Not perseids this time, just sparkling sunshine reflected off waves that looks** like shooting stars if you screw your eyes up against the glare:
Postcard from the beach
The weather is nice…
The sun is dropping
diamonds on the sea.
I squint against the glare
and see a storm
of shooting stars that fall
too fast to single one
and make a wish.
Yet this whole moment
is a wish for you.
** yes, the singular verb agrees with its subject – the sparkling sunshine – but it sure sounds odd.
It’s 4 a.m. and you stand on the lawn,
knees slightly bent, head back, facing
infinity, scanning for meteors. Come on;
it’s time for bed, I Zebedee, but you beg,
Just one more. And so I watch you
watching for falling stars, diamond scatter
from the Milky Way, and think of the tip-tilt,
star-gazey hare in the moon. There! look!
You point skywards, but the pointing finger
roots me firmly to the earth. Come on,
I say, but you are galaxies away, determined
to wait for Just one more.
It’s that time of year again: time for the Perseids, which I saw for the first time lying in Battersea Park two day’s after I had my wisdom teeth out. Although I was with a couple of radio hams who assured me they were ‘meteor scatter’, even some thirty years later I still wish when I see a shooting star.
This piece has been in my drafts file/notebook for years and has never really seemed to ‘gel’*. Still, given its provisional title, if I don’t post it today, I might end up waiting another year before I decide to do anything with it.
July
Heat swells to stuff the corners
of the room, tucking itself up
to pad the picture rail, deadening
the walls. We lie at the edges
of a king-sized bed, white cotton
smooth beneath us. You reach across
and touch me. Sweat breaks
under the weight of your hand.
(*perhaps if it weren’t so hot in Spain in the summer, things would gel better, but when the writer herself feels as if she’s melting, it’s not that easy to concentrate and get poetry to its final setting point.)
I had to make a quick visit to Madrid yesterday to sign some papers, but fled back to the village as quickly as I could. A considerable amount of the time I was in the city was actually spent travelling on the metro.
This poem dates from at least six years ago, but I remembered it as the air-conditioning on the metro doesn’t seem to have improved at all.
Fat Woman on the Metro
Her fan is silk and lace – a butterfly
whose coloured wings flick
and furl coquettishly. Crimplene
caresses curves as tenderly
as any lover’s hand; she wears pearls
of sweat at wrist and neck.
Since I’ve lived in Spain, one of the joys of visiting the UK has been the glorious green of the countryside. This picture was taken yesterday from the top of Brecon Cathedral tower.
They say if you can see the mountains it’s going to rain, and if you can’t see them it’s already raining.
Continue reading “the green, green grass of home”
don't confuse the narrator 