Poesy

What is a poem ?

A rising confluence ?

A boiling spot where

emotions and ideas

meet and spill over into

imagination's flood

to form a mesh of words

shored against 

the backdrop wall

of the mind's eye?



Or possibly a bunch of gathered thoughts,

Scooped up as you walked along 

for days and days,

The hedgerows thronging with them.

You come back in to sit,

The quiet of the kitchen pungent

with the abundant bunches which

tumble and scatter in your attempt

to put them down.



There they lie, 

Itinerant discordants,

Jostling for position,

Bedraggled things,

That you fumble to arrange

in some loose knit way.




Write a list before

you write it down ;

- Bath mats

(for your grown-up child),

plus other things you'd like to buy

to prop her up because

you feel she cannot exist upright

without you.


(How quaint.

How funny.

When she's wondering how

to make you feel ok

about her absence

on her birthday ) .



Now turn the paper over

and compose,

This poem;

Some words to prop me up,

To make me feel an 

adult on the occasion of

my daughters' 20th birthday.



A poem as crutch,

As wondering,

And thinking about.

As proxy,

and love itself,

Words to quell,

To soothe,

To expiate,

To visualise.

A list of things,

A kind of spell,

That makes a posy

for a birthday.

Clearing up

You go in and the telly's on;

but nobody watching.

Go through to the kitchen -

know you'll find him there,

Making tea;

Or in the garden through the window:


It's the mess that's left behind that

causes the most distress,

but it's not a mess, it's not a mess,

And I don't mind, I don't mind.


Someone's dug your roses up

and the greenhouse has gone.

It's a lot to keep up,

Things must move on.

But your tomatoes,

And those beautiful melons,

So ripe and suggestive

in their cut off tights to hold 

them up they were so heavy.


We loved your curly cucumbers.

You tried so hard to keep them straight,

But they were unruly in their

waywardness. A bit like me.


I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,

For all the unresolved loveliness,

Such an abundance of beauty

in everything surrounding me

that is here now,

And in dreams and memory.


A surfeit, sometimes a doubling,

Nowhere specific for it all

to go ; the spaces

we leave behind must

be filled with another thing,

Old things be put aside,

Or they will stuff our cupboards,

Cram our minds.

Fill us up too much.


Over time,

Places will empty,

And fill again,

A tide of some sort,

Washing things up then,

Taking them away again,

But always,

Traces of history,

All of its facets,

Ghosts of experience,

 Will remain.

A discussion between 2 cylinders

Close your critical eye;

Listen and use every other faculty.

Disregard the illusion of progress,

Of individuality parading in succession,

As if Duchamp's nude was in fact

descending into our space.


Consider though that

Maybe she might just join us,

Take a walk,

An extended hike if we ask.


But where would we come

to rest ?

Even Alan Bennett has

no armchair.


Perhaps our perambulations

could take a turn

around the drum and return

to the space within,

Each of us cramming ourself in,

And altering the original image.


And maybe a diversionary visit

to a boutique could be navigated

en route, the bride redressed,

Returning from the other side

of the large glass.

We would make a nice group.

Dichotomy

We stand as two.

There is always two.

Parallel things,

Where wholes divided.


Everything is divisible.

All things are parting,

Other wholes blossoming

From this division of parts.


Here is one thing,

There stands another.

Above is the water.

Beneath are the stars.


Stand before the mirror

and contemplate the other.

There is space that's not void,

Here is change as we look.


Transitions, transferences,

Mutations growing

from borrowed parts.

Mirrored emergences.


Turn to the side,

Scan all around,

From North to the South,

From East to the West.


Be still and look closely.

Things are evolving,

All things dividing.

Infinity unfolds.