It floats towards me
on the screen of my phone,
the old tree: dead, but
still beautiful, one slim trunk
and a few spiky branches
pointing to the sky,
in the photo I took
after years of loving –
parking the car where I could
and walking back to the only
and awkward vantage,
when that long intention
felt suddenly urgent –
one week before the next time
I drove past, to see in that spot
a neat stack of logs. Now, not even
that. Now there is nothing left,
except this photograph.
So we go on,
as if we shall go on,
as if we’ll always be doing
all the small daily things.
We make plans, and begin
carrying them out, as if
they’ll surely be completed.
(Perhaps some will.)
While around us,
the world ...
Across the circle,
as our eyes meet,
my Scorpio soul-sister
quietly places her hand
on her heart a moment.
I reciprocate.
In dealing with – I assure you,
very justifiable – frustration,
do NOT go out and buy a big
bottle of whiskey, or whatever else
you regard as excellent tipple. If
you do – and even if you don’t –
do NOT hurl blunt objects against walls
with crashing force. Do NOT scream
your rage so piercingly loud that
the neighbours call the cops. Take
Rescue Remedy. Watch something
mind-numbing on telly. Write a poem.
Write a poem so fierce and sly, it will
bite the heads off your enemies! Er …
let’s start again …
The garbage trucks wake me early.
Even my little cat is still asleep.
(She’s deafer than me.) I wake into
the immediate knowledge of his death,
my old friend, my soul-brother – we
could tell each other anything, every
thing, and also we didn’t need to –
unlike other deaths, when sleep gave
an escape from which I then had to
realise all over again.
When he visited
that night, before I found out he’d died,
I was half asleep already, didn’t then
recognise it was him (well we hadn’t
met in person for many years, though
we texted and were always available
to each other) only that it was a man,
tallish, not one of my usual visitors, but
someone I seemed to know very well …
I fell asleep not knowing yet, but feeling
safe in his regard, his calm affection.
This is one of a series of daily poems I'm doing this year as a 'Book of Days' and posting to Instagram and facebook – this one already slightly edited since. It's also being shared with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #100: El Dia de Muertos.
In Australia we don't have a Day of the Dead. (Many Aussie schoolchildren have now started celebrating Halloween, on the same date as the Americans do – which is the wrong season of the year here, the beginning of summer instead of winter; also they don't seem to really get what it means apart from the fun of dressing up and eating lots of free sweets.)
This newly written poem, though, obviously has some relationship to the topic.
Finally I remember
to light a white candle,
let it burn all the way down,
and speak my favourite
Prayer for the Dead.
I take the photo of his
keen-eyed, smiling face
out of my healing grid.
He is in a new realm now,
needing no earthly healing.
When I come to do my usual
morning ritual, I add a request,
to Bill, to be there in welcome:
the friendly face of one
he called ‘always generous.’
Oh bitter irony! A dear friend died
two days ago. I just found out.
I was about to send him – today –
my newly published books in which
poetry he wrote is featured. One tells
of how how our lifelong friendship
began. And now it’s ended. Except,
I suppose, love is never really over.
‘Thank you, oh intermediary,’
jokes a friend in answer to
a message I relayed in a text.
I tell her that I often, in many
circumstances, end up as scribe.
Somewhere along the line
I was informed that I‘d once
been exactly that, in Ancient
Egypt – one of my several
lives in that place, that era.
I find a necklace in Vinnie’s
which I think is just what a friend
was looking for lately, to match
a particular bracelet. It’s glass,
mostly, and costs $5. Of course
I grab it for her. If she decides
she doesn’t want it, I’ll enjoy
for myself the blueness of
the beads, the intricate shaping
of the central flower, and
the way it catches the light.
Wanting to escape tonight
from wars on the other side of the world
(but it’s such a small planet, and
there isn’t a fence across the middle)
or from fires starting to surround my town
and being brought under control again daily
(we just don’t know when there will be
some sudden surge or shift of wind)
and from all the many other things
there’s a need to escape from, including
an app on my phone telling me that
my walking’s unsteady (I know, right)
I take refuge again in Netflix, lose myself
in something light and pretty … briefly.
Her writing is amazing,
accomplished, wonderful,
superb. It always was.
But I don’t fall in love
with any of her characters,
as I once did with the wild,
fantastical girl who lived
in those old, unpublished,
magical tales of herself.
For Friday Writings #102 at Poets and Storytellers United, the prompt is to ignore the old advice to 'beware of adjectives' and instead go over-the-top with them and still produce something that's a joy to read. I chose to use even quite hackneyed ones in this piece and dare to hope it still works!
I find, in my finished book
from the printer, two words
(on two different pages)
which, if I changed them,
would improve the writing.
Now I see them! Now –
too late. How can I bear
that it’s not flawless?
Age is for
reminiscence. I think
of times with
Andrew. Or with
Bill. And years
of various friends.
‘The things we
did,’ I say
to myself in
wonder. ‘Oh, such
things we did!’
Noisy Miner birds
are being loud
out the front,
in the trees
and leaning over
the narrow edges
of the roof,
squawking in chorus.
They’ve a right
to be here,
but they’re not
an endearing species.
