The Sea

A detour, I stopped and sat on

the shingle shore. Grey, save for

some glints shining through and wide

at low tide. I watched and smelled the churn of the sea.

My fingers found a smooth cold stone, 

I lanced it into the unknown,

and I imagined it was me.

I've coasted through the air and

I’ve been to the seabed, skimmed the superficial and

dropped, left only

mini-ripples on top of the blue.

Like the pebble I threw, I've been trimmed by the

eroding; turned nearly to sand

by the thrashing of the current. 

Currently, the pebble that is me is underneath

still. But it will - eventually - be delivered 

back to the beach by the ebb and the flow.

This I know.

As I left, the sun overcame the overcast

and made glimmering shimmies like

a last foray of desperate disco balls.

Before the next cloud falls over the sun, I thought,

One last glance. I thought:

I could be really living, instead of surviving.

I could dance home instead of driving,

and rather than stumbling, I could be diving.

Without the Trimmings

This Christmas I shed all my flimsy trimmings.

With eyes involuntarily brimming and

in a transparent pantomime I tried

to pretend I’d not been caught out this time.

I didn’t intend to fall short and had been looking forward to it.

I would sprint toward it and feel like

this wasn’t such a show,

that I wasn’t just dragging myself through like a year ago.

Apparently though, the dormant thing

was not dormant at all.

I erupted then froze and then

fire and then gall and then a brawl.

The blanket-pall that

shrouds what’s left of a heart and

cloaks it in frost means that

Christmas is another luxury lost to me now.

Tears sprang like a leak and I tried to sneak off like a thief;

ashamed to show my face to the underneath;

titbits of melodies beneath, words I remember

singing when I was young sounded now

like Sanskrit tongues, extinct and far-flung.

When I was young, I’d be down there. I’d have done my hair

been involved. Left a trace. Not now.

I didn’t know my place within these walls.

When I walked down the stairs,

descending and half-whimpering

to Shane and Kirsty McColl,

I didn’t feel a home in theirs, at all.

I smeared on lipstick in the bathroom like a gurn,

hoping the war-paint would turn me into

something more strong. I wanted to sing along, be part of the

party. Eat some hearty food, play charades,

get a little tipsy, watch trash TV. But the real

charade in the house was me

And it was was wearing thin.

Don’t be a victim. You’re ruining this. Stop crying.

Do what we’re doing.

Who cares if we’re lying? It’s just a game.

Forget to remember that things will never be the same.

So I put on that show. I stopped crying and I held my burning tongue.

But like when we were young, that wasn’t quite enough.

At the knock on the door and in puff of smoke,

Christmas had disappeared

and just as I’d feared the one who pulled the most tragic joke

out of the cracker is the horse everyone is willing to back.

Homeless but home; party hat on, slumped on a gilded throne,

friend to no one but never alone.

Just as I remember but can never get back

the way my mother really smelled,

this Christmas was a fir tree, majestic once

but hacked and long-felled.

Riddled with rot and nearly dissolved,

we tried but there are some problems

that will never be solved with a holiday by rote.

This little boat will never reach an even keel

and some fractures cannot be commanded to heal;

I won’t be told to unfeel what aches in my chest.  

Some volcanoes will erupt after months of resting

and some bonds will not withstand the testing.

Tess

You sprang from the land of the long white cloud,

ventured beyond the Southern Alps

and ploughed a patch on another little island.

You came to discover things, my friend.

Wise and alive and strong like a silver fern,

you grow outwards and have strong roots

below. You learn things when you

fear you don’t know.

The status quo won’t do for you my friend,

there is always more.

So you take strides, you gallivant and you explore.

You’ve tried things, you’ve failed and have been sore,

even cried and given in.

Take it on the chin: a win without a

fight, anyway, is a redundant kind of win.

Mark on your map in indelible ink this

stop on your journey;

that’s what it is, I think.

Embark on everything, cross the borders

into everywhere and climb out of every window.

You deserve the whole world you’ve been travelling

and nothing less.

Wander around, procrastinate and effervesce.

You are my Frances, my friend, my Tess.

H33

So you’ve caught up with me,

and you now can

declare you are also thirty-three.

Two and thirty other silly little times you’ve

had cards and gifts, but those are now only fond debris

compared with what I hope you should

expect, next.

I’ve listened and observed as you’ve

skipped over and swerved steps and rocky

obstacles. Those hurdles that once

were ahead in the distance are a glance

over your shoulder now.

Colourful you

has danced on stony boulders.

Stapled fairy lights across doorways,

painted pots and chanted songs about churches with me.

 Like your little spider plants,

you’ve grown all over unstoppably:

unashamedly strong, unapologetically free.

And so: did you take a chance on a little romance?

Shall we talk saris, shiny costumes and a

gift-wrapped bindi?

Yes, there were those other mediocre, throwaway men,

and then

there was

 Indie.

This is a story that could write itself backwards,

a new nostalgia. A fable

so familiar the beginning escapes you.

Thinning and threadbare, the memory of you without him

Will soon disappear somewhere.

Just as the memory of my life before you

isn’t true. You are my warm weather forecast

heralding sunny days

until the end of the

summer and for always.

And the Pearl makes Three

The Pearl Makes Three

They journeyed, my friends.

Their love grew tall like the high tide

marked by green on a pier wall.

They sailed onwards, married over mileage,

threw their net wide and

then dropped anchor in a place they

decided to be.

Then suddenly (it seemed) The Bird and the Sea

were nearly a three.

Here they are, gazing out from

the bank of a highland loch

and taking stock before the real adventure begins.

They could speak grandfather’s chins, choose brown or blue eyes,

debate silly names and remember their childhood times.

Nursery rhymes were sung to them only yesterday.

All the time, taking shape and listening is their little stowaway.

Under the waves of her heartbeat, still

resting in its  bay and connected by a glittering sliver of a strand

Perfectly formed but not quite ready to unfurl

is an ocean pearl.

A tiny carbonite thing, strengthened already

by concentric layers: round like her

belly that burgeons against her clothes.

Tough, like your father and

harboured by the day-to-day swell.

Just one hop away in time

from iridescence: she has that as well.

This friend of mine, the magnificent girl:

the Mother of Pearl.