April 2020 To explain the story while also being in the story Is not easy. Like when in meditation The instruction is to observe the observer . . . . .
A Tale for Our Times Once upon a time a baby was born to a couple who lived in the woods. Her mother and father led simple lives, growing food in their vegetable garden, keeping
Poem on a Picture ("The Raging Sea" by Laura Fishman, from her climate change collection) The sea is weeping ice Sky white with horror Polar bear drowning As land and water Disappear into each other Creeping fingers of chaos Grotesque teardrops Melting into Monsters Of Destruction
Sweet Memories There is a doorway, arched at the top, not too high, brown and wooden, plain, solid, simple, unadorned, set into a whitewashed wall, thick and old. The key is of heavy iron, beautifully fashioned with a rounded wrought pattern to fit in my hand
On Reading My Diaries 1973-4 To hold who I was And who I am now And how the one became the other My arms are not wide enough I am overwhelmed Defeated by my own contradictions To witness the raw sensitivity Of a young half-formed woman While holding that
FOR MY FUNERAL Thank you for coming to see me off Thank you, on this one final occasion For putting together all the different bits of me Which you have variously known As my body and being begin to dissolve Back into the Universe. You will each
BY THE SWING It is really noisy here The birds squabbling over dangling fruit With their different voices Squawks, chitters, tweets, clicks A cock crowing haughtily When he can be bothered And a dog barking In irregular bursts of frustration. The distant roar of a passing aeroplane
Casket Cardboard, wood or concrete What do I care about my body Once I am dead? I try to accept death with equanimity With reasonings I have had all my life to get used to the idea And it happens to us all, in the
Moon on Water Caught unaware in a turbulent fog of activity By a stillness and beauty Demanding attention The moon’s shining crescent Casting three stars of light To point in line From the black uneven headland To this queen of the sky Otherwise alone in the
On Being 30 Baby at my breast I fall into his eyes Utterly in love With this unformed creature This stranger who arrived Needing me to nurture him Into the future The room
DEPRESSION Sponge in my mouth Devil’s hand grasps my throat Stomach fisted, drawn in Like a sea anemone touched Folded into itself Sight blurred through tears welling I woke, filled
ODE TO AN OBJECT The lampstand looks old Exotic Tibetan?Or Mongol perhaps. Solid and beautifully embellished It could have held candles In the tent of Genghis Khan. Visions of stony dessert Winds whipping
A Fairy Tale It was a dark and stormy night, the wind howled through the leafless trees, stones tumbled down the mountain, dislodged and dislodging others. The Great Brown Bear stumbled through the
Particular and Universal And you, who are listening to, or reading this, you whose lives are so particular, so unique, so personal to yourselves, at this moment you are linked to me by your attention, and I will enter your world when I listen to or read your words. . .
The Writing Competition “What do you think, Ma?” asks the child. “Och, lass, I cannot even read and write, you know that. But if I could, I would tell people what it is really like to live like us poor folk. I don’t think those people who own books and fine things have any inkling of how it is for us. . ."
THE APOLOGY As she dives into the warm Mediterranean sea, the water splashes and glitters in the hot sun. Here with her sister, the two teenage girls are enjoying themselves. They are both in their element, having learned to swim when toddlers. . .
On being in an unfamiliar situation She cannot recall those awful moments of disorientation. Like all traumatic memories they are buried deep. Or put behind a solid wall where consciousness cannot penetrate. The rising panic. She can remember that. . .
DREAM There is a landscape that reoccurs in my dreams from time to time, that represents a place I yearn to visit. It used to be New Zealand, but now I have been there. . .
MY FATHER Of course this will have to be about my Dad, in response to the stimulus we read out. And of course I won’t do justice to the subject in just one hour. So hopefully some cameo clips will capture something of him. When
Home A Chinese man is poling his sampan, yellow, across a green sea. A pagoda with a brown roof floating below classically drawn stereotypical Chinese mountains. Repeated again and again across the wallpaper of my room.
