At sea, in sound, in silence

For Bob

I knew you in the deep soft silences

between the staggered chimes and tocks and ticks

of all those clocks you lived with, tended, wound.

I don’t recall the room, only the sound

and unexpected closeness, which was odd,

coming after weeks cooped up, on board.

We sailed a thousand ocean miles together

shared a shifting deck, night watch, bad weather;

led a fading wake across the Channel;

found wild wind off Africa, that funnelled

strong and warm between volcanic crags.

We stirred up phosphorescence, felt its magic.

Our courses crossed. I trust we both have marked

The point of intersection on a chart.

Christmas Stills

Tinsel and lights turn this grey-lidded month

Starry-eyed, sparkly-cheeked, made up.

Santa’s bounty fuels children’s thoughts

As they make lists.

                             This is the time that sorts

The planners, well-prepared and organised

From panickers, last-minute-ers, who sigh

As they queue up to post late cards, in bursts,

Remembering only those who sent one first.

For some, a missing card, or gift-wrapped box

Brings to mind an absent love, one lost.

Gift-garlanded, the costly feast approaches.

Relatives draw near in cars and coaches.

The wise know joy and pain will surely strike

Not on demand, at church, but on the quiet

Maybe in the kitchen, uninvited:

Where sheer force of family-reunited

Stuns the in-laws, tensions marriage ties

Til something snaps.

Good cheer loosens lies,

Springs secrets, opens wounds.

No wonder all

Find reason to escape: to text, to call,

To walk the dog, to smoke.

        To find release,

We look up to the stars and search for peace.

Mapping Myself

Why, I have forgotten much of my life,

what went before.  All those scenes

on beaches, in parks or foreign cities,

those unfathomable entanglements

with people. Great flats of my past

are deforested.

Sometimes, catching moments

of a film I’ve seen, or re-reading a poem,

I re-ink the place where it struck me

before, the same cells responding,

forming a known part of me,
briefly.

Nurture your creativity

Here's a simple model I came up with to help with nurturing your creative writing (poetry in my case). The top half prompts us to bring the outside in by reading others' work and using any other external stimulus. That could be anything from taking a walk and really observing something in order to write about it, or using props, sensory stimulus (scents, music), for example.

The other half of the model is about bringing the inside out: which we can do by writing more and by accessing our own inner thoughts and feelings. Here are a few ideas about how to do that:

• take 5-10 minutes to clear top-of-mind clutter by doing free writing before starting your creative writing
• use creative thinking techniques that prompt sub-conscious responses - for example where you're asked to respond to a set of stimulus with "the first thing that comes into your head" or "without thinking"
• pay attention to your own use of metaphor as you talk. I'm using the word metaphor in the broader sense, to mean any construction where we use one idea to describe another, when it isn't literally true. (For example, "Getting out of bed this morning was a real struggle"). The words we choose can point to our deeper thoughts and feelings about what we're saying.

Growing up

I stepped out of the house a while,

had children, jobs, a go at life. I put on

hats that didn’t fit and never saw

my smile in a mirror.

I stepped out of the house a while

walked odorous streets in gorgeous cities, wanted

others’ tricks and baubles, picked up hanging

threads of conversation.

I stepped out of the house and found a spring

a self-announcing, giggling gush, just mad

to rise and channel. Its prankish water

wet my lips and tongue.

I looked back at the house and noticed how

a sharper light fell, with a cutting edge,

on cobwebs, dust and window smears, and how

it met the dark inside.

Painkillers on a scale from Actually make it worse to Truly make it better

Comfort eating: trawling through the fridge

Secret, guilty, numbing short term fix

Sudoku: boxed in digits, one way’s right

Certainty, the truth in black and white

Archers: could it simply be the tune

Was played to me when I was in the womb?

Films: spill my emotions, lead them on,

Get them out and take them for a run

Friends: connections, talking, being heard

Sharing things that matter through our words

Poems: grasping something never said

From deep within me, laying it to rest

On the Beach

Nothing is here,

Though a blue sky, edge to edge,

Accompanies a mild-mannered sea,

white-capped for decoration.

Postcard-painted beach huts throw their colours to the sun. 

A hundred thousand sistered stones make shingle.

Loneliness is here.

But the sea is playful, chucking balls of spray.

So she ups her zip, while tensing,

slightly wary of catching skin.

