But do I tell you the truth
in these writings? Yes,
but only some. I don’t disclose
the wild, strange places
I visit in the dreaming dark,
full of preposterous adventure
nor my conversations (awake)
with disembodied spirits
nor the fact that my small cat
is an angel sent by Heaven….
Appalled by the stunning mediocrity
of these daily verses, faced with the way
they expose how banal Is my everyday life
(though I happen to enjoy my little life) —
and for those which do go deeper,
sharing on Instagram and facebook
is truthfully not easy but somewhat reluctant —
I almost decide to stop. Or do it less often?
But then I think, I could name it an Experiment,
removing value judgments, and see where that leads.
(Extra because it exceeds my daily quota.)
Note: When I posted this to facebook, it was very gratifying that many people said, 'No,please don't stop; we love them!' Some argued that they are not banal but show the importance of everyday experiences, and the beauty that can be found in them. Needless to say, I didn't stop!
I’m wearing around my neck today
a small Celtic cross with a fleur-de-lys in the middle
and three identical circles down the back,
inherited from the magician Ridge, my mentor.
He’d had it chrome-plated by a friend. When that
wore off, I painted it with silver nail polish, sparkly.
His big cross, broad as a breast-plate,
studded with crystals, went in the coffin with him.
So did the jade ring, shaped and carved as a scarab.
I have my own scarab ring now, of silver, a perfect fit.
After dental work at the vet today,
requiring anaesthetic,
the small cat is wakeful,
reluctant or unable to lie down.
She looks at me with calm expectancy.
Isn’t it my job to fix this?
I devour whole books in a day, for escape;
listen to music, then suddenly decide
I don’t like it after all and turn it back off.
Two dear friends and one old lover
are all dangerously ill. Like me, not young …
yet how can I bear my loss and their pain?
Between sleeps, she comes looking for me,
or calls me to her. Sometimes she wants food,
sometimes she wishes me to know she would like
clean kitty litter immediately, and sometimes she needs
big long cuddles and smooches which she rewards
by sustained purrs. There are times when she just
wants to hang, settling near me wherever I am.
Occasionally she comes to make sure I’m still here:
finds me, checks me over for a minute, then goes back
to resting, day-dreaming, or looking out windows.
I slept so late and so little —
when did all this rain happen,
the traces now lying heavy
outside on the morning ground?
The newest deaths arrive next,
back into consciousness. No, not dreams.
I shoulder them with practised ease
and a sigh; begin making breakfast.
My friend who studies astrology
explains the influences
and how they play out.
It’s convincing, the way she tells it.
‘I don’t believe in that stuff,
I’m Christian!’ one listener says.
Another: ‘I don’t believe in that,
I’m a scientist!’ This amuses me.
Unconfirmed rumours of a famous death.
The shock of that,
of contemplating it as true.
And it might be true! How can we
wait calmly to be told for sure?
Meanwhile, a pale pink sunset.
‘Would you want to keep living if you were me?’
asks the suicidal woman in the novel I’m reading
to the imaginary reader of the journal she’s writing,
and I answer in thought, ‘Darling, I always
want to go on living. That’s me, it’s the way I’m wired.’
It’s not as if I haven’t had the bad stuff too. I won’t
enumerate, but if I did you’d see. So I have to think
it’s not about that. Not really. I suppose the answer
is that I’m not her — and if I was maybe I wouldn’t, but
I’m me. Stubborn, naive, idiotic me, who always wants life.
She reminds me frequently –
with body language, even some yells
and, finally, sustained purring –
there’s not only her and me,
we’re also us. And the Us
needs proximity, often:
togetherness and loving touch.
(Also, as energy tingles,
I realise she understands
I have a healer’s hands.)
Interesting, how various
tiny happenings combine
to remind me of all the magic
I carry within me –
how easily and often one forgets –
at a time it’s required.
Age: a time to revisit
books that have delighted me,
movies I’ve loved,
my host of dear memories —
old friends all
as well as those souls,
animal and human,
present or past, here or gone,
whose lives continue to fill my life …
and certain trees, mountains, rivers ...
I'm sharing this with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #73: Time Affects All Things. I didn't write this especially for the prompt, but it does at least indicate how the passage of time can affect one's relationship to some things.
My favourite cleaner arrives:
a pleasant lad, as well as efficient –
and not one of those who wants to chat.
(Do they imagine old people
are starved for communication
and human warmth? Not me!)
But he tells me he’s moving on
into Disability (more pay).
I’m glad I’m not disabled, but ….
In the dim day, the cloudy day
I draw the card of Temperance,
in some decks known as Art —
telling me to stir my ingredients
in the cauldron of Being, of Happening,
so as to cause a new arrangement of light.
(Card from Guardian of the Night Tarot.)
A time of quiet, of gentle play —
if not forgetful of serious matters,
at least a laying of them by.
It’s true I need respite
from work, from intensity of feeling,
from remembered pain.
Luckily I have my small cat to remind me.
I haven’t been giving titles to my small daily poems, but a sevenling is supposed
to have a title and it’s supposed to be in the same format as this one.
Today I remember some sad girls,
poets and rebels, two different girls,
who each disappeared, for their own
sufficient, unknown reasons, long ago now —
but we were friends, soul sisters,
so I thought, so they said —
and I miss (I still miss
after so long) their unique light
in which broken shards of glass,
their shattered hearts, achieved such shining!
About to take
a necessary risk,
puzzling over how,
I finally remember
the many angels
watching over me,
and waiting only
for my request.
I’m so slick and nifty
at getting the word puzzles out,
I know I’m not demented yet,
nor likely to become so.
(It’s different with mental arithmetic
— but always was.)
Watching a programme
on great Aussie foods,
suddenly how I hunger
for the long-ago taste
of a Chiko Roll,
or a so-hot-it-burns
Four'n'Twenty pie
sloshed with tomato sauce.
We never once kissed on the lips, I remember.
I mentally shrug, thinking it matters little now.
It was forty-odd years ago, I’m eighty-three.
‘That no longer hurts,’ I assure myself, ‘not when
I weigh it against all the lasting things we did achieve’ —
then suddenly I’m engulfed in anguished sobs.
Typing, typing, typing, typing, typing.
I come to some lines of my own
in the book I’m transcribing
and pause to remember the feelings
which prompted them, and
the particular occasion — long ago
and well remembered. Where are you now,
friends who were with me then?
A good cat for a witch,
she likes rituals. A good cat
for a poet, she likes patterns.
She has us follow procedures,
not essential but chosen, and
repeated daily at the same times,
in order to arrive at the desired
outcome — which is always a long
smooch and snuggle. She’s a very
good cat for a love junkie like me.
Preparing an old book for republication,
a collection of poems written from a place of pain,
I confront again the sufferings of those writers, my friends.
I run away often into light-hearted movies on Netflix,
or romance novels that always have happy endings,
or wine, or chocolates, or cuddles with my cat.
But then I return to the task. If they were strong enough
to live those things and write of them truthfully,
I can continue to honour and share their words.
Image: cover of an anthology of poems written from workshops conducted in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, 1981-2.
As the official publisher (also one of the contributors, as visiting/tutor poets were invited by the prisoner poets to submit our work too) I am issuing a new edition, to be launched simultaneously with my memoir about coordinating those workshops, Breaking Into Pentridge Prison. Because the original volume of Blood from Stone is over 40 years old and pre-digital, with uneven print quality, the preparation has involved retyping every word.
I'm sharing this with Poets and Storytellers United for my own prompt at Friday Writings #72: Writing About Writing. Writing about other people's writing is maybe not quite on topic, but still....
