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.