love poetry – Page 14 – don't confuse the narrator

noche de san juan

I dreamed of you last night and woke
to moonlight, sheet-tangled feet
cat-twisted and cold.

I drowsed again, through decades, slipped
between cities and crossed continents,
embracing and embraced,
now chasing and now chased,
no pause between the kisses passed
from partner on to partner
down through the yearning years.

I dreamed of you last night
and woke to moonlight.

(St John’s Eve – Midsummer Night – is celebrated across Spain with fire jumping in the street and general festivities. It’s supposed to be a time of powerful magic, and seemed a suitable title for this slightly chaotic dream poem.)

april

While others bundle and bunch
 under umbrellas, shrug
 into pak-a-macs and hunch deep 
into their collars, their faces
 scrunched, gurning
 against the elements, she 
pokes tongues 
at raindrops and laughs 
glitter from her hair. 

In the UK we are used to hearing that “April showers bring May flowers”, an expression that apparently can be traced to its earliest known form – Continue reading “april”

light and hope

Now that the weather’s improved and the council workers have managed to get out to do some jobs around the village, they’ve finally put in new lamp posts down by the river. Proper wrought iron ones that cast soft yellow light quite unlike the unnaturally white blare from the UFO-type double-headed farolas they put along by the polideportivo during a lull in the storms a month or so back.

Set against the snow-pocked backdrop of the Sierra de Gredos, the new Narnia-style lamp posts make me think of the Pevensie children helping Aslan banish the White Witch and release Narnia from the long winter.

They’ve also brought to mind a poem from a few years back:
Continue reading “light and hope”

hiraeth

The round-shouldered cobblestones nudge
at my sandalled feet. They are smooth
as the pebbles that sang on an Anglesey beach,
as the present-from-Beaumaris paperweight
whose faded dragon still parades
across my desk. They are warm
as cottage loaves fresh from Powell’s,
or bakestones from the griddle. The gulls
shriek with the same harsh voice, but the river
is an unfamiliar olive green and runs
beside a motorway that leads me
away from you.

(Not a new poem, but appropriate for March 1st, the feast day of Dewi Sant.)

new year, old writing

John Hayes’ 2010 horoscope for Gemini tells me it’s

an excellent time for writing, asserting your views and for catching up on your paperwork. However, if you identify too closely with your views, you may take a difference of opinion too personally and so there is the potential for disputes and disagreements

That’s a neat reminder about the difference between the writer/ narrator and what is written. And it’s not always just the reader who forgets this distinction. Paraphrasing Hayes: If you identify too closely with your writing, you may take criticism too personally.
Continue reading “new year, old writing”