Stamps of the World [Revision]

 

Why does Portugal love Snoopy? Why 

do such a  lot of other countries love cats? 

Silly questions!  I love Snoopy and cats.

Mt Fuji makes sense for Japan.

Are flowers / birds / fungi national? 

What about lobsters? Bats?

I’m more used to monarchs (British)

notables from history (Australian)

images of public events.

In the middle of my childhood

when I started to be serious 

(before I turned teenage frivolous)

Grandpa  decided I’d collect stamps 

like him; spent hours sitting with me

to explain their stories, their geography.

I didn’t care about small squares of paper.

I wanted books. It was books, not stamps,

brought messages, showed me the world.

Who uses stamps now? We email, we text.

But books continue to bring me mountains, 

flowers, animals, cartoon characters …

(Earlier version) 

A Crow Calls

There’s a crow calling

outside my front door

this clear, sunny day 

in mid-winter. I look out. 

Oh, he’s a big one, fat

as a lump of coal

but rounder.

He bursts from the tree

at speed, to follow the harsh 

cry I can only just hear

of another, further away.

His bright yellow beak 

shines against that mass 

of solid black.

Then they are gone, both.

Down the hill to other

houses? Or into the near

patch of forest? Different 

birds, more melodious, return 

to my yard; warble. 

(But I like crows.)

Let the poems ...

Let the poems come to you,

not you chase them.

Not how I’ve played it

all these years 

following prompts. 

If, would they be 

fewer but better? 

(But he didn’t say how

the poems might come.)

Between the Headstones

I looked so hard

to find my name

in the annals of Poetry,

in vain. ‘Let this be

a value judgment upon you,’

said an echoing voice 

which I privately labelled 

Doom.

And it would have been

so easy to turn away. 

But I remembered 

that when I began

I wanted only

writing instruments 

and a beating heart.

I feel to find if it still beats.

Options

Reading poems of thought 

not passion, I wished them

both. 

In my own life 

passion always won. 

Yes 

I talk past. 

I’m 84. Passion now

is a matter of the mind. 

Arguing with the Nature Spirits [Revision]

Hey woman, hooray for you!

You’ve left us a nice bit of mini-jungle 

here within your small back yard. 

We do like to be left some suitably 

untouched, wild spaces – especially now 

when, all around us, foolish folk

allow the wilderness to diminish.

We fear it will all disappear too soon.

I understand that greed for wilderness.

Yet if I allow the weeds to continue

rising unchecked in rich proliferation, 

soon I’ll have the whole snake nation 

sunning here, nesting here, as the weather 

warms and draws them out from hibernation.

Oh no, we’ve seen you do it before: 

you’ll get that kid from over the road 

to come again, to prune and pare,

weed widely, crash through and slash 

all the tall stems and grasses, 

until at last – wanna bet? –

there’ll be nothing much left,

and some of us will be out on our arses.

It’ll be me out if I don’t please the landlord 

with some attempt at suburban order: 

a border here, a mown lawn there, while I grow

sweet European flowers to be weeded, watered, 

pruned and generally molly-coddled. I need 

to keep this rented roof over my old head.

We’re looking for good weedy plots with lots 

of room, lots of thick growth. Too much neatness 

makes us needy! So, OK, you rent; which means

appeasing your landlord’s conventional silliness. 

But must you till every small corner? Must you

cut and cultivate so fully, so tidily, so prettily, 

so politely? Why not leave us just one little bit?

What if we promise to chase away snakes?

[Earlier version.]