the limelight
rises as a curtain on
the end of the pier show
an audience mumbles
it’s starting
the curtain lifts
not to be missed
the mist from a genie’s lamp
transports a magic carpet
sand coloured a bay gallops
imagine now the ships
the oysters the smugglers
the plot thickens
listen listen
the foghorn knows
listen
shhhh
lovely floating weather
like a floater in my eye
that made me cry
look for her and she’s gone
look away and she returns
i can (sort of) see her face
it reminds me of a thread
blowing in the wind’s tears
returning with the floater
flapping about like anger
when i close my eyes the lights
red lanterns on a lonely shore
she is there i know the waving
like the floater floating
and in turning returns
Swansea Museum
http://www.swanseamuseum.co.uk
Water babies in the river of time. My dad and I enter through the tall coffin shaped doors, pale and varnished at the top of the wide stone steps. A cold hush welcomes our wide eyes. With a nod to the doorman we walk down a few steps, turn a corner and the first room on the right has glass cases full of stuffed birds. All are holding branches in place, or so it seems, and each has its name printed on a white card. Wonder sat still and as dead as a last drawn breath. Not a sound; birdsong absent without leaves. Then there at the end of the room a barrier rail to lean on. Beyond is a dead Welsh kitchen with manakins dressed of old. See the black-leaded ‘range’ enclosing the fire with its cast iron oven for baking and the black kettle hanging above the false flames. The mantelpiece, the table, the crockery and the hooks. Something about it reminded me of our kitchen at home. What a funny place this is, that my dad has brought me to see. Birds that I could see outside (well most of them ~ certainly not the golden eagle!) and a kitchen as dead as the grave.
Further on we enter a room full of glass display cases with examples of pristine Swansea china. Blue designs and china as white as dried bones. Probably before the Industrial Revolution decimated the Swansea valley. They look forlorn without anyone to handle them onto a dining table.
There! Look there! Up on the wall a fossilised ichthyosaur, well that is what it says on the plaque dad said as we climbed the stone stairs with the shiny wooden hand rail above the painted wrought iron. Big stairs! There on the halfway landing a huge stone receptacle that was full of pale light from the many-paned window. On and up slowly to enter the mummy room, with the sacred sarcophagus held open to reveal a real embalmed mummy. Here in Swansea ancient history was inches away from a child’s wild imagination. The pale gold wrapping looked so threadbare tired one wonders how it could hold one’s attention and inclination to flee.
Then there was the dry room with the resounding wooden floor that had glazed display tables down the centre and wall cupboards that hoarded every artefact of the Red Lady of Paviland. Her remains were found in Goat’s Hole cave on the Gower. That is where I was born I thought ~ not the cave but at Stouthall Gower. This lady also lived there so many years ago, and died before I was born. It was all a strata of historical perspective that was not labelled on any glass case, but was a fact I took home free of charge that day. Even dad did not see me take it.
Moth balls and camphor spilled from the large thin drawers in the tall cabinets. There flight was pinned stunned by the display of moths and butterflies. Not the ones my cousin and I chase across the meadows but these dusty beauties that itched to have the glass broken so that they could feel the air just one more time. We closed them with an addiction to open each one just in case.
The sunlight bathed the museum that morning as we stepped outside onto the grass area around the museum. There were the machines that pumped the oil in the oil works, all painted resplendent in reds and greens. Yet again, nothing moved ~ no animated displays in those days, and yet a feeling stirred in a young lad deep across the oceans of longing to know more of these past times. To be at the fulcrum of the tug of war between the past and the future. To know exactly where we came from and why things were and are as they are. The word museum burst into a kaleidoscope of possibilities.
We went back many times.
Nothing ever changed except that everything had.
hey mush
silently
on a wet sunday
the rain drips
from the lush leaves
the light is strange
the cat is asleep
thoughts linger
eyes think
rain lines
the music has stopped
it is time to prepare
flat liner deniers
the graph flatlines
for not one more concerned in mind
is added to the warming warning
the seas boil
yet not one irate mind
not one scream
is added to the welter
the spectators watch
adverts are consumed
time is consumed
not for one but for all
time is of the essence lost
not one finger is raised
not one frown is traced
to oblivion at thought’s edge
they are burying the graphs
inverting them into smiles
simple similes do not hold water
that is turned to steam
some scream still stop yet still
not one sorry lily lies
upon the coffin of our times
tinted
look this rose
as pink as a baby’s mother’s flush
edged with the white of eyes
that only note the warmth suffused
where love entwinéd lies
how and why
how long is a cry
how far or how near
how long is a why
how close is the fear
that the end is far
that the start is near
how everything we hold dear
has been lost in this war now
you are laying down history my son
as you bone there dead in the bleaching sun
generations
the king
after this king
and the next king and the next king
hasn’t been born yet
neither has his subjects
how many branches in the line
before i am next in line
unless on this game of snakes and ladders
the asp bites in time
queen takes pawn
i bloody nose
then
every once on a wall
the graffiti gives you a bloody nose
i bloody know
you want to write back
but it has past & you have passed
until the next wall
you’ll keep your chalks dry
why rain on your parade
reign
the very word genuflects
you reach for the chalk
i bloody nose
baffled
they named the streets where the widows weep
after the battlegrounds where the flowers sleep
where there are no streets named after the widows
where no children play their games
‘it’s the same the whole world over’ someone wrote
you kick a stone
and another stone
drip drip drip
i want to write a poem
but the tap is dripping
i need to effect a repair
i need a plan
and all you do is drip drip
pass me the spanner
a magpie arrests in the cherry tree
and all the birds in the garden explode
a petal floats down like a drip
there now
the poem is finished replete with drips
the tap waits until coffee has written another poem
if the spanner fits
two vignettes of the sea
the slow burn of sun on mud flat’s
golden ooze in minds slow repose
of a sunset long in day and distance that
lay down in thoughts of bed and snooze
the bight of a squall on the briny
blue black is the bruise of dawn
tooth white the snarl as waves ask me
whether it is worth going out at all