on a foreign shore: icing-tipped waves
toss tinsel into the clear air. We play
at Wenceslas in the sand, taking it in turns
to be the page. We look for sea holly and sing
carols under the curious gaze
of a parrot in a palm tree.
(Like the last couple of posts it’s not new. It’s also a repost, but I think the blog has different readers now. Incidentally, don’t waste time trying to find the parrot in the photo: it wasn’t actually that palm tree!)
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.
On my way back from the village early yesterday evening, I met a neighbour who asked wasn’t I staying around for the Kings’ Day cavalcade.
The usual conversation resulted, about the Kings as gift-bearers not being part of my culture. (“We do things differently en mi tierra,” is a useful gambit which usually puts paid to criticism of my unorthodox behaviours. After all, I can’t help being foreign.)
don't confuse the narrator 