Lynne Rees's Blog, page 8

Poem ~ wherever you are ... For Mammy

wherever you are, there I am, wherever I am, there you are

For Mammy 

I call out to you when I run through the underpass, 

my words echoing back from the walls in the cold, still air.

 

And when I pass the quarry, I throw the same words

across the excavated chasm into a towering wall of layered sand.

 

And again, as I cross the motorway, high above the traffic.

I let them ride the bitter wind rushing from the North Downs.

 

And finally, heading home through Moorland Wood, I stop

and shout them to the tops of the spindly light-seeking trees:

 

wherever you are, there I am, wherever I am, there you are, 

imagine them floating back down to me, through sunlight

 

and shadow, like leaves yielding to autumn - gold, russet, copper -

the colours you loved. And now they are like blessings.

 

Poem: wherever you are ... For Mammy

wherever you are, there I am, wherever I am, there you are

For Mammy 

I call out to you when I run through the underpass, 

my words echoing back from the walls in the cold, still air.

 

And when I pass the quarry, I throw the same words

across the excavated chasm into a towering wall of layered sand.

 

And again, as I cross the motorway, high above the traffic.

I let them ride the bitter wind rushing from the North Downs.

 

And finally, heading home through Moorland Wood, I stop

and shout them to the tops of the spindly light-seeking trees:

 

wherever you are, there I am, wherever I am, there you are, 

imagine them floating back down to me, through sunlight

 

and shadow, like leaves yielding to autumn - gold, russet, copper -

the colours you loved. And now they are like blessings.

 

Poem ~ What doesn't kill you ...

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger ...

... the cliche says. But not how much it hurts. 

And how you break, over and over, and the horizon, 

where you want to believe strength does lie, 

is completely out of sight. For now 

it’s placing one foot in front of the other, 

making yourself breathe, deeply, forcing yourself 

to notice what the world still has to offer you: 

daffodils crowning the bank, a woolly cloud 

of old man’s beard in the hedgerow, how the shadows 

on the footpath through the woods remind you 

of broken shuttering on the walls of an old barn. 

And yes, the light squeezing through. 

In memory of Mammy 1932 ~2021

Poem: What doesn't kill you ...

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger ...

... the cliche says. But not how much it hurts. 

And how you break, over and over, and the horizon, 

where you want to believe strength does lie, 

is completely out of sight. For now 

it’s placing one foot in front of the other, 

making yourself breathe, deeply, forcing yourself 

to notice what the world still has to offer you: 

daffodils crowning the bank, a woolly cloud 

of old man’s beard in the hedgerow, how the shadows 

on the footpath through the woods remind you 

of broken shuttering on the walls of an old barn. 

And yes, the light squeezing through. 

In memory of Mammy 1932 ~2021

Prose poem ~ Gaps in a hedge

The neighbours have cut a hole in the hedge opposite our house for a new driveway, freeing an old five bar gate from a decade of knotted ivy and uprooting a screen of spindly trees to reveal a canopy of sky I have never seen from my window before. But even knowing this, when I glanced across the room this morning all I saw was a barricade of dull grey hoarding, something they must have erected while I slept, for privacy perhaps, or to keep people out from the half-built garage, and effectively blocked my view. And then I unsaw what my imagination wanted me to see and stared at the canopy of sky left by a retreating storm. Perhaps we are all too hasty at times, slipping into the satisfaction of our nurtured suspicions and resentments, rather than seeing what lies before us. 

Prose poem: Gaps in a hedge

The neighbours have cut a hole in the hedge opposite our house for a new driveway, freeing an old five bar gate from a decade of knotted ivy and uprooting a screen of spindly trees to reveal a canopy of sky I have never seen from my window before. But even knowing this, when I glanced across the room this morning all I saw was a barricade of dull grey hoarding, something they must have erected while I slept, for privacy perhaps, or to keep people out from the half-built garage, and effectively blocked my view. And then I unsaw what my imagination wanted me to see and stared at the canopy of sky left by a retreating storm. Perhaps we are all too hasty at times, slipping into the satisfaction of our nurtured suspicions and resentments, rather than seeing what lies before us. 

Photo haiku

contrail, cloud

sometimes there are no answers 

to our questions 

Photo haiku

 

deep winter taking every scrap of light

Poem: Enough

 

Enough
It feels like I have arrived at the point where every run is a recovery run, every step an affirmation of frailtyand this tree on its side in the park a reminder that even great and wondrous things have a breaking point  so what chance do I have? 
Sometimes I have to searchout life amongst the loss:the shattered trunk slowly returning to its source; the scent of moss; what persists  in these fallen branches.Because what is hollow can always be filled. Today that will be enough. 

Poem: Listen

Sometimes what we want to happen

doesn't happen: fruit doesn’t ripen,

the ferns unexpectedly die,

what we see in front of us looks

nothing like we imagined it would.

 

We expect to heal. We don't.

We go back over what was said,

what was done to us, what

we lost or gave away. We cry,

Where is the justice in the world?

 

Listen. In the small hours just as

dark gives way to dawn, a single

bird we have never heard before,

may never hear again, and in that

one rare moment we are saved.