Teeth, Hammer, Blooms

 

I read poems of past love, lost love –

and remind myself: no love is ever

really lost, or past. But so many

varieties! Some are sweet-smelling,

pretty while they last, but lasting

no longer than ephemeral blooms.

Still I think fondly back on their

kindly delights. Memory preserves,

even if I seldom return to them now

to remind myself of that sweet scent,

that simple, delectable taste.

Others are like crashing hammers

tearing down walls, opening up

separateness into huge, inclusive 

vistas of possibility, expansions 

ready to be enriched with detail,

then further expanded, further filled. 

Eventually, though, there is nowhere 

further to go without a fading 

into the amorphous. After all, 

a building without fixed edges
becomes vague, collapses to nothingness.

I dwell longest on those loves that satisfy 

like good food: you can get your teeth

solidly into them; the taste remains

on your tongue; the memory rises at will

to your recollecting palate. They fed you,

nourished, sustained. Perhaps, if

there was an end (there is always an end

sooner or later, even if it’s not until death),

you can still return years later and feel

that old enrichment renewed – that old

groundedness which is the best enchantment.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #232, where we are asked to include in a piece of writing the three words I have used in the title of this poem. I am also inspired by reflecting on a couple of the poems in Rajani Radhakrishnan's new book, No Way Home.

November Tanka: Home and Family

(Decided it was time to play with this form again. But didn't think of it until November had well started.)

still wearing

my wedding ring

past his death –

the band thins, but

the gold remains bright

9/11/25

looking out

after sudden rain

what’s to find?

on the dying vine 

a single new bloom

10/11/25

I gift you –

brought by our Nana 

from India,

passed to Mum, then me –

these bracelets, Cousin

12/11/25

photo line-up: 

cousins, teens to babe –

decades on

oldest and youngest

become dear friends

12/11/25

morning porridge

childhood comfort food

thick and salty –

in old age I learn

to add cinnamon

13/11/25

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #203: Why I Love /Hate ... The prompt asked us to write about three things we hate and tear them down, and/or three things we love and celebrate them. It's my own prompt, but I have been busy the last few days marking my 86th birthday. (I always seem to have extended birthdays, courtesy of kind friends who want to take me out and do nice things for me.) So I haven't written specifically to the prompt, but I had already decided to play with tanka this month, and these first few kinda fit. They are certainly about things/people I love. Perhaps it can be inferred that I also hate the attendant loss (of husband, dying vine, the past, my own childhood) ... the  ephemeral nature of all things.

I Couldn't Have Done It Without You!

 To Andrew

As a small girl, I already knew

(from instinct or indoctrination, who cares?)

the thing I wanted most in my life

was to experience love – to be loved, I meant, 

but was smart enough, even then, to know, 

the only way would be to love. To give it.

So I set about becoming Love. And on the way

I learned the many forms of love, the great

varieties: family, friendships, pets; trees and

rivers and mountains and the sea; foreign

cultures wiser and kinder than my own; places

of transcendent beauty; motherhood; even God …

But I’d meant, above all, romantic love. To learn

the all of that, I needed (I should have realised) 

many romances: the youthful, the unrequited, the false; 

break-ups, betrayals, heartbreak, loss … as well as 

the enduring, the joyful, the true … marriages,

divorces, lovers, infidelities (theirs and mine) …

Eventually, newly single in my mid-fifties,

imagining I’d have to be alone the rest of my life,

I encountered a deliciously attractive, 

mentally compatible younger man, and yes,

on offer, drawn to me too. But he wasn’t yet 

looking for permanence. And I was done

with sad endings, with a torn heart, with mixed

pleasures and regrets. ‘Next time,’ I said to the Universe, 

‘I want a happy love. I want my Ever After. No more 

mucking around!’ And so you arrived in my life – 

ten years older, short, funny, white-haired, divorced. 

(That tall, lean, sexy hippie, I turned away / turned from).

You and I, we married soon. For twenty years thereafter

we enjoyed, each, our happiest wedlock, full of spice

and adventure, laughter, and the quiet joys of the everyday. 

Until you died. In the year of your last, slow illness, 

we learned yet more of love; finally entered, mutually,

into the true Unconditional. Together. Answered Prayer.

Written to share with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #195: Revisiting Old Favourites. (A new poem for an older prompt: I Couldn't Have Done It Without You.)

What Is Love?

 

‘I don’t understand,’ she says, 

‘the meaning of the word.

It’s bandied about so carelessly, 

with so many different meanings.

I know several light workers

who claim to be loving, but 

they don’t show it in their actions

nor even in some of their talk.’ 

I suggest she call it affection.

Or friendship. Or caring for

another’s wellbeing. Or simply

being happy in another’s company.

‘A warm feeling,’ I offer. No,

on reflection, none of that works

for her. (She admits to knowing how

affection feels, but finds it limited.)

Seems it’s romantic love specifically 

which she doubts – doubts its reality,

its existence. ‘Again, you want it 

to be just one thing,’ I tell her. 

‘What if there are various kinds, even 

of that?’ I list in my mind the types 

I’ve known, while she continues

to question if all can be valid. 

There’s the sad and the happy, I think.

But it’s still love, no matter the end.

In fact, it doesn’t end, even if we part. 

Love, if true, is always … or for my life. 

Are some romantic loves more passionate, 

some less? Ah, if romantic at all, passion

happens, unless its nature has changed. 

‘It’s all very subjective!’ I admit. 

She quotes Erich Fromm, who opines

‘Love is not primarily … towards

one object…  Because one does not see 

that love is an activity, a power of the soul,

one believes that all that is necessary

is to find the right object.’ (So we’re back to 

love in general.) She signs her email: ‘How-

ever you wish to interpret this, Heapsa love.’

This was an actual discussion, though edited and to some extent fictionalised for poetic reasons. It happened to take place in synchronicity with Magaly's prompt 'Love Is Love' for Friday Writings #164  at Poets and Storytellers United this week, discussing whether there is only one kind of romantic love or several.

The Choice

In a world

of so much hatred,

how to continue

to be of love?

How to resist

being frozen in horror?

Or burning 

with rage and blame?

But those

are not the ways.

Only peace

can beget peace.

If only 

we could each

become an oasis

of light.

I imagine

each small circle of light 

spreading,

merging.

I can’t make it so

for others. 

Each can only 

choose it ourselves.

And why – in the face 

of pain and injustice?

So as not to be 

that which I abhor.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #107. The prompt is to write about a time when we weren't sure if we could (or wanted to) do something but ended up doing it anyway. What I've written is a little bit different  – more about something I want to do but (being human) often end up falling short.