Tag Archives: Life

Abstract

March 11, 2023nature, poem, PoetryLife, nature, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Silvered gas bubbles catch the light
above the oak leaves do not stir

I’m blurry in the viewfinder
with a days full tears

walls of clear glass listen
bring distant shouts to my ear

I cannot now remember her clasping
the wound of hunger and hard work

Tired of it all

March 8, 2023Life, nature, poem, PoetryLife, nature, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Tired of it all
I close my eyes

yet few in this world hear it
see my hills

feel and taste their
ancient language
that waits for us all

His Pencil

March 4, 2023art, Life, love, memory, poem, Poetryart, Dad, Life, love, memory, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

It is missing him I can tell
mourning his deft touch, firm but gentle hold

It has been in the filing cabinet drawer
in a muddle of discarded stationery
since the world
as I planned it
ended

It asks for Dad, but I cannot say where he is
instead I ask it about the last drawing it made
and it trembles, remembering pudgy three year old fingers
clutching it as they outlined a tigers sharp teeth

I was hoping for a memory of Dads art
as most of it is as gone
as he is

Then it tells me of the many years
stuffed in a drawer of tools
in the house I grew up in
where it and Dad
learned to forget what they had done together
in that glowing youth of expectations
and dreams

All too soon I will be older than
Dad was when he was taken
in the meantime his pencil and I
make new memories

Dizzy with Time

March 1, 2023Life, love, poem, PoetryLife, love, poem, poetry, published poemThe Cheesesellers Wife

Dust motes in sunlight freckle your face
as we kiss deep in bracken on a Welsh hill
a long way from home.
I will leave my bag there
to be retrieved in darkness and laughter
long hours later.
If I had to describe this
it would be joy crackling in heat
dizzy with all the time in the world.

This poem was first published by Oddball, in December 2021

That awful beauty of standing alone

February 22, 2023Life, poem, Poetryfuture, Life, night, poem, poetry, solitudeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Always night
made starless by neon
all converges upon you
all sinks deep into your eyes
silence has a shadow

the past spreads out
you walk forward into it

Veering slowly, Losing identity

February 15, 2023Life, memory, nature, poem, PoetryLife, memory, nature, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Memories come in isolated flurries
like squalls on March winds
speak in a complexity of branches
bring distant shouts to my ear

Birds of prey cavort and hunt the air
grasp certainties in taloned feet
take them to ground
eat them

When you get home

February 11, 2023Life, poem, Poetryinternet, Life, lonliness, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

You put the kettle on
a reflex action
anything to fill the time
the space
your ears as the water roils and boils

Stare out of the window
gardenwards of course
looking out to the road
seems
desperate
may look
nosey

Then turn away
open your screen
and
disappear

This is what I do

January 28, 2023Life, poem, PoetryLife, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Orchestrate complexities into resolution
bringing that project, that poem, to fruition

Sit on my chalk hills, or deep in green woodlands
listening to the wide world around

Craft and nuture my many rich composts
working with the worms within

Love long and hard
so hard

It hurts

Absent

January 25, 2023family history, Life, poem, PoetryDverse, family, family history, Life, love, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

One grandmother is a monochrome photograph
other people’s eloquent stories
even the only grandchild she lived to see
cannot now remember her

She was
tall, stylish and elegant on my grandad’s arm
smiling enigmatically at the camera
the wife he still mourned deeply
twenty years after her untimely death

She is
the reason I can write this
for she saved her premature baby sons lives by
determination and ingenuity when the midwife
left them for dead

So maybe she is not absent at all

This poem is published for Dverse, where the theme is Grandmothers. My paternal grandmother died a year before I was born, but she still had a great impact on my life…..