Lynne Rees's Blog, page 6

Poem ~ So much

So much
I want to say so much about this oak and these first bluebellsbut what can I say that youdon't already see and feel yourselves?
The weight of that trunk hunkering over the frail brushstrokes of colour. You might even imagine their barely perceptible scent soon to be booming 
through the woods. We are comforted in these moments, aren't we? The reliable return of Spring. By beauty. The way our small hearts sing. 
Above me the first shimmer of green in the splayed branches. At my feetthese steadfast little gifts. I want tobelieve in a world that can change and heal.  

Poem ~ What I see

What I see
The railway bridge’s shadow staircaserising diagonally on the opposite side of the cutreminds me I cannot always be sure of what I see, or what I think I see.Or at least understand that even lightcan sometimes lead me in the wrong direction.

Poem ~ The Old and the New

The Old and the New
What remains in the Afan of an old wooden wharfoverlooked by wind turbines crowning the mountain.
The castellated look-out tower at the docks dwarfedby the unloading cranes in the deep harbour.
The timeless and relentless tides held back bygiant tumbles of rock along the steps of the prom.
This is what we are made of too: the old and the new,what we were, what we’ve done, what we have become. 
Some days we look back with a heartful of regrets,others, we are brimming with gifts a new day has brought.
The past is always with us. Change sits at every horizon.We can only do our best to carry and welcome them both.

Poem ~ Never

Never
For Mam, 1st December 1932 ~ 25th March 2021
Grief keeps changing its shape – a weight like a kilo bag of sugar compressing my lungs, 
sometimes a water smoothed stone that fitsperfectly in the palm of my hand. Yesterday 
the heaviest of winter coats that refused to keep out the chill. Today, I woke and heard 
birdsong through the early morning mist and remembered the last words you wrote 
the month before you died –  It’s good to be positive and looking ahead, Lynne.
So here I am running the lanes looking for all the things I would have shared with you:  
the planting of young laurels along the hedgerow on St Vincent’s Lane, the way the moss 
has grown sparsely on one side of the stone bridge but thickly on the other, and how someone 
has laid a plank across the stream to cross from bank to bank. I think I understand now 
that grief remains with us. And I never had to say, Don’t go, please stay, because you never left me. 
Mam, the wood anemones are like stars carpeting the woods. Soon, the bluebells. 

World Poetry Day 2022

2nd day of Spring
No one shouts about the 2nd day of Spring.The 1st day takes all the credit for just being, well, the 1st. 
But let’s celebrate being 2nd today – the determination to keep going when you know there is no fanfare waiting for you when the cheeringhas stopped and it’s up to you to congratulate yourself for the effort you made and no one can say that’s
worth less than what is aheador behind you. Each day another burst of fragile scentfrom the apricot blossom. 

Poem ~ Walking on thin ice

                                        Walking on thin ice
                                        Before the ice cracks                                        there’s a sigh                                        like the last attempt                                         at holding things                                         together – the moment                                         before whatever is going                                         to happen, happens –                                        the slightest tremble                                         under the skin                                        invisible to the eye.

Poem ~ Clearing the ground

After the stormwe go out to survey the damagereflect on whether we could have prepared better, differently.
But some trees will fall.Some places where we believed we were safe, protectedcan sometimes disappoint.
We could Ignore the debrisfor as long as possibleand nurse the unfairness of it all or get on with 
clearing the groundrepair what we can a little less fearful perhaps of the next gust when it comes. 

Poem ~ 1963

1963
Even just writing those numbers creates a feeling in me like the shifting of tectonic plates: things will slowly change as, together, we’ll outlive one century and cross into another.
This is the summer we begin as the family of five we’ll always be, in the council house we’ll grow up in, that Dad and Mam will buy, but never leave themselves. 
I have my eyes squeezed shut against the bright summer sun. My straightened arms and hands flare as if I might be imagining flight, but my sister anchors me to her side.
Let me be the photographer staring down into the lens of a Box Brownie, let me really see my mother’s red hair, my father’s best trousers, my brother’s barely lived in skin, 
our white socks and Start-Rite sandals, or deeper still – the cotton handkerchiefs in our dress pockets, Dad’s tattoos hidden under his long sleeved shirt, the sand beneath 
the soil and grass under our feet, the scent in the darkness when we opened the coalbunker door, what we knew then,what we didn’t know, what we were unable to even imagine. 

Poem ~ It has been a year

For Daddy 22nd December 2021
It has been a year.So much has happened.But nothing for you to worry about.We are well. Safe.
I remember the last timewe laughed together, with Mam, before you moved into the home, when you misheard ‘Father Christmas’ in the middle of a conversation and I said, ‘Hey Dad, where did that come from?!’ And you were well enough then to chuckle deeply at your mistake. I can still feel that moment’s joy.
We miss you. Your kind heart. Your gentleness. You used to say all that mattered to you was our happiness. 
And here it is this morning, the sunrise tiers of rich turquoise and peach,the moon still risen and gleaming.


 

Poem ~ for Mam & Dad

You both had such quiet determination,
resilience, a belief in not giving up

even when old-age and ill-health shackled you,
you pushed on, smiled, resisted complaint.

Today I am scouring myself, from skin to bone,
through marrow and blood for a similar reserve,

in the absence of sending you a card, speaking
to you, lifting a glass with you in celebration

of another year. It would have been 69 today,
72 since you first met in a Llanelly ballroom.

No-one, nothing, prepares us for this loss,
the disappearance of the people who

brought us into the world, who made us.
Gratitude slowly eases the grief. I carry you

like I might carry the most precious, the most
priceless of gifts: knowing I was loved.   

David Anthony Rees, 5th August 1927 ~ 22nd December 2020Joyce Rees nee James, 1st December 1932 ~ 25th March 2021