What dog was Rodney?

What shreds of sleep stitched

dream to memory to make

my waking moments march

to melody un-thought for

fifty years? 

                       The BBC

and Light Programme and

Children’s Favourites and Uncle Mac and

Pocca-pick-a-lean-yah,

He played the con-suh-tee-nyah,

Pocca-pick-a-lean-yah,

From sun-knee It-tar-lee!

Less than a minute’s Ipad’s use and I

had found the title, singer and the date,

together with a link to ‘53 and

Decker singing what I thought I knew.

The music channelled thought

and stuck the present to the past.

Space, learning, life, experience – irrelevant:

a moment of unsettling now.

Abrupt: a sonic wormhole.

Giving and yet mocking;

emphasising what can’t be

matched up so easily.

Remembered words were wrong.

I had forgotten, if I ever knew,

the narrative: lost concertina

eventually restored with simian aid

to general delight. 

                       But tune and attitude

were part of me, a key

just waiting to be turned

inside a lock available to all.

First dog my parents had

I think I never knew.

‘Rodney,’ unlikely name belying

mongrel status that I think that he had.

His life is shadow now, beyond the click.

There’s no one left to ask.

No records to consult.

And does it matter?

Silly questions

never asked because

there’s always time.

But time is ever now,

as then denies the space

to hear what is not said.

Lavender

Some words spill beauty well

beyond a dictionary.

Not lav-end-‘er.  Too

bodily and finally, abruptly

some-thing, to enchant.

But scent in sachets.

There’s a word whose sibilance

and sliding sensuality evokes

the world of southern belles

who laughed their way through

pillared mansions white!

And muslin envelopes with ribbon tied

below the question mark, above

the bracket of a silken hanger padded

soft. 

            An object I remember vividly

though not

                       in time or place

but is

with that vague scratch of scent

made into waves of blue by finger crush –

for lavender is always blue

for me, dilly, dilly, and surely,

comforting, maternity. 

My thinking back demands

acceptance of the cost of

lost: that which has gone. 

Is gone.

So much for the 'trees sequence now is ended' approach to writing poetry!  I think that I have probably added another poem to the list.

In reality I think that this sequence is going to be cut down, but I am finding great satisfaction in developing the ideas that are contained within it.  This is the latest and 'last' one.  For now.

Exception?

One tree is different.

While all around have

gone to gaunt,

this one preserves its greenery.

A little tired, it’s true, with

more of structure showing

than it did, but

                       birds prefer it –

            though skittering is paid

with extra loss.

What makes it different?

It’s one of six

in seven short rows:

outside edge; the second

from the gate.

I’ll count the days

before it too conforms.

When empty scratches
test one’s faith once more.

Two poems: Death & Metaphor

Two more poems.  They are both a type of meditation, with the first being prompted by the weather and the second being based more on a recollection from my youth - but with a link to the present too.

Death

This cold; this sun.

Remind me of my

first few days in Spain,

when sitting in shirt sleeves

in late December warmth,

seemed like a gift

Christmas forgot to wrap.

Now, it is necessity.

The sun is fix, not luxury.

The bright; the blue; the clarity:

combine, for days to form

a pattern that can

take me home.

Metaphor

The towel that I used today

was crimson red and,

as it dealt with wet,

I thought of Cornwall,

many years ago, on holiday,

St. Ives, in a Church Hall.

And lurid towels all set out

to catch an emmet’s eye.

My mother’s eye was duly

snared and handling the

yellow, blue and red,

she asked the gawky youth

who stood behind the stall,

‘And are they fast?’

His blank expression spoke

for what was a non sequitur

for him.  My mother saw

his doubt and added,

‘Well, do they run?’

The wildness in his eyes

prompted my mum to

further modify to,

‘Can they be washed?’

Which wasn’t quite the point.

But his enthusiastic, ‘Yes!’

was comfort for them both.

My mother’s shame in

innocent unease ensured

she bought the things.  And we

used them until they were

quite thin; because we smiled

whenever they were washed.

Today, near me, a table set

about with eight old men,

creates a rolling wave of

simultaneous talk with

scattered, shouted, wordy-spray.

I catch a name, a team, a phrase.

But understanding’s not complete.

My decades count for nothing,

and I am now the gawky youth

struggling to understand.

Although it mentions trees, this is not yet another part of my four part trilogy about them!

This is my latest poem and one in which I have been a bit freer about the line length and stanza form.

A way

I sit alone, not lonely,

with empty tables

fringed with red,

tipped, plastic chairs.

The traffic passes, but

does not disturb.

A calmness: denuded trees

in breezeless air.

Swimming dampened hair

that doesn’t face the sun,

tells me it’s cold.

A thermal chiaroscuro

warms what’s light:

what isn’t – isn’t.

People pass like shadows:

sun-simplified, backlit.

Though parts of me are cold,

I am not moved to move.

Tolerable, is enough.

Autumn trees: IV Touch

I had thought that the 'Autumn Trees' sequence had finished, but another poem has emerged to make some sort of ending for the four poems which now form this section.

This is the latest of them.

IV.      Touch

Only the unfortunate remain.

Down on their luck, a sorry sight.

Stained, shapeless, flaunting,

shamelessly, a refusal to accept

the mandatory modern mode

of stark black fighting grey.

I take one from a branch’s end.

It separates with ease and

moisture at the break tells me

the xylems are still feeding

to the death.

The leaf, now in my hand,

is leather landscape:

polder patchwork

burnt by water’s lack;

vein roads; gashed,

empty lakes of eaten space,

and darker urban shades.

Perhaps bombardment, aerial view,

distinct and photo-like.

Broken to satisfy a

light poetic whim!

- And with the body? -

By my cup, motionless. 

But with a speed that is too slow

for my fast life to see,

its withering accelerates,

because of me.

                      

                       And now,

between end pages,

folded twice, it’s
pressed into my notes.

I think that this will be the end of this topic for the moment, but as I see these trees each time I have a swim who knows what may come of the seasons yet untouched!

III. Remains

Yet another Tree poem.  I now see the three poems as part of a sort of sequence of which this is the third - and I think the final - part.

III.      Remains

There’s something quite contrived

about the disposition of the thinning

fades that cling to emptying trees.

These time-lost lonely dowagers

wear worm-hole gems where bright

sky glitters through and droop

aloft in genteel raggedness.

They feed on emptiness and

flaunt their hopeless state.

While at their feet, two magpies strut

and crunch through memories of what

there used to be. 

                   And with the sound of

silken sheen or tuneless whistle -
but with edge – the rake comes on.

As always I welcome comments.