poem – Page 59 – don't confuse the narrator

a bee in her pocket

Last time I found a carpenter bee in my pocket, it was alive – at least until I stuck my hand in to find out what was in there and it stung me.

Today, though, the poor thing was already dead when I reached in thinking I must have left a tissue in my pocket when my jeans went in the wash.

I suppose if didn’t put my clothes on straight from the washing line, both of them might have lived, but who irons jeans?

The photo is only intended to give an idea of the size of the creature, and explain why, even desiccated in death, its bulk could be mistaken for a paper hanky. I put the keys there to give an idea of scale, and then remembered this old poem:
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fragmented sunshine

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the heat, everything slows down for the summer in Spain, so I’m finally getting time to think about revising some old poems.

This fragment comes from a far longer piece, but I think it’s worth posting it as a stand-alone, particularly as the blog is in dire need of an update:

the sun flowers
and sheds its petalled light
into the corners
of our unswept lives

Night visitors

Now that summer is here, we tend to keep the house closed up all day, to keep the sun out. After dark, though, I like to open the windows wide to let the cool air circulate. That means I am a lot more aware of the noises of the different animals during the night.

When we used to feed the cats on the verandah, the food trays would occasionally be left out overnight. They were always empty in the morning.

I came across this old draft in my notebook the other day. I should probably add it to my pile of ‘drafts to be dealt with’ as I’m interested in how the repetition works although I’m not particularly happy with the line breaks. I wonder if they succeed in helping the reader to the sort of short, heavily-paused phrasing that I had in mind.
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the name game

Yesterday I was working on a poem inspired by something I was told ages ago, which had re-surfaced in a conversation earlier in the week.

So far all I have is this:

Vanessa says,

I’ve heard tectonic plates move
at the same speed fingernails grow.
A flourish of bright acrylic tips
adds emphasis, and then: I like to think
it indicates a kind of synchronicity –
shows we’re in touch with Nature.

Although it hasn’t got to where I want it to be – which would be at least three times as long and with something actually happening in there – I was wondering what to call it. (In my own filing system it’s down as ‘tectonic nails’, but although that may help me keep track of it, I don’t think it will do for a title.)
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midsummer day

Today is midsummer’s day, a fact that always confused me as a child: if June 21st was the first day of summer and the 24th was midsummer, did that mean it was all over on the 27th?

Actually, given British summers, it wasn’t that really all that confusing. Perhaps if I’d known then about the St John’s bonfires, I’d have thought it quite reasonable that you might need to light a fire to keep warm even in late June.