Evening

 Evening

Evening has been the loneliest time 

since my love left me, first for hospital

and nursing home, and then…

And then the cats, who used to 

still snuggle up to me in the big bed

left me too, one by one.

Always the night owl, I escalated

my bad habits, hour after hour

putting off going to bed alone.

My new cat doesn’t often

spend the night with me, but she does 

like long embraces any time.

She chooses the times, picking her way

across my desk (delicately not stepping

on the computer keyboard).

Or invites me to play chasey, running

up the passage while I lumber after 

(probably very good for my fitness).

We land in ‘her room’, the spare room,

where she enjoys the afternoon sun.

I loll beside her. She enters my arms.

All this tactile loving eases my heart.

Evenings might be playful or restful;

her presence here is enough.

I still keep late hours, I always will.

But evenings now have lost that dread

of confronting loss and loneliness.

When I do retire, I adjust the pillows

and settle in, singly, yet feeling hugged.

I believe she too feels safe and loved.

Poetic Asides prompt #29 for April 2021: an evening poem.
Linked, in July, to Writers' Pantry #81 at Poets and Storytellers United.

the future holds the final answer

 the future holds the final answer

thick with rain

pensive yet pungent

lift a seashell

an old song unforgotten

you could be journeying

falling through space

with great swooping cries

fierce and raw and loud

Golden Apollo who embodied the sun

bright and fierce

picked me up and threw me

through the thinning divide

rapturous light

purring across my heart

ever after

dwindling gradually

no bearing it otherwise

they are things I know

but I don’t understand

we don’t have to 

it needs so little

Poetic Asides prompt #28 for April 2021: a remix poem. Various possibilities were suggested; I chose 'take a line or phrase from each of your poems this month and work it into a cohesive new creation'. How cohesive, I'll leave you to judge! I picked whatever line or phrase jumped out at me from the rest; the title is one of them too. It seemed fitting to leave it all lower case, unpunctuated; perhaps it gives the reader more chance to make sense of it.

Shared in October 2021 with Poets and Storytellers United, for Writers' Pantry #92: Better Than Normal.

Not Beliefs

 Not Beliefs

If I tell the sceptics:

My beliefs are not beliefs,

they are things I know

from my own experience,

they will say:

It is true

your beliefs are not beliefs – 

they are delusions.

Prompt #27 for April at Poetic Asides: Two for Tuesday; Believe  and/or Don't believe; write on either or both.

Also shared, much later, with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #64: Life is Stranger (and often sneakier) Than Fiction. I didn't write this piece for the (optional) prompt, but it's not unrelated!

What in the World Happened to Me?

What in the World Happened to Me?

Once upon a time, 

long, long ago

I used to think ANZAC Day

was a glorification of war,

and I wouldn’t celebrate that.

(Even though my Dad did 

when I was little, lifting me

onto his shoulders to watch

his mates march past

in their uniforms and medals.

He himself didn’t march – 

never went away to war 

with his crook leg, but instead

to camp in Central Australia, 

training to repel invasion.)

Something changed in me

over the decades. I’m glad

we didn’t get invaded

(though Darwin got bombed)

and that the Allies saved our world.

I don’t rise early for the Dawn Service,

but I do watch the march on TV

(pre-COVID anyway) – the veterans

or their proud young descendants –

with gratitude, and a few tears.

And when an American friend

wished me, online, this year, 

a festive ‘Happy Anzac Day!’

I was polite, but I wanted to say,

‘Mate, it’s a SOLEMN occasion.’

Prompt #26 at Poetic Asides for April 2021 is ' — world' and make that your title.

Image: Public Domain.

In the Mind, Travelling

 In the Mind, Travelling

In the mind, travelling 

over a stretch of wild water –

among the wildest in the world –

I encounter the ghost of one

I thought long dead.

I buried her myself, years ago.

She was become as an old song

few remembered, so I told

myself, who also rarely

recalled that face, that voice,

let alone thoughts or utterances. 

Yet here she is, as if reborn.

It’s only that I began thinking 

of that island whose daughter

I was, and the time living there ... 

that complicated girl 

I meant to leave behind. 

It seems I've re-created the Strait.

Easier to cross mentally

than in a real boat.Though once

(when I banished her back there)

this way of making the crossing 

would have been the more turbulent.

What made me idly try it now?

Well, no matter. It is nearly

Samhain, here in the Southern 

half of the Sphere. Ghosts

and spirits of all kinds 

may be starting to peer through

or reach through the thinning divide.

Why should a disembodied

fragment that once formed part

of a living entity not seek,

perhaps by its own thoughts,

to rejoin the parent body?

I contemplate a welcome.

Image of Bass Strait (between Tasmania and the Australian mainland) taken from Sorrento, Victoria, by Finn Whelan; found on Unsplash.

Written in response to prompt 25 for April 2021, at Poetic Asides, to write a poem about thought.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Weekly Scribblings #67: Liminal Space. More than one kind of that here!

(A friend who read this found it unclear, so I have now tweaked it in  the hope of being less obscure.)

Which Was the Love of Your Life?

 Which Was the Love of Your Life?

Must there be one answer? Only one?