Feels the mild discomfort of the stones

Beneath her feet. They’re slightly warm to touch,

Just slightly warming

Emptiness is here.

Complicit though, the ocean -hush, shush, hush -

denies it, plays at perfect summer’s day.

She drops a matt grey, ocean-tumbled stone

her hand has nursed. Returns it to the fellowship

 of pebbles, walks away.

San Francisco, April 2012

All those brilliant

Splintered fragments of light

Across the bay

Make a scene she can’t get hold of.

Prozac-numbed party girl

Sidles past the death of a close friend

Into a courtroom

To have an opinion

About the abuse of a child.

The juror’s out of it.

From tumbling, tearing seas

The Clipper yachts

Are racing in to find haven and

Her hand-crafted welcome parties.

They are heaving, swelling and falling,

Words and drinks flowing,

Carrying her close to and away from

The lighthouse man

Who dazzled her seas,

Projecting mirror-crazed rays.

Angry

She’s living like a gloss-painted wall

Planted, strong, inscrutable, slick

Behind the wall, she tussles with explosion,

as it jigs and punches in her open-fingered fist.

Occasionally, she roars, and is indignant

at how the air diminishes the flood

of sound to nothing, so that silence is her censor

and nothing may be said, nothing heard.

Sometimes she takes a deep and sudden bite

from her own forearm; or almost kills her girls;

or smacks her head against the steering wheel

and giggles at the horn’s small howl.

Once she was so needy that she sought

respite in church—although God wasn’t hers—

and there she wrote down words so harsh they vanished

as she turned each page.  They couldn’t be endured.

On better days she’s bramble-torn, her arms

and legs ooze, hot with superficial wounds.

She knows, on days like these, to let the cool breeze

cool the skin, the blood, the head, the mood.

Postcards

What to do with words?

A decision I need not

Postpone. This summer,

Instead of postcards

Poems will frame messages:

Paper and pencil

Conduits for fresh

Discoveries, graphited

In two dimensions.

Weekend break

Tall man walks, each step is a curling swingboat,

rolling heel to tip-toe, in red-laced plimsolls.

On his sleeve his parakeet rides in comfort.

Paris on Sunday.

Grey-haired man drinks coffee and smokes a Marlboro,

gossips intermittently with the barman,

curses, when the rain begins, takes his coat, moves

under the awning.

Driving here I saw how the road was cracking

Not from drought but lack of long term investment

But, for now, a café provides distraction,

blocks the horizon.

Paris, July 2012

Midpoint

Hurl the rock over water

Watch it lose energy – your energy-

Arc and break the lamina.

Think of it sinking

Eating metres,

dismissive of the water’s resistance,

To thump the mud bed hard

Like a Saturday drunk

Bruising the water with silt,

While on the water’s surface

The point of puncture

Still oscillates, pulsing rings.

From the centre, choose

one of infinite paths

to the outer edge.

The Gardener

“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.”    Rudyard Kipling

A man came or, to be precise, a teacher,

A bounce in his step and a bounce in his attitude too.

A man came to the school, to make a difference,

With a suit and tie and a smile and a point of view.

“It takes time,” he said, “for a garden to mature,

Takes decades for a tree to reach full height.

This school will be the garden that I nurture

A place of thriving growth is what my sights

Are set on. I, the teachers, governors, parents,

Will bring our contributions, be a team,

And all from the community we’ll welcome,

To help us realise our garden dream.

I know that Ministers of Education

Will come and go and modify the rules

But nothing will distract me from my purpose:

My bin will file the paperwork of fools.

Here, learning will be broad like the spread of an oak

And the love of learning will be at its heart,

From which we’ll put out branches, more and many,

Words and numbers, science, sports and art.

Music will wind through the school, its tendrils

Accompanying songs and plays and dance

And you will find me seated at the piano,

Improvising jazz, given half a chance.

Like ivy, we’ll weave clubs and more activities

Before, through, after school, so children come

To feel endless possibilities opening

Like purple fuchsia flowers in the sun.

Over time we will expand our space,

More classrooms, teachers, single year groups, all

Of this is possible. We’ll even raise

A quarter of a million for a hall.

In our assemblies, there’ll be celebration

Of Christian values, merits and awards

And birthdays, marked with cards and claps and candles—

We’ll not set fire to hair or tie, of course.

