Return (when do I ever leave it!) to one of my favourite subjects, the swimming pool.  Although I go to swim every day, I do not go at exactly the same time, so I see a variety of people of all ages who accompany me on my swims.  This does not make me more accommodating!  The perfect pool for me is an empty one with only one swimmer - myself!  This rarely happens, but usually I am lucky and am able to get a lane to myself.  Usually, but not always!  As an only child 'sharing' as a concept has not been something close to my heart, and certainly not when swimming.
          Most of my fellow swimmers are fine and any confusion is, I am sure, more due to my not fully understanding the language than anything else.  Some people, however, are simply plain rude and/or selfish.
          If I have to share a lane, I do so with good grace - as long as my fellow swimmers are equally considerate.  Diagonal backstroke in a confined space is not what Robert Frost had in mind when he wrote about 'good neighbours'!
          I usually outlast my fellow swimmers and so I recognise that any sharing will be temporary and  something which can be tolerated and is obviously character building.
          Some things do rankle and the simmering feelings contained in the following poem have been building up to their fitting expression!
          I am conscious that this a a relatively long poem on a relatively unimportant, even trivial, event - but it obviously meant something to me.  I hope my readers will be able to relate too.

Petty

First length is for warm up;

then crawl ‘work out’ starts,

and finishes after a metric mile,

with two slow end-to-ends of breast.

Yesterday, I looked around and saw

there were no vacant lanes for me

to swim.  I chose, therefore, to take

the free and common space

for those who splash.

As I approached the end of my

first length where, nowadays,

I stretch and set my watch,

a woman of a certain age,

cosmetics waterproof and nails

a crimson red, swam past

into my length’s end and

indicated I should move away

to the far side so she could

swim alone (next to the floats)

and ‘properly’.

Instinctive chivalry dictated

I accept her terms. 

                        But as

I moved I realized that she

assumed that I was one of those

slow men who clutter up the pool

with painful strokes and little pace.

I moved and took my place

along a side cluttered with

exit steps and started my

true swim. 

                        I was the better,

without doubt, quicker and

more purposeful and I soon

lapped her plodding speed.

I hope she spoke no English

as, I understand, expletives voiced

in water carry far!  And voice I did

each time I passed her form!

My tricked gentility gave sharp

intent to arbitrary length and

fifteen hundred metres soon

passed by – while she moved to a empty

lane as soon as possibly she could –

and I resumed my place where

I had started out

                        – and she left

long before I did.

Is this a poem or a peevish rant?

And does it matter if it says

something significant to me?

Our lives from day to day

are not defined by shattering events;

rather by how the busses run

and whether there is time for tea.

I am surprised by just how

ritualized my daily swim’s become

and how disturbed I am

by what I take to be

divergence from the norm

(defined by me) and, perhaps,

I need to pause a space,

and think about my passion for

an exercise contained

and destination-less

as swimming is.

One day I will count up the number of poems I have written about swimming and perhaps start worrying about my focus of my poetic attention.  Meanwhile I will continue to write about those aspects of life which I find interesting and worry about the depth that I go into certain aspects of my life later!

Our local leisure centre has developed further!  The new car park is now open, a new extensive children's playground has magically sprung up and the space under the remains trees has been set with new tables and chairs.
          I was the first to sit in this new space with my customary cup of tea and it was during the time it takes for a cup of tea to be drunk that I made the notes that informed the following poem.
          There is not real shade under the trees at the moment because the leaves have not yet grown to their full size so you can appreciate the structure of what will soon me lost as the leaves develop.
           It was seeing the almost ecclesiastical church-like pillars and fan vaulting that encouraged the central image in the poem.
           It is also undeniable that I do feel a sort of ownership of the trees as I have been writing about them since last autumn and I make that explicit in the first stanza of the poem.
          It is difficult to know how much of what I write on such a limited subject matter is self-indulgence, but as soon as I started to make my notes in my notebook I felt a sort of excitement about the development of the ideas that I had.  I only hope that some of that feeling is contained in the poem.

Over head

It’s only fitting that I am the first

to sit (new tables, chairs) under

the captive trees which rise from

earth-island-circles set symmetrically

in cement seas. 

                       My words have claimed them,

through three seasons, as my own. 

My metaphors manured their growth!

The roof’s a work in hand,

that spreads from ruins of the past,

as fissured pillar-trunks show they retain

the memory of what they might become.

Mosaics of the sky fall through the

broken tracery of branches’ spread

that, fanning out, Rococo ribs

vault space that lacks the summer’s leaf

to smooth the edifice to a convincing build.

I sit under potentiality,

appreciating and imagining

as new worlds show.

I sense a sort of arrogance in the line, My metaphors manured their growth! when I am talking about the way that I have used the subject matter of these particular trees in my past poems - but, in my defence, I would point out that there is an exclamation mark at the end of the line and I think also that the absurdity of the reality of the line is also obvious!  Which is not to say that I do feel that I have created a version of the trees which only exists in what I have written.

Although this was not really part of the prompt, this poem came from a freewrite as part of the evening with the Barcelona Poetry Group.
          I am not sure that this is going to be the final state of this poem, but I think that it does say something about missed opportunities, and what is lost through a sort of emotional cowardice!

Some love

Some love beats blood past

broken brain-bonds, through

intermittent jangling nerves

that jitter thought to finger tips –

which almost bridge; but stop,

before they realise

what they can’t take:

a touching, real and tangible

which tears chasms apart

and closes tightly-in together.

A short poem, but one which has some authentic emotion for me!

