A couple more fragments from the poem I posted parts of yesterday:
Christmas Morning
Santa hasn’t let us down: look how
he’s stuffed the stockings
full of trinkets and tangerines,
games and gifts and puzzles –
enough to keep the kids
from worrying Mum who’s busy
in the kitchen; enough, we hope,
till everyone is ready
for their presents after lunch.
A few fragments from a long and rather rambling seasonal poem:
Planning ahead
Mindful since the summer sales
of nieces & nephews, great aunts
& ageing uncles, I have squirrelled away
a score or more of little packages;
nondescript bundles and boring
plastic carriers are tucked
on the top shelf of my wardrobe, stuffed
under woollens and jumpers, hidden,
made invisible by dullness.
Actually, the figure in the sky that has caught the attention of this crowd is the Archangel Michael.
The scene is from one of the glorious stained-glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones for the Cathedral Church of St Philip, Birmingham, UK. Specifically, it’s from the window illustrating Judgement Day, so it seems a good picture for the last day in the Mayan long calendar.
If you’re still around to want more information about the windows, you’ll find that, and more about the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands, over at the Revolutionary Players website.
(Just in case the world really does end, this has been programmed to post automatically.)
I’m not good at Christmas presents. (To be honest, I’m not good at Christmas.) So, when I arrived at my elderly mother’s house earlier in the week and was told a curtain rail bracket had broken, it seemed that fixing it was something practical I could do in lieu of a gift. Not only that, but since I look for poetry in domestic life, maybe it’d be inspirational. Continue reading “ranting and railing”
In the orchard, you
are busy pruning
and tending a bonfire.
In the kitchen, the toaster
fails to pop; I offer up
my own burnt offering
to the Virgin.
In fact – as far as I know – Spain has no tradition of sacrificial fires to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, but most of the ‘clouds’ in the photo are really bonfire smoke, which does make me wonder.
There’s a longer poem for la Inmaculada, posted a couple of years ago, which was inspired by the painting by Tiépolo.
don't confuse the narrator 