We’ll take them from this garden to discover

More about their village, see the Pang,

Walk through bluebells, worship in our churches,

Visit Rushall Farm to see the lambs.

To Snelsmore, Avebury, Ridgeway, Ufton, Rhos,

Each year, they’ll go on longer trips away,

Strengthening their limbs, resolve and friendships,

Gaining independence with each stay,

So when they leave this school, we’ll have succeeded

If it’s been a place where every one

Could be their best and grow and feel valued,

Learn to live and, on the way, have fun.

Yes, to tend this garden, I’m committed

My energy and passion I will give.

Not alone, but with the help of others,

I’ll do it”, said the gardener.

                                            Andy did.

Written to mark the retirement of Andy How from Bradfield C of E Primary School, July 2012

My mother and the tsunami

The great wave came and missed her, she had distance:

Saw it nearing, climbed, while people passed her,

High enough to safeguard her existence.

For days I fretted, then a text. Then, faster

others came, like news reports but shorter:

For her it was a small, intense disaster.

Monks provided shelter, bottled water.

Medicines that she’d rescued came in handy.

A couple passed by looking for their daughter.

Scavenged diesel fuelled a jeep to Kandy.

There she stayed, reviewing what she’d saved,

and sent my kids a card, “My room was sandy,

Monkeys played there, after the big wave

We had to climb and hide behind a wall

The hotel owner called it a close shave.”

Years later, when the impact of the Galle

event had waned, as far as we could tell,

some mealtime chatter led her to recall

the horror. Worst, she said, was how the swell

had stranded bodies like big fish; and that

the thing that wouldn’t leave her was the smell.

That silenced us for seconds, then we ate.

Fairy steps and giant strides

It starts – as it always does - with fairy steps

silver dust, kicked up in sparkles,

as they pass in a corridor,

you-again, raised eyebrows,

coffee at the same time,

more or less, give or take a heartbeat.

Magical fairy steps

tiptoe-trip towards some future,

as they lunch, make unremarkable exchanges

her face tight with alertness,

slight uncertainty.

With the team day out,

come quickening fairy steps to the dinner

and imperative seats them

face to face, with wine and nerves on fire,

tension rising, like scalding steam.

Group-loud jokes fill the bar, connections

snip-snap into place across the team until

much later, quieter, two of them sit,

still, and patches of silvery glitter

settle round their dress-down shoes

in glowing moonlight pools

And he pauses, leans in,

takes a breath that holds her scent

and knows that, in a moment, he will take

a giant stride, towards or away.

This was placed second in a local poetry competition.

A Sapphic for Sunday

Strolling on the riverside path, on Sunday,
solo, slowly, kicking a stone in. Slyly
watching families being together, nicely,
since they’re in public

Since in public, nothing is really showing
Scars are covered, stitches are held together,
Dressed with hoodies, bandaged with coloured T-shirts
Sunday’s for healing.


Louise Ordish

The way happiness finds me

On the school field, layered over playtime,

A one-night village of camper vans and nylon.

12-berth citadels and two-man squeezers

Pop-up tents like bubble-gum balloons

A view of shifting greens, a pre-school collage

Of fields and hedges, trees in light and shade

A British summer's evening: we'll have rain.

Bingo, burgers, baps; pre-hoodie kids

Kick balls and swarm and scatter, spread among

Our camping chairs, cold beer and easy talk.

Year sixes bind. Friend to friend, intense,

Afraid of summer's leap to their next school.

Night strolls quietly in. From boxes, children

Break out light sticks, snap alive their glow,

Trade colours and connectors, build their gear:

Bracelets, earrings, necklaces and belts.

Hurdling guy ropes, now they stream away

Towards a distant, thicker darkness where,

Untethered, indiscernible, they hurl

Up high their spinning neon rings,

As though to cast their very spirits free.

To see it stills me; I will keep this safe.

Disco man has sorted out the sounds

His green light's on, he lets the music out

“Tonight's gonna be a good night”, swells the sweet

And knowing promise of the Black Eyed Peas.

I've got that feeling too, it picks me up

And takes me barefoot to the dance-grass where

I shake a shot of pleasure through my limbs

And feel the small emerging child in me

Whoop and loop the loop and hurl my hoops

Of vivid living colour to the sky.

17.7.11
Louise Ordish