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.
This morning, I waited in the half-light for a bus that finally arrived 40 minutes late: there was no one about, and the only noise was the rain, an occasional car and a few birds. It gave me plenty of time to think, though it was too wet to get a notebook out to try and capture any of the ideas.
(I suppose I could record memos on my phone, but how you’re supposed to skim through an audio file later, I don’t know.)
Mind you, I actually believe that writing a thought down too soon can ‘fix’ it before it is ready, and I may carry a phrase or image round in my head for days or weeks, occasionally even years, before I finally anchor it to the page. Continue reading “grey’ku”
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”
I’ve mentioned bonfires a couple of times in the last week, and I reckon half the village have been out in their gardens, taking advantage of the sunshine and what, for many, is a long weekend. They haven’t all been busy at the same task, though:
Clear
above the bitter smoke of bonfires
the scent of new-mown grass
I was particularly surprised by that as my lawn looked like this until about midday: Continue reading “seasons”
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 