National Poetry Day October 2015
The birds in my garden don’t listen to the news, can’t know of Assad’s brutality or of families struggling in poverty or grief. Their exuberance
October 8, 2015
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My mother died in 2001 and I realize now that there is so much I don’t know about her life and can no longer ask. This is something mirrored by many of my friends. As older relatives die history dies with them, especially when written letters and diaries are replaced by emails and social media. It is easy for people to forget what happened yesterday let alone twenty years ago. A news story can be huge one minute and disappear from the front pages the next.
I have written this chronicle of my life expressed in poetry in order to give my grandchildren and their peers some insights into the life I and my generation have lived. We Baby Boomers have certainly experienced massive social and technological change.
Perhaps there are people whose lives turn out exactly as expected, but I imagine they are few and far between. Certainly the twists and turns of my life have surprised me and I suspect many others born in the post-war era would echo my own experience. We may have lived through the Swinging Sixties but we were often remarkably naïve about life and its possibilities! I hope these poems reflect some of this period.
The birds in my garden don’t listen to the news, can’t know of Assad’s brutality or of families struggling in poverty or grief. Their exuberance
So. Farewell Dick. They’re queuing up 5000 of them or more To pass by your bones In Leicester Cathedral. Do they come for you Or
It was the end of the day,the lift doors were closing,the office commute began here. I pulled my Portobello furscruff tight over my mini skirtand
You’ve always had it so good,that’s what the kids said the other morningas they languished at the kitchen tablehungover from vodka at the London clubstill
The air was dampwith silk-spun mistdraping itself over the still water. The moorhen’s solitary saluteechoed across the shore,as the dinghy rockedour unsteady feet. I felt
It was 1994, a Saturday, but not the usual lazy Saturday to relax in the garden. On this Saturday I had to give a presentation
The bullet train sliced through the landscape,catapulted images of forest, river, temple,Tokyo’s cubist blocks dissolved in Lilliputian miniature.The disjointed view flashed me Norththrough cinematic snatches
It’s lunchtime in Lambeth.The streets glisten with oil-streaked rain.I take refuge in a Church,pews dotted with damp heads;hear the vicar introduce a concert,feel myself relax
Would it add up to several years,that waiting for one’s other half?“I’ll just be five minutes” raises fearsthat he hasn’t even got into the bath.