Back to the trees!
          As the season pass I keep to my determination to look closely at the changes that I see in the trees which surround me (well, on one side) as I drink my after-swim cup of tea.
          Spring has produced quite a few pages of notes, but not many poems.  This poem is based on ideas in my notebook and it links to thoughts that seem to go through many of my 'Tree' poems.
          The basic idea in this poem came from simple observation.  The newly laid concrete which now surrounds the surviving trees in my local leisure centre is an idea canvas to pick up the shadows of the trees.  I was surprised to see that the shadows did not exactly correspond to the actual trees.  The shadows were as if there was not vegetation on the branches at all, just the jagged lightning / of twisted trunks - the light seems to be ignoring the new growth entirely.  When I looked more closely I could see that there was a sort of blurring to some of the branches which had new leaves on them, the shadow of which reminded me of the depiction of sound waves - those vertical lines threaded together by a horizontal median line.
          I am also fascinated by the speed of growth.  The trees look different every day now that spring is accelerating, but our lives are too fast to see or hear the growth while it is happening and we are observing.  That is the paradox that I try to suggest in the last few lines.
          This is a sonnet like poem and I worked to keep the lines to the necessary 14 because I felt that the form had something to say about the content.

New leaf

The too-small, rubbled green has

not found fulcrum taut enough

to bend around in moving air. 

The season’s grind and push thrusts

decoration on the twigs; stuck on

as if to give the right impression

for the time of year.

The sun attempts to scorn such ghostly growth:

stark contrasts thrown by midday glare

on blank cement are jagged lightning

of twisted trunks – but branches now can

shadow etch as the articulating growth

draws sound waves on hard ground

for eyes to hear what dull, closed ears cannot.

 I wonder if this poem is too obscure and the central (for me) image of the shadowy sound wave too difficult to discern without explanation?  Not sure.  Perhaps I'll read this one to the Poetry Group and get a reaction from them.

This is one of those poems where I am not totally sure that I know what I am on about, but the feeling is something I know is right!
          This poems came about as a response to a prompt in the Poetry Group in Barcelona.  The theme was 'Colour' and I half remembered something, which may or may not be true, that one critic suggested that some of the colour combinations and choices in the paintings of Fernand Léger was due, in part to colour blindness.
          I too have partial colour blindness, a confusion between red and green which, disconcertingly seems to vary in intensity for no obvious reason.  So, I felt some fellow feeling for the artist, and used what I think is true to talk about perception - which I suppose fits with the subject!
          I like the title Autocrat of Shades and I like the feeling in the last stanza, even if I am not absolutely sure what it means!
          I wonder what my feelings about this poem will be in another week or so?  Time will tell.

Colour

The painter Léger’s life was

colour everyday – and yet, they say,

the man himself was colour blind!

There’s no official test for artists

like the circle of small spots

where you can see a ‘9’

and I see ‘17’ –

                       that tells us what?

I touch the grass that is, for

me, as green as my reality.

I speak as Autocrat of Shades!

I say that my eyes

and that your eyes

are the grass –

and Léger’s paintings too.

I vividly remember those colourful circular charts that we were given during one day of fairly exhaustive (and obtrusive) medical tests in school.  I'm not sure that I have the numbers right, but I plead poetic licence! 

If, as William Blake suggested, you can see the whole world in a grain of sand, then just imagine what looking at the construction of a car park will suggest!  Well, that was the sort of logic that prompted the following poem.
          My local leisure centre has decided to resurface an area used for car parking and has rooted out twenty trees, levelled the ground and resurfaced it with reinforced concrete or cement.  I never know which is the appropriate word.
          As is my want, I have been following all the construction details from my vantage point of a table outside the sports cafe while sipping my after-swim cup of tea.  This project is a major one and the car park has been closed for weeks, so I have had time to think about things!
          The workmen have now reached there stage of painting on the lines for the cars.  It could be that the car park reopens some time next week and then the fun will start.  It could be that everyone will behave with consideration and reserve, but that has not been my experience of how people park.
          I have always found public car parks fascinating - not that I have gone out of my way to visit them - especially in the way that people quite casually display the most selfish behaviour when parking their cars that they would despise if they saw it in other circumstances.
          Having disabled friends, and also because it is part of my character, I find it very difficult to pass by disabled parking spaces without checking if the disabled card has been displayed.  In car parks in supermarkets in Britain, I would always go up to the information desk if I had seen an illegally parked car and ask them to do something.
          I fully intend to do the same in my leisure centre and take a note of the car number plate too.  This is the first time that there have been designated spaces, I think because we now have an official car park and local by laws insist that for x number of able parking space there has to be one space for disabled customers.
          Perhaps I will need to do nothing as everyone may behave properly.  It is when they do not that I want to see how the staff in the leisure centre respond!
          Anyway, this poem is an amalgam of observation and prejudice!

Car Park Country

The weeping concrete’s salt is

washed away, revealing hard, smooth

stony canvas left for men to paint.

They squat and measure, check, reflect

and pluck the taut chalked string.

They draw equality until

there is no room for choice.

Space is boxed, with borders clear;

space not lined is all for flow –

and clockwise, if you please!

Each berth is numbered?  Why?

To give identity? 

                       To try and stop

encroachment by fat tyres

of those bombastic vehicles,

the rugged all-terrains that cope

so well with shallow

potholes in our urban roads?

Two spaces for disabled pose

alluring problems for the fit

and sturdy individuals who scorn

to be contained by some one else’s

paid authority and painted lines.

The spaces look quite small

to me, suggesting future opening

doors will touch and scratch

and irritate until the lines

must all looked at once again;

equality be re-defined;

the brush dipped deep

in paint, to bring

a momentary peace.

I would be interested to hear others' responses to this poem.  It obviously touches some sort of nerve in me, I simply wonder if anyone else feels the same way!