Create multiple lines. Blood lines, tear lines, love lines. Multiple directions that multiply upon the world more blood, tears and love.
As a child grows, lines unfurl in borrowed darkness until they reach their own light which grows and grows until the time of their own
darkness, when new lines multiply over theirs and then grow away, as they did, towards light, towards darkness.
So many, I should be able to shuffle
Them like cards and arrange them
Into different hands, full house, two pair
Et cetera Et cetera. So many hands, so
Alive the days, the hours growing under
Your gaze, facts great and small tumbling
Out of your hard working teeth, so much
Enjoyed the taste of living, the joys great
And small, coursing along the network
Through the high voltage bangs “Christ”
“******” And back again, looking for the next
Buzz, lighting the way, the room, the earth.
My mother said she could see me with little
Boys, like little suns, tiny stars, their own
Planets rolling about the sky, their sky, with
Me a moon, but a moon, smaller now, but
Gripped by them, in their orbit circling them
For the rest of my life and out beyond it
Into the blankness of their lives unlived yet,
To outlive my light, to bounce off my rock
When it is dead, when it is simply a reflection
Of theirs.
Soft face, soft blue
Eyes like marbles
Happy playing on the
Breeze above a chalky
Smile.
Soft hair, soft blonde
Fuzzy, sometimes
Spoilt by too much
Highlight-friendly
Care.
Strong legs, good knees
Eat and run and get as
Much out as put in and
Keep up your best and
More.
Strong heart, no holes
Or spots to dot the clean
Valve that knows no
Lies and pumps life
Full.
Soft face, soft blue
Eyes like marbles
Happy playing on the
Breeze above a chalky
Smile.
Soft hair, soft blonde
Fuzzy, sometimes
Spoilt by too much
Highlight-friendly
Care.
Strong legs, good knees
Eat and run and get as
Much out as put in and
Keep up your best and
More.
Strong heart, no holes
Or spots to dot the clean
Valve that knows no
Lies and pumps life
Full.
Stanley
Peter Merer,
Architect, sailor, spitfire
Survivor.
Zoom up –
SWERVE, the tropics
And dales, war to peace:
Air to sea.
He ruled
New colours and
Shapes that could tame breezing light
Like the best
Sails and wings.
She had bright
Red papier mâché,
He, a thick oak.
Between funerals,
The years, brittle,
Wan, now mingled
With the best ones –
Dusty joy,
Shared; striding, touching,
Swimming through the wind.
You are stronger
Than the bay that is beaten
All day and all night, you
Are cleaner and brighter than
The cool fragments of matter
That cake round our toes,
Softly absorbing their heat.
You are wiser
Than the ache of oak creaking
As the bark is baked, you
Are livelier at heart than
The leaves that crackle round
The edges of the hazels,
Crisping autumn into nuts.
You are kinder
Than the caves that are hidden
Away from cats who play catch,
Safe nesting for runny eggs
Impatient to hatch wet wings,
Your ledges echo with the
Quiet drop of Peace on stone.
You are better
Than the ravens at keeping
Watch lifelong through the
Woe and the weather, the
Sheets of fog and the pain, your
Sweet call is the plain truth
That feeds hope through to your young.
Thank you.
A person and a penguin , in conversation
Person:
‘Accessories are what it’s all about –
Hats, scarves, bangles worn over gloves,
Keeping warm in the snow, nothing
Else counts when you’re cold and wet too –
Suddenly life contracts to a quick pulse
In the chest, trying to beat Frost and reach
Hands and feet first.
Penguin:
Keep the shuffle going, to and fro,
Across the glacier, here
And there a slide and skate
Punctuated with the odd skid
And backwards swirl, churning
The blood through warm wings or,
As we call them, waistcoat fins.
Person:
‘Where are we going in all
This white, what paths shall
We black when all previous
Tracks are under four metres of
Soft silence and the only clues
are foxing paths deviating on
a scent we’ll never crack?
Penguin:
Why ask where we are going?
There is no direction
To go in because we are
Home, our feet make it
Newly, every step
into top snow .
Person:
‘Don’t you ever ponder,
One day, ice gone,
you’ll be swimming Through
to Death or simply,
wait for Life to
Pass, from the last
Raft of rock?
Penguin:
‘And what does it matter?
I feel my egg between our
Feet and know to protect
And honour –
Our pact – we three:
Her, egg and me.’
Another conversation, same person, same penguin
Person:
What use is breeding? One
More penguin when there
Are thousands
Picking fights to
Get to the inside.’
Penguin:
Who are you to ask why?
You have over engineered
Your brain so that
No fuel is compatible and it
Eats itself for food.’
Person:
‘Still, must be more to Life than
Eggs that may
Never survive and hatched,
What will it do? Make more
Eggs like you?
Penguin:
Better that than
Unhappy with what
I have, thirsty for what
I haven’t need, hungry
For what I’ve just gorged on.
The ice is melting
And we’re all on it –
Melting it more
In the warmth of shared space – nothing
More, nothing less.
Reality abides with us,
Quietly, no fuss at the fading snow.
Sitting cold next to Arthur,
Tea brewing strongly.
Tied the knot in 1952, now
Tightened too flat to tell knot
From rope, you pop out to shops,
You pop back to tea, he pops
Upstairs to find his crossword. You pop
Out again for more tea from Maggie’s cups –
Same bags but the milk’s not
Not gold topped. Still, there are plenty of biscuits
Arthur couldn’t eat.
Being Every Day 