the fallen

 the fallen

on the smooth surface

of the Icarian Sea

a fisherman hauls in his net

and shudders to find yet again

waxy feathers and fragile bones

swimming with the muscular

flesh of still living fish

writhing and squirming the frantic

mouths the would-be screaming

the water greasy with fear …

 

above, a sky clear and blue

holding a sun the light a whorl

all radiant with innocence

blinding the world askew

and deep down in the turbid depths

of a black sea floor the bottom feeders

are picking clean the gleaming

remains of a fallen star   that at least once flew

that, at least once, flew

Simple Machines

 

Simple machines

Let us imagine the machinery

the cogs the ratchets the pawls

laid out on the floor

then being meticulously assembled

and oiled the gauge calibrated …

Could Icarus take flight?

Forging the sky the weight of myth

the blue the white the colossal clouds

soft-limbed and below

the sea muscular sculpted

immense and breathing pulsing

against an iron-rimmed horizon …

 

Simple machines a lever a wedge

a bit of pushing and pulling

another turn of the screw

a tightening a loosening

a wheel within a wheel

an inclination

 

the Minotaur in the labyrinth

running scared hungry

running into walls

gone off the rails

another child on the loose   

lost

Learning to write

 

Learning to write

 

The house is fully furnished:

A mother, three kids and the TV;

The father is upstairs, attached to a guitar:

An intricate arrangement of strings and chords;

An intimate arrangement of bodies and words.

 

My hobby, he once declaimed,

Is not playing the guitar,

It’s learning to play the guitar.

Then he took himself off for a session.

A terse man, pithy under the skin.

Once, maybe twice,

He’d handed me the guitar

Like a baton, like a lesson.

I never learned. He never listened.

 

And so, only when the music stopped,

Was the poem written.

 

Now, sometimes, if I listen very hard

I can still hear the fingers at work:

The tiny metallic flowers blooming,

Filling the air; dandelion heads

Going to seed, wind-blown.

 

The time is always the same: too late.

This poem was initially inspired by Carolyn Kizer's Thrall. See the link below.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thrall-2/

The original of the picture above is by Regina Cassolo Bracchi.

For information about her see the link below.

https://www.gamec.it/en/regina-della-scultura/

Family Therapy

 

Family Therapy

 

Tell me,

 

Were you ready for this?

Being asked to undress,

 

The tone polite but stern.

The folding of your clothes …

 

Was it tea or coffee

That you dunked the biscuit in?

 

I could, I suppose, agree

That when they asked who did it -

 

Who started the fight,

Who committed the theft -

 

That you looked up right,

Or that you looked up left.

 

Are you looking up now,

As if you’d know somehow?

The Slanting of the light

 

The Slanting of the Light

 

You left them sitting in a room,

Backstage, behind a closed door,

For years,

Waiting for it to open

And for you to come back in

Larger than life - spotlight, drum roll – ta-dah!

With an invitation to the reunion;

Or perhaps they were hoping

For something small:

For a supplicant’s tentative knock,

For something to rouse them

From the stupor of sour memory,

For some good reason to cross the floor,

To ask who’s there, to open the door,

To set the dust motes aflight,

To change the slanting of the light.

 

But no one ever knocked

And the light remained unbent,

Unbending.

And now the door is locked,

And the room is empty and unaired,

Filled with music - no one has ever heard -

To announce the happy ending.

Legacy

Legacy: Take 1

 

In the scheme of things,

I go first:

fall off, pass away,

drag myself out,

leaving you with the job

of grief, resolution, euphemism,

platitudes and clichés;

the coming to terms with ...

this thing we call love:

the failure that is wrapped

in good intentions,

ribboned with guilt

(you’ll have turned away first -

a sleight of hand, a slight -

into another life,

leaving me

blind-sided).

 

You’ll understand one day,

when in what you believe

is your own life

you slip from its fingers

and you’re caught out,

not waiting

for the impact,

not remembering

how it comes in

                            sideways,

then remembering,

                                as it does;

reminding you of me,

of us.

 

Touché, you’ll say.

 

And  smile ...

And ... cut!

 

Déshabillé

 

Déshabillé

 

Saying goodbye, he kneels so they are eye to eye,

And then pulls her close, holding her tight, claiming

The shape of her bones with clumsy, clammy

Returning hands: clavicle, scapula, pelvis, thigh.

His fingers travelling, needing that haptic fix,

Unravelling geography and geometry;

Love like L-dopa, memory – synaptic tricks -

Awakening, shores and shapes rushing in,

The topography stretching out, the moment elastic:

History, anthropology, a religion of lust and sin.

 

(We want to touch children, and animals:

It’s our first response – to reach out, to pet,

To stroke, to hold, to groom – prelapsarian

In its simplicity, uncomplicated by sexual

Tension and implication. The primeval set

Of genes from which love evolved,

A reflexive action, boundaries dissolved;

Yet so fraught with danger, so easily confused

That one can nearly share the sentiments of …

That one can barely tell the difference between…

The abuser and the abused?)

 

He pushes his nose in under her jaw,

Wanting the smell of her to claw at his nerves;

Nothing unique, the stink of child, undeserving

Of the scented disguises that adults can flaunt.

He stands – needing again that height, that stature -

Turns and leaves. The air screams! The fabric tears,

Ripped at the seams down years and years…

Lives undressed, stripped; Oh the hate! The rapture!

Learning to swim

M and Me Swimming

Learning to Swim

 

I take you into the shallows,

back into the loose

embrace

of water,

and

release you;

 

Year after year.

 

Time is the treading of water,

the dancing of limbs:

that sculling of hands,

that scissoring of feet

to the rhythm of trust and faith

(a mimicry of drowning,

of prayer);

a simple belief in buoyancy

that keeps you afloat,

and waiting for the right wave

to carry you forward,

and just

out of

reach.

 

But the water always gets deeper

as you get further from the shore,

and the gap never closes

on the distant horizon

(about three miles of eternity -

enough to last a lifetime).

 

Still, you step into the water’s mouth

and allow it to swallow you whole.

And I release you

(Or is it that you struggle free,

welcoming the current?)

and you drift away;

 

then with strong,

clean

strokes

you begin to swim.

 

Your feet will never touch bottom again.

Click here to read about the artist Michael Andrews and his picture 'Melanie and Me Swimming'

Click here to read about Graham Swift's story collection "Learning to Swim".

A poem for The Dead

Sorrows

He weighed six stone -

The size of my daughter, aged ten -

The skin baggy on the bone,

The meat of him gone.

Death reduces, like a good sauce.

A scrawny thing, a corpse -

Carries no weight, no remorse,

No apology, no applause.

And memory, eaten at by worms,

Claws at skeletons, at the marrow;

And grief struggles to find a form,

Scraping and picking and gnawing

At sorrows.