Shadow: Middle Sixties

There are few occasions that I have ever felt tongue tied, indeed my fluency has landed me in a variety of difficult situations, where silence might have been the better option!  However, I have rejoiced in my ability to weave words together and get drunk on the patterns that I create.
     It is, therefore, a disconcerting experience to find myself searching for a word.  When semantic jigsaws seemed to me to easy-peasy junior toys, it is unsettling, to say the least, when the words I know I know do not flow into their accustomed positions.
     As a Baby-Boomer (Leading Edge) and someone about to claim his State Pension, I do not, defiantly, feel as old as parents or grandparents: my dad played golf, I swim - a metric mile a day.  Proof enough to show that I am a younger person than my father was at my age!
     Or so I like to think.
     My Squash playing (or Paddel playing) days seem to be over.  I haven't played tennis in years.  Badminton is a fading memory.  And, OK, I live in a country whose first language is not English.  I no longer teach the subject, but . . . but I feel the loss of that ease of communication that I once had - for good or ill!
     With all the publicity of we Baby-Boomers (Leading Edge) getting to retirement and beyond, there is also a whole pathology related to the Golden Generation marching steadily into the dark.  We drink too much.  After a life time of getting free education up to and including university, we think that our life styles will continue indefinitely, with age being an inconvenience rather than a full stop.
     That being the case, any lessening in life style seems an unacceptable imposition from unreasonable fates!
     So my struggle to find the apposite word in ordinary circumstances gives me pause for thought.  And as soon as you start thinking, the whole reductio ad absurdam process soon get you to a position where Alzheimers snuggles closer and closer to your living fears!
     Finding the right word is always a problem in the writing of poetry, and you might say that writing a poem about the difficulty of finding a word is both an exemplum and refutation of the fear itself.  But, for the word that eventually emerges in the following poem, I always have to struggle - and I always wonder why.  And that 'Why?' is a heartfelt howl!

Middle Sixties Shadow

They’re not so imperceptible.

Those changes that you think tell you that

Things Are Not Quite As They Used To Be.

            The struggle to remember an occasional

and unimportant Little Word

whose ordinariness makes its evasion

all the more unbearable.

For me, the tell-tale sign,

if that is what it is,

is the repeated struggle just to voice

the Spanish word for omelette.

Which even as I write

still keeps itself well-hidden,

out of sight, behind

linguistic heights, which I begin to sense

are growing taller, crowding round, tectonically

as I attempt to speak.

What makes it worse is all the

consequential bluster of un-needed words

which scramble, boil and fry along

a silent tongue.

                           

I try to poach a synonym from what I know

or coddle metaphors to mask just what I don’t.

This poem ends because ‘tortilla’

has come back to me,

                        at last,             as soon

            as I stopped trying

quite               so hard to

            force it back

and,

after all,

perhaps it’s just

a touch of blindness

rather than disease

(or so I tell myself)

            just one particular arrangement

skittishly avoiding memory,

rather than the darkness

dressing up

in onion, egg, potato, fat –

to flavour my descent to

This is not the first time that I have used a lack or punctuation at the end of a poem to make a point.  I have tried to use line length and line arrangement to make further points.

     This poem expresses a genuine fear of mine, and my increased attention to it, especially in poetic form, is my way of raging, "against the dying of the light."

Not the same

This is, I am the first to admit it, an odd poem.
     It started as the memory of an incident - if the occasion deserves such a significant word - during a swim, and the memory emerged in the context of a freer write that was accompanying my ritual cup of post-swim tea.
     When you are swimming I find that the smallest things: like a single strand of hair, or a tiny piece of tissue, or a small fragment of cloth can have an effect on your progress out of all proportion to their size and true influence.
     The poem uses the gradual grubbiness of well used water as a build up to the 'flash' of the foreign body.  I did stop swimming and was disturbed by the sight.  Whether I thought it was a fish or a small, thrown object I do not know.  But the moment was, to put it mildly unsettling.
     Catching something in water is always difficult, and swimming was what I wanted to do, not twist around trying to catch - something!
     It was a nothing moment, but I felt it.  And in writing about it I think that the wider metaphorical meanings of the whole affair come into play.
     I left the title deliberately vague, or at least ambiguous so that the open ended quality of the statement could resonate.
     I suppose it is up to the reader to decide whether there is anything more in this poem than the self-indulgent thought that,
                             
                              meanders freely down, along each
                              end-stopped line

I hope that there is something more.

Not the same

Clarity was gone.

