From Bath to Cork with baby Grace

Tis time for daisy-chains and dandelions,

the thrush with gangly legs has gone to wind,

hostas, risen, pushed aside the shale,

and clover back to torment dreams of lawn.

There’s a cherry blossom behind my back,

the baby oak’s grown leaves on time

………………… in rowan and hawthorn writ

with showers for ink, lavender for paint.

The black dog tastes an apple core,

licks the fly and sucks for more.

The black dog’s in the grass,

…………… paws, panting fast.

She sleeps below the windline stretched,

out of senses, out of mind,

no rush to untangle the rest of the deep.

The black dog’s dead. The black dog’s dead.

The daisy chains are broken,

the dandelion’s divine.

There’s a place we know as light.

There’s a home we know is right.

_____________________

Unfinished:  you see the bits that I’m sleeping on. Waiting to approach this fresh.

The two poets who give me quotes these days are Walt Whitman (1819-92) & Mary Oliver (1935 -).

It would be easy to miss the poets

in the Farmgate Cafe

encased behind glass

as you sip espressoed coffee

on a Saturday afternoon

in the English Market.

Poems slip by without fuss,

prefer to let you pass

until you’re ready to listen

to your breathing heart

– the minute they sense you ache

for a set of fingernails

with which to grip on to fragile life

ticking like a fading metronome.

Poems are used to coffee drinkers

who turn their backs on them.

Poems become taken forgranted

even when handwritten and hung.

Poets never have the last laugh.

Ink fades gradually away.

I wonder whether the spirits stay

hidden among fushia encased in a water jug.
____________________

This was composed in the English Market Farmgate Cafe in Cork Ireland in May 2015

I sing to the rocks on the road to Roundstone
and they sing of home to me.

I whisper my secrets to blooming heather
and she whispers back to me.

I hum a tune to silver stream that rushes past
and she hums my melody.

I wipe my eyes in the mountain wind
and she cries her heart for me.

I see the sea wave on every tide
and she comes and comes for me.

She looked deep
deep into the mirror
to where her mother lived.

Inside her fading hair
from where that ghost slept
reflections stirred

as if she heard an echo
laugh into eyes
that list their way

long ago before her self
wobbled step after step
away from a haunting house.

She looked deeper now
past the past
into the conundrum of being.

It would soon be time
for her to teach
the metaphysics of daily repentance.

As we say in Ireland,

“You’re one of us Mary,

you’re a chip off the old block.”

I came across you recently

when I was looking for something

– like a better life –

(not even sure what it was).

Not even sure what it felt like

the day I opened the door to you

and you came into the kitchen.

Almost certainly, it was raining.

You see, I’d never have written

“You don’t have to like oysters”

if it wasn’t for the sound of your voice

– the way you didn’t just sit in the chair

opposite me, but got out of the chair

and sat on my lap.

Every now and again, daemon-like,

you’d change form (not substance).

You’d hop on my shoulder.

A whelk, a blue iris, a river, a goose

(Oh no, not a river, another creature.)

Not only was this a new experience for me,

it was an old experience, returned

to poke the cinders

to see if any of them still glowed.