Annunciation

Well, it wasn’t
quite what I’d prayed for.
I wanted a few more months
- was I greedy, to ask for so many? -
of a girl’s freedom. Those days
before skipping gives way to weaving
playing to childbearing, planning to wishing.
Or maybe a few more weeks
when I could still leap like
a dancing salmon under the new moon,
spring up the mountain paths
with no matron skirts to weigh me down.
Or even just a few more days when I
could still dance along the borders
of my innocence, flirting with what
I didn’t quite want to know,
not yet, anyway.

And when I saw
Those cascades of angelic feathers I thought
- for just a foolish minute – that I might
indeed be bidden to go to the ball.
I rejoiced at the possibilities
magnifying before my eyes.
But the bright light somehow
erased my dreams with its dazzle.

And before I could get my head around
this – admittedly unusual – announcement
I found myself placed, gravid
on an unwanted pedestal.
Where people prayed to me
in the name of the blessing that was
the rejection of most of my prayers
the miracle that forever trapped me
within my innocence.
My soul rejoiced, dutifully.
But something in the wellspring
of my young body
felt cheated.

This is a response to Rick Mobbs’ picture above.

flesh and rock

Here opposites collide.
Suppleness flows over rigidity,
warm sweat slicks the dry grit
the rough abrades the soft.

Hanging from fingertips
curled in the tiniest crevices
of cliffs rooted in bedrock,
the mortal defies the eternal.

Empty space echoes below
the mote that cannot fly.
Face to the rock, back to the air,
the fragile outfaces the fall.

Warm and breathing body
presses its flesh to the
bloodless skeleton of the earth.
The mind explores the mindless,

using flexible wits to flow upwards
and making the harsh stone
both stairway and podium
as the rock uplifts the flesh.

This was inspired by another image from Rick Mobbs – a photo rather than a painting this time.  It also draws on the memory of doing some bouldering during my holiday a few weeks ago!

Thresholds

Once I stood at the threshold of life
all opportunity and experience
spread before me in aweful newness
in my hand, beating strongly
my unique young heart
new and scarless
in its naive impatience.

Each holding
a different treasure
we walked down into experience
like swimmers into a vast lake
walking to the drumbeat of our individual rhythms
clutching at different comforts
as we were submerged into vividness…

…until out of the kaleidoscope we return
tired but triumphant
ready to lay down
the burdens that have ripened
through a lifetime
of days

and even if noone ever reads it
still my heart’s story will be eloquent
in the scars and knots and fissures
of the tireless walls as they tire at last.
the song of those days of ripening will be heard
in the voice of its last faint beats
as I stand at the other threshold of life.

Another poem for another of Rick Mobbs’ eloquent pictures. Just can’t resist….

I’m not sure if the objects in the hands are meant to be hearts, but that was the way they struck me. And I liked the idea of each starting off on a similar journey, but with very different hearts. Hence the poem.

Memories

Exhausted from grieving
and the deadly bureaucracy
of burial and inheritance.
I sit sifting
the stacked residue
of my parents’ lives.

Shuffling aside decades of paper
I lift a grey-cream cardboard flap
and life leaps out in a blaze of colour.

A wooden bird, colours vivid under
a feathering of dust,
grinning up at me with a cheerful eye.

A coiled ammonite, fossil treasure
Of some long-ago walk.

A xylophone with the mallets missing.

A toy cannon,
a handful of lead soldiers.

A watercolour sketch of a newt,
in my mother’s delicate brushwork.

An old comb tangled with pale strands
(my father always said he was blond as a child)

And the head of a hobby horse,
eager to ride again even though its stick
seems to have vanished
long ago.

And for a moment I seem to walk
across the green fields of earlier times.
Which are thronged with the fantastic creatures
Of my parents’ childhood worlds.

Above me the bird flirts with the air,
the newt slides green lightning down the mud,
the horses gallop endlessly
and the ammonites wander the endless oceans
among time’s ancient bones.