Transparent still, but not precise.

Much more Impressionist than photo-like.

Perhaps it was the numbers;

too much kiddie stuff around;

or much more likely, it was

short showers, too perfunctory,

that gave some texture to my way.

Rhythm regulates, while thought

meanders freely down, along each

end-stopped line.

It’s true, that when you swim

in something less than crystalline

you wonder what, or who you’re

swimming through as you breathe in

each person-loaded breath.

My landscape is my lane.

Each side, beyond the floats,

is chaos, but within my strip of me-ness

Shout, Kerfuffle, Splash are

foreign waters well beyond the calm

of my own ups and downs.

            A flash of yellow!

Across my path.

Unexpected and alive.

In dead-safe water of the pool.

I stopped.  Confused, disturbed

at sensing a true aspect of the depths,

that all pools mock with careful

shallowness.

My stopping showed precisely

what it was I saw:

Elastoplast, and copyright,

and coloured for a child.

But when (so public spirited!)

I saught to catch and to dispose

of what should not float free,

the bright intruder sped away.

Two lengths further on,

along my lonely line,

I was convinced it slipped

again past fingers three and four

of my right hand.

This time unseen.  Though

comfort, not intrusion now.

Companionable oddness.

A thing that made

one metric mile

a little different. 

Even

memorable.

With the present heat wave, or normal summer as we term it in Spain, there is sometimes and almost irresistible impulse to go into our outdoor public/private pool and cool off.  There are supposed to be lights around the pool, but they are more often off than on, and even when they are on they only half work.  This means that the pool, outside the hours of normal use, is more of a black space than a welcoming facility.
     But temptation is there to give in to, to hell with Puritan reserve, and swimming at night is something which always surprises by the fact that the water is still warm and there is something magical about swimming alone, in darkness.
     Our pool is often the centre of what can only be termed cacophony and night time is the only time that you get something approaching silence.  Admittedly, there is the sound of kids (no matter what the time of night), television and radio - to say nothing of all the other types of electronic methods of noise production that our neighbours seem to have mastered.  But there is a tranquility which is deepened by darkness.
     On two sides of the pool are houses and on the other two sides there are houses and flats - though they are further away, so there is always slight spilling from un-curtained windows.
     It was while swimming in darkness, not blackness; away from and yet visually near to so many other people that the idea for the poem came to me.
     I swim every day, and usually try and complete my metric mile, but being in a dark pool was different.  I was not wearing my glasses, so there was that element of seeing and not seeing that informs so much of my observation.  There was also the fact that the pool is a public space, but at night there is a sort of privacy about the darkness which is at odds with its position.
     There is an element of the voyeur in this poem; of being able to see while remaining unseen which struck me.

Dark pool

Unseen ripples roll faint light

(that bleeds, insidious,

from isolated window-screens)

and drowns a dappled net

of dimness strong enough

to tangle bathers

in the liquid night.

Pale arteries of faded trees

bleach out to alveoli bunched

against a moon-robbed sky

with stars’ suggestions

lurking at the edge of sight.

One public globe slews

globs of floating light to

smudge the surface

in a gesture almost

natural and painterly.

I do not swim.

The noise of water

sucked and dropped

by moving arms and feet

would be, I might suggest,

immodest,

in this private gloom.

I laze in darkness,

hardly moving, held

within a distant-light-surrounded

empty space where eyes

are stopped by brightness

on the other side of glass

where life plays on

with licence,

unobserved –

except by me.

This poem has taken a number of drafts.  This is something which I found surprising because the notes for the poem seemed to flow so easily.

     For me, the most interesting element in the poem is the use of the word 'immodest' in the ante-penultimate section.  I am still thinking about my use of that word.

The notes I made after my morning swim today were of even more than usual banality, with my thoughts concentrating on the fact that the refill in my collapsable pen seemed disinclined to stay in place!  
     I commented on the fact that the swim app on my phone, which is linked to my smart watch, has decided recently to let me know how far I have swum on a daily, aggregated basis.  I noted how lucky I was to have a whole lane to myself when the rest of the swimming pool was a writhing, pullulating mass of bodies: I felt like a member of the IOC making my unfettered way to the London Olympics able to ignore the surrounding stationary traffic!
     While writing this rubbish I was, as is my want, sitting in the full sunshine.  Nothing in this country so clearly shows that you are not native than sitting in the sun when not actually sunbathing by the beach - and even then it is customary to lurk under a parasol!
     Today, like lots of near yesterdays, it has been very hot and I (remembering my First Aid in English) was perspiring freely.  It was at this point that I drew my index finger's crooked sweep and flung the accumulated sweat (sorry, perspiration: horses sweat; men perspire; women glow) on to the ground.  I hasten to add that I was sitting outside (remember the sun?) and alone, so offended nobody.
     I did notice the pattern that the perspiration made and that was the start of rather more productive notes and the genesis of the following poem.

