3 poems from May "poem-a-day" project

Red bird days

Because on top of everything else

making you coffee empties the milk jug

it feels today could be the end of an episode.

Or the start of one. Keep the button pressed

to speed up the passage of the hours it says

on the free gift horloge reveil de voyage

the postman brings with your slippers.

On the top of the feeder at seven

the greater spotted woodpecker we first saw yesterday

is back with his head back ready to hammer like the king

of the birds making whatever the call is he makes.

Once he’s gone bless me if for a moment

a big fat bullfinch doesn’t amaze

I think even the goldfinches by appearing.

How’s your history?

I knew Marlbrook s’en va’t en guerre

but until the Versailles programme

last night I was unaware

of the War of the Spanish Succession,

confounding it with the Hundred Years’ War

or maybe - I don’t know -

the Thirty Years’ War.

I knew

tall soldiers with long-legged horses

had paused in twos and threes

by tall trees all over Europe

or at least the Low Countries,

and that a lot of soldier, soldier, won’t you marry me

with your musket fife & drum

had gone on when they found their way home

after all kinds of battles like Blenheim

but the history had eluded me. Now

I’ve got it and furthermore

could I’m sure for a day or two

slot together the Charleses and the Jameses

and William the Third and Anne

in whose reign I know from the fancy lead

down pipes at Forde Abbey

Frances Gwynne was secretary at war

in an early seventeen something.

Poor Queen Anne.

Thinking of the tall men

in long buttoned coats,

buckled shoes with heels and long curls

talking concern over a long table

with a map of Europe

and how to pay the armies

puts in proportion the worries

about us now and what it costs to keep the paras

or whoever it might be this year

in Afghanistan or wherever,

and the state of the banks

and poor old Clegg, poor us. Whatever

became of proportional representation?

Red tail, bindweed & cleavers

A day spent on and off tidying the house,

putting  papers & books away

because my sister was coming to visit.

Then after she had gone

a woodpecker kept coming back

in the garden for more peanuts.

Now we have borage and lemon balm

to plant in the tub by the door. The toys

for my niece’s son have gone.

...and on into May

All three of you may be interested to know that la lutte continue (sorry - pretentious is a hard habit to break). Any road up, laike, what I mean is that I'm still apparently able to keep on with the project Carrie Etter got me into, of writing A Poem A Day beyond the end of the original April challenge. looking in my head for the beginning of a poem each morning has become another  habit, though what I find varies...

It's now Meredith Andrea who is spurring my creativity, with the idea of a Flarestack Poets pamphlet maybe at the end of the year, assuming of course that enough Good Stuff has emerged by then.

Let me know if you'd like some of the poems posted here.

Further April efforts

In that kitchen

a cooker called Radiation

where my dad made the flame

burn green annealing copper

to beat into a bowl

with the polished steel peen

of a planishing hammer.

In that kitchen

the sticky-varnished back door

would open too suddenly

on red-polished brick steps down

to what we called the Shed, home

of the noisy old Morrison Shelter

my dad used for a bench, and the garage,

rented home to better-off people’s cars.

In that kitchen, too

lived the Cabinet with the drop-down

white enamel shelf where mum

rolled pastry. Mind your head

when you come up from rummaging

in the bottom cupboard for shoes

or big saucepans.

Never mind That kitchen

in this kitchen Mount Fuji

somehow looms out of the corner

of my eye as I stand at the sink

swirling limescale flakes

out of the white electric kettle

but has gone when I turn to see it.

Teastains in the sink

have made a sepia sketch

of a ghostly samurai reaching

to point to the future with his sword

beneath the mechanical doughnut sun
of the plughole.

Racing the rain back

from Forde Abbey this afternoon

between hedges unbelievably dotted

with pink, red, blue, mauve, yellow, white

I caught myself saying

what a lovely world we have.

In the living room

A purist from a line of purists, made

worse by a lifetime in a pedantic trade,

I think of writing about the two plums

I know are on the kitchen table.

Are they really, I wonder, navy blue

but the minute I look I know

the word for what they are is indigo –

despised term for a spurious seventh colour

Newton or Goethe (or both for all I knew)

squeezed in, I thought I knew, to the middle

of the perfect and rational spectrum of light.

