A PANGLOSSIAN DAY BESIDE THE DEBEN
I know it's too late to enjoy a. Birthday treat:
mudflats spread light across the river
but who resists a free bottle of prosecco,
haze of light on water near the Time and Tides.
Mudflats spread light across the river
to Sutton Hoo where Vikings rest masked pieces:
haze of light on water to the Time and Tides,
houseboats wait the buoyancy of water
To Sutton Hoo where Vikings rest masked pieces
two days before its expiry date, happy days.
Houseboats wait the buoyancy of water
rolling dreams course downstream into ocean.
Two days before its expiry date, happy days
coffee drinkers watch the passage of clouds.
Rolling dreams course downstream into ocean:
next year the longboat’s launched past time and tides...
Coffee drinkers watch the passage of clouds
but who resists a free bottle of prosecco.
Next year the longboat’s launched past time and tides,
I know it's too late to enjoy a Birthday treat...
DRAINING PARADISE
Your dying was impossible to know,
explored in little bites that did not tell
exuberance of life-drained overflow.
Consuming it so slowly did not show:
in eyes, or cheeks; nor shoulders proudly well.
Your dying was impossible to know.
In feet, in knees, in chest; no blood-course flow.
Your brow and lashes, stubble chin – a shell.
Exuberance of life-drained overflow.
No burial nor wake nor flowers bestow
knowledge of that absent smiling spell.
Your dying was impossible to know.
Ghost of the Devon coach? Though no great blow,
can Christmas past/the room he died? Nothing, never quell,
exuberance of life-drained overflow.
Such stillicide of heaven’s eternal woe,
bordering paradisal pity, so...
your dying was impossible to know.
Exuberance of life-drained overflow.
TIME FOR BED, SWEETHEART
Crawling slowly along the path
past two teens – like angels at the tomb
of a busy gardener, long ago.
Busying with concrete, and a white van
crushed between a tree and passing place,
until I sighed the engine silently, alone.
And there, broke bread, watching pairs of
butterflies in flight,
synchronised by brokenness of air.
Unloading self and stripping of tyred wheels,
I eased along a parallel world in bloom:
and there the gardener paused (from UEA),
retired and satisfied by grief – so hard –
and three times every day he petted, watered
and tidied like a corporation lawn.
Beds; so many beds; all angel-groves;
and every petal sang of greater love:
that tended, nurtured, every day.
His wife. Grief-stricken by
the stillness of departure
to motor-neurone disease...
the last great pain? Of swallowing;
the time; the waste; the loss.
Every day, for over twenty years,
he’d tended, nurtured, bloomed – his lovely wife.
Until I dragged away; his words, like air,
dancing on my currency of departure.
Then, as I passed on by – those careless lads
had vanished in their white van; back to work.
What lesson for such youthfulness? To place
a gravely laden message, set in stone.
My son, memorialised for passing care-
LESS-ness; where his muchness was laid to rest.
No gardener to tend an empty tomb...
so, butterflies, wing petals for his kisses,
to nectar sunshine in this great abyss.
HEAVENLY FLIGHTS OF FANCY CHRISTMAS EVE
Persimmon is the Cruellest Month/2024
Remember plucking that chicken without an inch of its life...
it was dead, then, like you are, now.
Doorbell ringing, out the back, as one man went outside
to wring another neck. Feed the village, way back when
Jack wasn’t old; I wasn’t born; my Dad a scrap of a lad
at the kitchen table with his Mam. She pulled out the innards,
prepped the last bird for her joyous Christmas Eve, after
the plucking. She was plucked first at Kilby Bridge
along the Grand Union Canal, birth certificate proved true
after he’d gone. Plenty of feathers, back of the throat,
up the nose, fingers raw, smell of blood, cold chicken.
Stories passed down through generations, remembered
like it was yesterday. So when you say your loved one
passed by leaving bird feathers/darted across redbreast
bright as the morning star/seagull-called to chill bones
white and dead; I won’t. Maybe, a little.
Not immune from allegories, phantasmagorical tales
of bravado and dreams. Heaven’s like that.
Don’t want Jack walking past, dropping dead chickens;
plucking future Grandma at the Boarding House.
Awaking my Twenty-First Century Woke,
that Dad stayed up late, put out no stocking for Nicholas
and may have received an orange; or black coal.
Cannot deny birds’ feathers on the lawn;
robin redbreast every year darting past, awaiting worms,
or berry-brash crows/rooks/magpies/wood pigeons
remaindered on the bird feeder.
Gladys possibly left forget-me-nots around our garden,
like those at Enderby, across a brand new motorway,
a farmer’s barren field. New housing, edge of village?
Flocks of birds proved a genesis: none flocking
at Eden-time, among flowers. Heavenly scents
of raucous seagulls above brash petals; cold chicken
uncanned to the oven for Sunday roast with all the trimmings.
Is there a heaven beyond darkening clouds?
None of my dead have returned, plucking harps nor birds.
Remember that day: a fully-plucked wood pigeon on the lawn?
Feathers snowy as Christmas angels in brash dresses,
half the heavenly host singing Gloria. Or Grandad,
off wringing another neck for Santa Claus.
PULLING PINT AND PUNTER FAMILIES
Wait for miles of tyre burn
to iron away news and ponder
across that desert of a red tie
and Sahara sizzle empathy put into
a fresh row of ironed shirts
from Berlin to Montreal.
You watch the bar pulling pints
and punters on a Saturday afternoon
asking the waitress to switch off TV football
louder than a MAGA hat rally
while grating table legs and chairs
and handing out gene-pool goodies bags.
Move empty plates and glasses’ dregs
and leap up metaphorically into welcome hugs
dive-bomb conversations of a seagull beach
scrap for morsels of food or gossip gassing
as children bore and blitz the outdoor playground
and loud goodbyes promise barbecue or bottle.
You make friendship bracelets of birth and death
transcribing your heart’s hidden script
of dust or books or charity piles of clutter
exchange cuppa tea and cake and selfies
send texts and jpegs, emojis, safe ETAs
as updated SatNav grumbles miles back home.
Wendy Webb
loves nature, wildlife, symmetry and form and the creative spark. Published in
Reach, Sarasvati, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Dreich, Seventh Quarry, The Journal,
The Frogmore Papers, Acumen, Drawn to the Light; online in Littoral,
Lothlorien, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Atlantean, Poetry Kit, Amateur
Gardening, Leicester Literary Journal, Drawn to the Light, Poetry Wivenhoe,
Seagulls (Canada), forthcoming: Poetry Breakfast; broadcast Poetry Place. Book:
Love’s Floreloquence; Landscapes (with David Norris-Kay) from Amazon; free
downloads of other poetry from Obooko.
Love's
Floreloquence: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Meek, CT, Meek: 9798850867003:
Books
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