hey high
a sign of the times
hanging on one bracket
squeaks ill of the dread
so
i write my own poems
i read my own poems
i share my poems
meet me face to face
down in the woods today
and we’ll have a picnic
sandwiches of laughter
on a gingham cloth
well pour each other’s poems
and drink deep
there on the stream’s bank
we’ll write with a stick
we wos here
at the going down of the sun we’ll bundle it all up
and walk by the light of our brilliance
that the moon will swoon over
i said he noticed things
grains
beached on the sands
of a life
time’s tidal times
visitors come and go
thoughts remain
memories
as deep as whales
blow time
you would think
as you do
that we would too
so sparkle
my sunny gifted boy
collect the grains
build your sand castles
for the tide is coming in
and life’s boat awaits
a thought ran away with me
language
a corral a stallion
what can language jump over
but language itself
where would language gallop
if the language of destination
we’re not the elastic anagram
of changing thought
as planning planned to all along
scrap newt and bat rules
that’s what the headline said
and then they added toads
just for good measure
tales of the bank river
running to the golden treasury
you cannot serve frog and mammon
so they chose mammon
and devil take the hindmost
why write a poem
why would you
strangle a poem at birth
drown it in hessian
thoughts come
where would you send them
return to sender
poems happen
would you tear down the aerial
un-dial the tuner
poems are eternal
when everyone is dead
the poem will sit
for waiting to be read
read waiting
that’s why not
~~~
look granddad
sit on the settee and shut up
or write a poem
we don’t care
but if you write a poem
i’ll read it
Am I my Father’s Keeper
My 84 year old dad was in a nursing home and had pretty lousy short term memory. He also had a chronic and painful diabetic ulcer on the great toe of his right foot, and intermittent spasm of the calf muscles caused him to wince in time with an incessant and involuntary knees-up.
The vascular surgeon recommended a below knee amputation. After explaining this to my dad as softly as possible, I discussed with the registrar the level of the amputation (suggesting as high a level as was thought advisable to avoid a poor outcome from a more conservative amputation). I returned to my dad and spent some time explaining again that it was all for the best. Surely he would be better in a wheelchair without this intractably painful foot, and no longer having the risk of falling all the time.
However, when I returned the next day I was told that dad had undergone a lumbar sympathectomy because he had refused an amputation. His words were unambiguous: “It's stopping there—I'm not having it.” (Or, I guess, more accurately, “You're not having it.”)
“You bloody fool,” I unsympathetically muttered sotto voce, “You just don't understand.” I was exasperated.
But within weeks his ulcer had healed, and he was pain-free up to his death two years later from an unrelated illness. So, in retrospect, I am contrite about my superficial attention to his feelings. It might have been that the sympathectomy was more than palliative, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he did know best—that somewhere between his fossilised long term memory and the sieve of his irritatingly short term retention there was a deep pool of sagacity.
I smile anew at his reply to the nurse who admitted him to the ward, reiterating his name back to him condescendingly as, “Ah, Frederick the Great,” and going on to ask, “And do you know where you are, Fred?”
To which he made the exquisite riposte, “Well I'm not in Russia.”
an isthmus
it must be
but yet it is not
for the certain seas
see only the uncertain shore
an opportunity to erode
and in doing so
they become an ocean
without an isthmus
yet
under the isthmus
between the sea and the sky
the horizon oscillates
upon a reef of clouds
the ocean evaporates
to rain and settle it
once and for all
if no isthmus isn’t
what is sand for
