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PAPER CRANES

  

She is compact, he is long and lean.
“I fall in with whatever he wants”.
She is eighteen and has folded herself
like a favorite handkerchief she will misplace
for thirty years only to find in their dark
attic the day she carts her youngest
son’s Heroscape up the ladder to store
away now he’s outgrown his childhood.
Doubled over in the dusty recesses, she will
push her son’s treasure between his older
brother’s Rubik’s Cubes and Star Wars Lego,
and his older sister’s painted pottery wizards,
and stumble over her own pandora’s puzzlebox
handcrafted in walnut with an eagle carved
into its lid. Inside nested in the satin lining
the handkerchief wrapped around a compact
disc: The Marriage of Figaro with a letter
from the Birmingham Conservatoire regretfully
rejecting her application to study opera.
She sees her marriage like a fan she spreads open:
each pleat a phase of  life in a different city
constructed by her as carefully as her eldest
child’s much loved cardboard collection
of world wonders, all of which collapsed
and disappeared long ago. In a flash of memory
she will feel the heat of the Florida sun,
hear “I fall in with whatever he wants”
and see her eighteen year-old self
in her white strapless sundress, her outline a blur.

 

( Published in Pennine Ink)

 

MOTHER and DAUGHTER, JULY 2008

 

Last summer we, your four adult children,

thought we would be burying you before

Christmas, next to dad on one of Colne’s

green hills. So, today I kneel, weeding your soil

at eight am, having woken at four when the sun

pointed long fingers through the skylight in the loft

extension you built after he died.

You emerge from the conservatory.

You stand over me in your English garden,

your robe, quilted and embroidered with roses,

snags on the hydrangea bush as you lean forward

without the aid of crutches. You forget

to use your knees to protect your lower spine

which from experience, we both know is not

sensible. Legs astride, you say: “I usually squeeze soil

from the weeds with both hands like this”. Your hands

clench unclench clench close to my face, veins

like green-blue rivulets, your fingers like mine, cracked

from dry weather - hands I watched for years as they

fashioned puppets from papier-mâché, molded

pastry for meat and potato pie; crafted Victoria

sandwich cake or stitched sunflower hot-pants

(matching sets for my sister and I).

I manage to reply without gritting my teeth,

I give you my reasons for using the trowel -

you watered yesterday, so the clay soil

will not crumble as easily as Lancashire cheese.

To my ears, I sound patient. But you know me

so well. You know how close I am

to reminding you that at forty seven years

I have owned a few gardens myself,

acquired a number of practical skills:

I spackle and paint, shop for bargains; drive, bake

raise your grandchildren, have bought and sold houses,

moved country (when eight months pregnant),

am, in fact, capable of weeding a patch

of soil without close adult supervision.

When you are no longer there

to micro-manage me, how will I know

my adulthood? It won’t be by this list

of skills, but from standing on my own

two feet on American soil unable

to cross the bridge of you back to my childhood. 

 

( Published by "Literary Mama" May 2013 )

 

THE OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE OF A POTATO

 

 

So, she pricks me with a fork,

sticks me in the oven with a quiche.

Thirty minutes then she whips

that quiche away,

turns the temperature up.

Hot.

POP.

Fellow spuds, picture this,

I literally jump out of my skin –

one minute I’m in it,

the next, I’m plopped

on the rack, guts in a mash

next to the seemingly intact

sack of my crispy jacket.

Friends, I’m here to tell

you that when tossed

from frying pan to fire

when roasted

by life’s explosions,

don’t get into a stew,

instead relish this:

 

WE BE STEAMIN’

 

( Winner Humor Prize, Southport Writers' Circle International Poetry Competition 2012 )

 

 

DENT IN THE DAY

 

Each day a dress rehearsal, life scripted by infinite lists:
mail Michael’s birthday card, sort soccer medals,
sign field trip form, pull together poetry presentation
for Monday, bake chocolate dessert, buy ninety cent stamps,
don’t forget Aleve and melons at Publix. Trish in
hospital tomorrow, call. Look up Henrietta Levitt scientist,
online. Contact handyman, check no rain in crawl space.
Add lacerate, trample, curdle, smudge to word list. Email Vicky,
plan to visit paint store. Find Wordsworth poem. Renew
Thyroid prescription and AAA membership, clear clutter
start to-do list oh and remember Patrick’s password is pottle
and weak writers rely on language that shouts and pounds.

Take a moment. Touch an alternate universe,

Patrick with play-doh I’m making clouds for you,

Patrick in the pool I’m covered in wet, 

Patrick in my lap to read.

Hold on to the snuggle-heap of him,
tomorrow he will be fifteen, untouchable.

For now clasp the crag with Tennyson’s eagle,

crawl with his wrinkled sea and live this day.

 

(Humanities Institute at USF Third Annual Poetry competition, April 2015: Honorable Mention)

 

SUDDEN BREATH

 

Cars glide by double-file

tailights bleed

to distant destinations.

Where concrete overpass

dissects flat tin sky

a truck shudders under

a grumble of planes, stalls.

 

Snatches of rage flame,

humid air

thick with thuds of bass

and fumes of gas.

Curses spew.

Drivers forced in line

rail against the dying

of the light. Left, right

shallow pools

blotch mud banks

stubbed with smears of grass.

 

A breath of air - and there -

centred on a blade, rust

throat thrust up, a thrush.

She bobs and sways in the breeze.

 

(Sandhill Review, vol.17 2016)