As bad as calling green a primary hue.

How you will come

When you call for me I’ll notice

how you came,

from which direction:

did you walk

past the ethical food shop

smelling of caraway

and yeast, or drive by

the fitness club with its air

of sweat and desperation?

Are you straight to the nearest gate

from the car park, or do you wrestle

your wheelie bag along the street

peering at door numbers?

Will you be so late I’ll despatch

a friend down

to look out for you

or is your knock going to catch me

still basting the fowl?

SELF-INDULGENCE: an infuriating poem about doorknobs

I’m not even going to look. More books

come in the post every day. You know

how polished brass is the colour of dry straw.

Someone woke the birds.

If I was able to, I’d go far a walk round the village.

(Wouldn’t we all, dear). Not saying

what I have to say, I wonder how long

this weather’s going to last.

If you close the door properly or leave it ajar

it won’t bang.

Just a gabble, with no proper words,

lines that have strayed from other poems.

the worst yet

The Good Friday moon

like the stone ball

I suppose it is

hung above the village

at 6 a.m.

Now it’s gone

behind streamers of cloud.

People below sleep on.

Another poem using just the first of Kelli Russell Agodon's 30 prompts

The spectre of repatriation

Twenty-one cracks in the teacup

trace a ship, a suitcase; hint

at missing paperwork on the dock,

reprieve, the nick of time,

salvation on the dot

of eleven minutes to nine.

[prompt-words: cracks, trace, paperwork, suitcase, teacup, dot, dock, ship, time, twenty-one]

A poem from ten prompt-words

- one of Kell's poem prompts: see her blog: http://ofkells.blogspot.com/  (triumphs, decade, darker, problem, godlike, break/staff, so-called, bound, crow, mark, were the words, the poem title being a nod to the title of the book from page 29 of which the words were selected)

Pocket guide

In the darker place near my heart

I’ll take a crow bound with raffia

to keep him still but not quiet

on my bumpkin explorations.

A decade should suffice to break him in:

imagine the feeling of godlike triumph

when the so-called problem of his struggles

is overcome and I can walk the city streets,

him perched wing-free on my ebony staff,

a hoarse but docile finial calling out landmarks.

Back in the zone?

In place of paint

Could this be the hoped-for corner,
the breakthrough, the turning-point?
[normally I'd frown on such repetitions,
but if it's true...]

Self-portraits seem
so against-the-grain,
egotistical, but
oil-and-water portraits
are not to be managed,
and yet...
using words I can still do
the lilac light on the beech trunks
in the background, even shift
the sitter to a minor place
in the plan, find that magic
A4 sweet spot...




Too sharp by half

Mallory grins sharp-eyed in red & black

back to the wall of the ice-cream stall.

Maybe like a spy she wishes she could hide

or the wind would drop, stop

blowing her hair, that they would open

so we could share a ninety-nine

before starting on the path up the cliffs

where the twelve fearless white goats live.

What you expect to happen

happens? What you fear

will happen happens? What

you hope will happen happens?

What you believe will happen

will happen. What you knew

would happen happened.

The sparrow maybe thinks

Uh oh the hawk might get me

but maybe also thinks I can

hide round the back of this tree

then he won’t get me.

Looking for a Glastonbury festival of the mind

A maze designed to lead me back

directly to where I came from.

Round a corner of the field

- wide  Kidz Field –

a top-hatted man in red on stilts

looks over the heads of the trekking crowd.

Where have all the rabbits gone, I wonder,

and do foxes negotiate the security fence?

Tonight cardboard beer-carriers

will be contribute to our fires

while we dance to the headliners’

heavy music on the hillside.

Before the end the ground will be hard and dry,

impenetrable, full of buried plastic water-bottles

Both sides – all the sides

Day 2

The sounds of lorries & cars on the top road

approach & recede like my thoughts

as I strive without striving to regain

calm after a fraught night.

There seemed sufficient reason

to cut back the shoots of the buddleia.

Like a dammed stream or a dream ignored,

the force in due time will burst out elsewhere.