Two poems: Autumn trees: I. Leaf & Scent

These were the poems I read at the Poetry Meeting in Barcelona on Wednesday 26th November, 2014.

I would welcome any comments on these poems and I promise to respond.

Autumn trees

I.     Leaf  

The trees have bared their knuckles,

teased to view by falling scraps of

bleached-out green.  The brittle rags of

Summer drop and bump on

Autumn’s shore, to hunch and arch,

like driftwood, pocked, cold-coiled

by absent moisture’s fires.

Drab carcasses, stark ridged with

pale and empty veins crumble to dark.

The living, gleam and face the sun,

hectic with sweaty gloss, that

momentarily confounds the time.

And shadows push against the light

to drag new life from dust.

Scent

How do you reduce

a dead mother

to manageable proportions?

How pay the owing

nine-month’s rent?

My coin, is memory.

My dad said that she liked

Co-tea Lammont.  And so I

bought, with Christmas cash, a

coral-boxed, dark-bellied urn

and read, L’aimant.

                                   And

loving her was what I did –

what child does not?

Years on, I bought a

black-edged, pure-white box.

Print plain and sans serif.  A

number-title, calculating,

more restrained.  And fitting

for a young and clumsy teenager

who found the Coty words

more difficult to say.

Almost adult and trip to France;

returning with a box of powder blue

and violet disc of liquid glass –

paying yet more for less – but

Worth the money; firm in the belief

that Je Reviens was true, and that

she always would be right back when.

Until one Easter, ’90, in our

local Boots, I saw a bunny

holding in its paws a bottle of

L’aimant: always the present tense.

And in the hospital, it was the final

gift I gave her that she recognized.

And all that I am left with now,

is lilting fragrances from lives I lack.