And the white sails
of ships freighted with
the spices and rubies of imagination
billow with a wind
which is always fair.

Jeans grey, eyes red,
I kneel in the dust,
alone but no longer lonely.
Consoled by these relics
of bright old dreams.

This poem is a response to another fascinating picture by Rick Mobbs. He said that he hoped there was a story in it, and this was the one that I found! It seemed to me like the wild world of a child’s imagination, but I couldn’t quite work out a way to convey that directly. Hence the idea of stumbling across an old toybox.

I am happy to be able to add that my parents are both alive and kicking, but in writing this I have drawn on my own childhood dreams as well as my experience of clearing a house after someone has died.

Loyalty

Do not undervalue the persistent optimism
Of loving hope.

Nor underestimate the weariness or determination
Of following paws.

Don’t take too much advantage of the patience
Of a loyal heart.

Or be provoked to harshness by the limpid tenderness
In caressing eyes.

Don’t disdain as weakness the brave choice not to bite, even
In self defence.

Don’t dismiss as dependency the valour of staying put and trying
To make hopes real.

For only a hard, fear-ridden heart despises the tolerance
Of faithful love.

This was written for Rick Mobbs’ picture above. But as you will probably guess, this isn’t really about dogs at all, but has a much more personal significance for me.

Now

Once
just
a dream
quietly
beckoning my heart
towards a dimly seen future

Now
here
heavy
in my arms
all senses announce
that the idea has become flesh

And
smells
more real
more vivid
than I imagined
with the eyes of my hopeful mind.

Strange
gift -
to see
ideas
shape matter – into
a house, a child, or a poem.

I wrote this as a companion poem to “waiting” – which I wrote some time ago for a blog friend and a real-life friend who were both close to having a child. Now both mothers have given birth to wonderful small people, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on humans’ miraculous ability to turn dreams into reality. The poem also responds (HT to readwritepoem) to the beautiful picture above, which is by Rick Mobbs, one of the new fathers – click on the image to see it in greater detail. Edit: I’ve also discovered a new poetry prompt over at “pen me a poem”, which very conveniently has the subject “birth”!

This idea also has a lot of resonance for me now, as, in my work, I see the things I have planned start to happen. In many of the jobs I’ve done, the goals were so far off that I moved on before I could see tangible results. So it is a real satisfaction to actually see the results of my decisions!

I was also lucky to come across a new (to me) form today on Nicole Nicholson’s blog Raven’s Wing Poetry. Like hers, this poem is a fib chain – the syllable count in each stanza is 1,1,2,3,5,8. Which seems rather appropriate, as Rick’s picture is called “fibonacci”!

The condor soars

The condor soars above the ruins where sandstone glows like fire 
And infinite blueness haloes the idols that inspired a lost empire.

And the condor soars above the ruins and rubbish on city streets
Where barefoot children play with stones and pester tourists for sweets.

The condor soars over jagged peaks caught by glaciers in a serpentine net
That shone white-bright against the sky - the continent’s proud coronet.

And the condor soars over jagged peaks, now denuded of their icy crown
Now only rocks and gravel remain to show where the glaciers once ground.

The condor soars past hills which once were made of silver and gold
The land of nobles bright with diadems, skilfully hammered and scrolled

And the condor soars past hills whose gold was shipped away to Spain
Now dusty relics in darkened museums are all that still remain

The world is changed. This is no longer the realm of Tiwanaku and Inca
Yet still the condor soars above its ancient Andean finca.

 >>>>>>>>>>>>

This poem is a response to Rick Mobbs’ inspiring picture above. As I’m currently living in South America, I was struck by the many shapes which seemed evocative of the artefacts found in Tiwanaku and Inca ruins, as well as the image of the condor that is so characteristic of the Andes.

And yet the lower part of the image seemed to suggest decay, and made me think of other sights that are sadly just as characteristic as the Andes – the consequences of poverty, climate change and past imperialism. And so I wrote this sonnet, which contrasts the past and the present.

(Finca is a Spanish word meaning the land that is someone’s property.)