Right now I’m learning to love

a neat brown girl with bold eyes,

who makes loud, insistent demands

yet gives affection wholeheartedly,

climbing into my arms to rest her head 

over my heart, purring. Who constantly

shows me she trusts me. And that she has

her own way of doing things, thanks.

This, perhaps, will be one of those 

easy, happy loves. I’ve had them before.

Indeed, I’d much rather do without 

suffering. (Though I think that’s

eventually, always the price of love –

and I’m willing to pay, when I must.)

My last love was very intense.

God, but she was beautiful! Black

with sleek white whiskers, elegant.

And smart! When other communications

failed, she spoke me mind-to-mind.

(Only my first was equally clever, but

in different ways. Well of course,

they’re all different, that’s my point.)

But she died, my last, while still

not really old. Already sick when she 

came into my life, though neither of us

knew it then. We got off to a bad start.

Mutual trust was gradual, slowly earned.

By the time she left me, we were utterly 

all in all to each other, no doubts,

nothing held back. Yes, it broke my heart.

So was she the dearest? One could well

think that. Only, there was my first.

Long gone, ever remembered.

We had many years together, knew

each other deeply. She was daughter,

sister, mother to me. She was friend,

ally, equal, closer than a lover. No-one

had a brighter brain, a wiser courage.

She chose my husband by signifying 

her approval, helped me care for my kids.

She was stalwart. She was devotion.

She even knew how to joke.

There were others. Several. Some

I recall with tears for early loss.

Others with swellings of admiration,

pleasure, undying affection (though 

they all died, late or early) and 

always gratitude. Who am I, 

that such love has entered my life

so often, so well? If I don’t list all,

it’s only because this is a poem,

not a full-length autobiography.

The small girl calls me now

with her low-pitched, insistent yell, 

summoning me for morning cuddles.

‘In MY room today,’ she tells me.

(All cats who’ve lived in this house

claim the spare bedroom as theirs.)

‘Of course, darling,’ I say.

I lean back on big cushions. She presses 

herself to my chest and purrs. I fondle 

her throat, stroke behind her ears. After 

a time, she washes her paws: leisurely,

deliberately, still sprawled across me.

I bury my head in her neck. ‘This,’

I declare, ‘is the present love of my life.’

Prompt 24 for April 2021 at Poetic Asides: A question poem.

Sharing on 3 October 2021 in Writers' Pantry #90 at Poets and Storytellers United.

I Am Beginning to Get Lost

 I Am Beginning to Get Lost

I am beginning to get lost in April.

I have an appointment with myself

to come out the other side when

the month ends, but what if it

never ends? Every day until then

I have an appointment to turn up

and write a poem. The poems begin

to swallow me whole. They snarl,

they sneer, they refuse to obey.

There are more and more of them daily;

they are herding together, they are

ganging up. I thought at first

they floated on angel wings, that

their smiles were beneficent,

that even those which refused to work

were motivated by some kind of 

basic goodwill. But no. They have

claws and teeth. They are not at all

frightened by my cracking whip,

nor the chair I move behind, raising it

in front of my chest. Oh, I used to

pet them, telling them I loved them,

telling them they were pretty. I soon 

had to give that up. They showed me 

they were not pretty: they were fierce

and raw and loud. Now they crowd,

surrounding me. Shall I ever get free?

I have an appointment with the rest

of my life, on May the first. I’ll be 

bringing with me a rabble of surly,

unruly poems which would not dream

of asking you to love them, but

Written for prompt 23 at Poetic Asides, for April 2021: an appointment poem.

 

Also shared with Poets and Storytellers United via Weekly Scribblings #69, where Magaly invites us to write 'from the point of view of a character or speaker who is hunting, being hunted, or both.' I see this as both: me hunting the poems, which I also feel hunted by – though in neither case is this hunt stealthy. Although not written specifically for the prompt, I trust it's recent enough to count.

A Nature Poem

 A Nature Poem

You expect, perhaps, 

a paean to trees,

an effusion on the beauty 

of hills and rivers,

or a towering 

ode to mountains?

But, floating all over

the internet lately 

is the reminder: we too

are part of nature –

and I wonder, what is

my natural self?

If you’ve never known

who you really are,

for all the other people

talking in your head –

parents, teachers, Society –

can you be true to yourself?

‘Know thyself’ said God

to the ancient Greeks. 

I always thought that advice

was Biblical, for the Hebrews. 

But no, it came from 

beautiful Apollo. 

Golden Apollo

who embodied the sun,

master of music

and poetry. Or did it come 

from Socrates, 

most rational of men?

At this point I realise:

all these tangents

and speculations

exemplify human nature.

We are in our heads, far

from the other creatures.

So it’s unlikely

we’ll save them,

or even ourselves,

from what our brains

have wrought. Would I 

have done better after all

to write in praise

of seas and mountains,

trees and rivers, hills?

But if you need a poem

to point out beauty,

are we not already lost?

The title is the 22nd prompt from Poetic Asides for April 2021.

I'm sharing this, six months later, at Friday Writings #4 for Poets and Storytellers United, where Magaly invites us to explore 'Pain in Ink' or to choose our own topic. This probably counts as unprompted, although it does record a type of existential pain.