This short poem is an account of a fairly ordinary incident, and it starts in a fairly neutral descriptive way.  From the third line of the poem and the mention of constellations, it attempts to progress into something which links to concepts of time and space.  The last verse with the combination of words like gone, nothing left and suggest, give a fairly negative feel to the poem and perhaps points towards a final eschatological ending.

Heat

An index finger’s crooked sweep

across sweat-wetted forehead

scooping drops to fling some

crazy constellations on the hot cement.

Where, even as you try

to find familiarity in the

momentary, aleatory

(so much could be just like The Plough)

systems boil away

into indifferent space.

Even the supernovae

of something more

than shallow blots,

fail to survive

beyond a blink.

And then they’re gone.

With nothing left

to suggest

that they were
ever there.

As with a number of my recent poems, this one was started in one of the Wednesday meetings of the Barcelona Poetry Group that I attend.  The theme for the evening was Heroes & Villians, and the present poem grew out of a consideration of the concept of the 'fatal flaw' that Aristotle suggested was an essential ingredient in the make up of a tragic hero.
     I think that there is an element of something which has figured in other of my poems, the growing concern with age about what you have achieved.  Perhaps it is a sort of consolation to look back on the 'heroes' from the teaching in my youth and look at the way that all the Great Figures that it was suggested that we might look up to and take as our guides have been systematically debunked.  Livingstone, Nightingale, Churchill, Baden-Powell all have been subject to greater scrutiny and the fuller picture of their achievements and their character oddities has lessened their attraction - though it has made them much more human!
     So that I think that the poem is a combination of initial awe, followed by a sense of inadequacy, culminating in a membership of that group of boys that Golding so forcefully presented in Lord of the flies as they danced around the fire chanting Kill the pig!  And which resulted in the death of the 'saintly' character of Simon.
     The poem does not suggest that the suave and confident people are necessarily blameless, but it does suggest that it is easier to draw / a finger's cutting edge and participate in the destruction of public character and move right on than accept that the major flaw might be in oneself.

Fatal Flaw

They stand, these people,

suave and confident: complete.

A wall of seeming competence

that blocks the gaze.

They force all thoughts to centre –

on a ragged nail which snags

and nags and tips your poise

to mumbled, furtive nibblings;

where all attempts to

teeth-trim roughness fail.

Frustration cuts short patience;

keratin is torn to quick and blood.

Better, by far, to draw

a finger’s cutting edge

along doubt’s shadow

darkening the public face

and watch flayed reputations

curl and sink to dust.

It’s simple then to lick

the red away and

move right on.

As always any comments will be appreciated. 

The theme for our weekly Poetry Group was suggested by Sandy and she put forward Keats' use of the phrase 'negative capability' as the basis for our meditation and inspiration.  Keats only used the phrase once in a letter, but it has come to be seen as a defining concept for his work.
     This site gives what I think is a convincing discussion of some of the aspects of this phrase: http://www.keatsian.co.uk/negative-capability.php.
     I am not sure if the poem that I wrote actually illustrates or relates to the theme, but I did write it while considering the implications of what the words might mean.
     I think that there are some contradictions in the poem and some useful conflicts - at least from my point of view, or perhaps I should say from the point of view of the poet who wrote it!

Endings

Some culture’s cheap and deep.

I remember well the

taste and texture of the penny

gum, together with the paper bits

impossible to clear.

And chewing, chewing, chewing

‘til the jaws began to ache,

just for that moment when an

unvoiced exhalation rounded

to perfection: skin-thin the gleam

and candy-stretched to spherical;

defying all the forces in the universe

to take it down. 

                        A momentary

pause.  And the inevitable itch

to tempt domestic fates as

just-a-little-more seemed

reasonable.

My mouth is empty now,

but in an accent, quite precise,

I can fill it up with words that

mimic intellect to fight against

the dark and memories
of bubbles burst.

There seems to be a slightly archaic air to the use of vocabulary in this poem and, although my childhood is some way away, it is not quite so distant as it sounds!  I think that I was trying to get some aspect of distance into the words while still feeling that they were authentically mine.

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!