8 might have for her. But the date pierces my heart.

I think, ‘No, that’s my event.’ But it’s not even mine. It was his – his birthday. He died eight days before it in 1982. (Gods, can it be so long?) He would have turned 25.

When I start to have my ‘anniversary reaction’ during the winter months leading up to the date of my dear husband Andrew’s death, in September 2012 when he was 83, that is not the only anniversary I’m reacting to, not the only death. 

My two greatest loves, so far apart in time – how appropriate that it is winter that brings those deaths back for me, with bleak cold. 

Then comes the consciousness of being alone. I don’t normally mind that. I keep busy; I like my own company; I’m content. But at this time of year my aloneness confronts me. It becomes loneliness. It becomes an abyss. Do I hear a wolf howling? I shut my ears, make myself busy….

a sudden chill
the date of your death
arrives again

In the memoir I’m writing, I’ve been frank, so far, about the men I’ve loved. But not this one. This is the one I never speak of – though I do write poems. 

Very few people know what he meant to me. (Few know anything of him at all.) Those who do were there at the time; they saw it all play out. Some others may have guessed, but if so they have never dared ask. 

Really there are only two who understand completely. It has been remarked on between us possibly three or four times in 35 years. The hurt is still deep; and after all, there is nothing useful or even needful to say. We know. We know that we know. That is all. (That is everything.)

our eyes meet
he lives in the unsaid
our friend who died

There was one other. Just one time we spoke of it. We talked for hours; we said everything. We always knew we would. We’d waited years … and still we needed to get drunk together first. He has long disappeared; no contact for decades, no knowledge for either of where the other might be. It’s probably better so. 

Then there was a friend I made much later, who read my selected poems and asked, 'Rosemary, who died, in your life?' (This was long before Andrew died.) So I told her the story, in outline. She could barely grasp it. We have never mentioned it again. That was years ago; I think she has forgotten all about it by now.

did we exist
if no-one knows? 
– Zen koan

Shall I write the tale at last? What could I say that anyone who didn't live it alongside me could possibly understand? I could relate the facts, but what could they truly convey? 

I might tell it one day, but not today.

So was he my true love, the love of my life? Oh, all loves are true! And all loves, when true, are for life. Andrew, with whom I had a life, a happy one for 20 years, is the one I most acutely miss. That other, who died before he was 25 – which was shock as well as grief – has been the longest dead.

After he died, I wrote: All my years / you’ll go on being dead. They stretched before me interminably, then.

All those years ago, I learned everything about intense grief. All these years since, I have come to know that grief never ends, though we learn to live with it. 

I would have died to save him, if it could have saved him. I live on. I mourn. I relish life.

blue skies
you will never see –
winter sun



I didn't share even this very widely at the time I wrote it! Finally linking it, over two years later, to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #498


24 July 2017

July Nights: Sequence

July nights
darkness brings a chill
I’m alone

I huddle
into my jacket
deny cold

turn on light 
and warmth to cancel
memories

already
five years ago, still
I shiver


(It's winter in Australia – and time for my 'anniversary reaction'.)

21 July 2017

The Misunderstanding

I said into her mind, ‘Today you can
come with me if you wish.’ I only meant
she could attach her mind to mine and see
and hear and feel and do alongside: scan
my own experiences and share. I sent,
I thought, that message. Sadly, she
received it literally, stood by the door
as if with whiskers spruced, bag packed, intent
and ready, proud to come along with me
on business. Had to tell her, ‘Sorry – you’re
Cat, see.’

Written for the curtal sonnet challenge at Poetic Asides.





8 July 2017

A Vain Pursuit


I search in facebook and my email box
in a vague play of eyes and finger-tips
for something – anything – I don’t know what.

Except I do. I want to smash the locks
that death instals so deftly: kiss the lips
of those I loved, as if alive. They’re not.

And friends I used to talk to when online
have nothing new to tell me now; their quips
and loving wisdom stilled, while bodies rot.
Likewise, they don’t absorb one word of mine,
though I pine.

Written for the curtal sonnet challenge at Poetic Asides
Also linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #371

7 July 2017

The Light Seems Holy

The light seems wholly blue when I look out
from my front door, discovering the day:
a day of starkly brilliant winter sun.
The dark blue mountain range right opposite, 
the vast and shining blue of morning sky,
pervade the street below. 'Thou art the one!'
I sing to Life (for God is Life, we're told).
On such a day, my soul must dance and fly
in sheer delight, pure joy that I was born.
This moment is the whole. This truth I hold:
all's one.


Written for a form challenge at Poetic Asides


3 July 2017

On Not Going Home Again

Across remembered waters, bay and sea,
the island lies that I will not forget,
the one I know I'll never see again.

The mountains and the rivers nurtured me.
In memory the crashing waves repeat
their rhythmic play on ancient cliffs of stone.

Old forests grow unhindered, thick and tall,
fed well by rich dark soil, by gentle rain –
in memory. In fact they've since been cut,
the lakes and streams polluted, air made foul.

All gone.


Written for a form challenge at Poetic Asides

In Difficulties

I wrote a curtal sonnet but it stank.
I needed all of 14 lines to say
the whole of what I had in mind; present

a thesis that would float before it sank –
in fact not sink at all but stretch and play,
its movements elegant and confident.

Instead, alas, it doesn’t wave but drown.
Without room to manoeuvre, there’s no way
to save it – what I meant as eloquent
is chopped abruptly, three lines short, shut down
unspent.


Written for a form challenge at Poetic Asides

Nomenclature

He's asking us to write a 'curtal sonnet'.
I told him once before, the word's 'curtail'
(as in truncation, lopping off) but he

persisting with his error – set upon it –
will judge our efforts. I don't want to fail.
I'd better just shut up and let it be.

They call me grammar Nazi; spelling too.
I like precision to the nth detail.
And Hopkins said 'curtail', so why not me? ...

Oh, never mind the name – just write one, do!
(Or three.)


Written for a form challenge at Poetic Asides.

(Adopting a bit of a persona for this one. I don't REALLY think I'd be failed for cheekily correcting a spelling mistake.  And actually, it turns out he's right, I'm wrong! I have now ascertained that 'curtal' is a variant of 'curtail', and is indeed the word used to describe this form.)