He was equipped with a fine vocabulary
Far in excess of his intellectual needs
An entertaining fool
Stocked with dictionaries
Obscure constructions
Medieval verbs
Circumlocutory, verbose
Impenetrable
A simple mind hid amongst
A confusion of entangled phrases
As if using a foreign language
Assembling hopefully meaningful phrases
Where a listener may find coherence
A simple message

Every request
Every Statement
Observation
From his mouth, no matter how mundane
Appeared decorated
Embellished, almost..
Baroque

In this wordy fog
It was hard to know
Hard to find
Traces of a real person
A tangible, relatable identity
Something predictable.
In the swirling wind of
Constantly shifting
Complex expressions
Seeming riddles.

He was a prisoner
A lifer
Doomed to remain
Incarcerated in his usage
Dense, cloying, exaggerated, unyielding
Usage
He could not avoid
Unconscious, reflexive, merciless
He did not struggle,
That ended long ago.

Shucking peas on the back steps
Maureen and I watch her Mum,
My Aunt Grace,
Arguing with Aunt Edna
In the kitchen
The narrow kitchen
Of number 84 Truro Road
As they whip a Sunday lunch into shape
A test match drones on the radio
The aroma of mint on new spuds teases.
It’s a modest roast
Served in the tiny parlor
To nine of us!
Eating elbow to elbow
With yellow handled knives and forks
Down to the bare porcelain
Waiting for the apple pie
with Libby’s.
That crust, with sugar sprinkles
Is a lifetime goal for me!

I learned about Oxalic Acid
At seventeen
When less than anxious for yet more information
More notes on a chalkboard
In a malodorous Sulphurous  school room.
Hastily copied in pencil
Scribbled then and required to be transformed
Later, into copperplate, almost textbook pages.
To be judged as adequate; or not.

Oxalic Acid; not as deadly.
But in a close league,
To the clear deadly liquids
Held in the dusty skull marked bottles
Within easy reach of any manic schoolboy.
Dusty bottles in a rack
In a rack on a bench
On a bench where I sat
Where I sat wondering why my mind
My sharp juvenile mind would never grasp
Molecular Valence Theory quite as well
As the taste of a girls lips
The smell of her hair
The ring of her laugh
The answer to a question in her eyes.
Years later
When that girl had gone
I read that Oxalic Acid is found in Rhubarb leaves.

Like an old cushion
Whose stuffing you removed
Excepts its me
Just a few ***** of fluff
Clinging to the inside corners
Comprising my soul
Forced up against the stitching
Very Old Stitching
Ready to break and cast
The remainder of me out
But for the moment
For a long moment
The half empty pillow of me
Still offers a cozy worn velour exterior
To those who like that sort of thing.

You notice the browning leaves,
Early victims,
In midsummer
Late July and August
And they parallel our love
Crisping stale edges
Edging inward
Inward to where growing used to be
I blame the sun
The sun of truth
Blasting unmercifully on our greenness
And returning us to the soil
Of amorous compost.

The bright sun’s rays
Are dappled as they strike
The manicured greensward.
He, tall, lithe, teeth all aglow
In cream slacks and pastel blouson,
She, fair and fairylike in acres of shimmering gauze,
Alight from the auto
At the site of their ‘manger al fresco’
Let us call them Justin and Jocelyn.
The basket is heavy
No matter.
He lifts it clear to carry
She gasps, he grins.
In minutes the scene is set
The rug, the plates, the glasses
The pate, the cold chicken,
The fruit….the wine.
He deflowers a bottle of Moselle,
Wishing it were her.
Guessing as much she blushes.
Ants retreat to nests
Wasps attack alternate targets
Flies zoom elsewhere to feed.
And all the while the sun
The golden sun continues to dapple.


The rain is not quite horizontal
As Joe and Judy
Run from the bus stop
To the stony beach.
Not quite horizontal
But driven off the sea it tastes salty.
He, ordinary, average, in a dampening grey mackintosh.
She, hair bleached in a sister’s frock and jacket
Holding hands,
And hold each a sandwich
Cellophane wrapped.
Squatting against the seawall
They eat.
Wet eyes flash bright signals.
Joe has a small thermos
Its vegetable soup,
And somehow a hardboiled egg appears,
To share.
The rain continues its attack.

That short wispy haired lady
Fighting her way against the wind
Up the London Road
Is my Mother.
Lips pursed she is returning
From the hairdressers, the post office
And has yet to pick up steak and kidney
For the pie she will make
For the boy who is coming home
For her son who will soon be there
For the man who loves the pie
For her child who loves her.
Her lips are pursed in determination
Against all the obstacles
Real and imagined that stalk her.
Lately that climb past the church
Made her puff.
Tiredness, her weakened heart
Struggling to keep up.
Perhaps the thought of another winter
Another wet and windy struggle
Up and down the village
Up and down the London Road.
Discretely her body decided
To give up.
No more struggling
No more tiredness
No more puffing and halting
For my shy timid Mother.
No more making tea
No more cleaning
No more washing
No more worrying
For my Mum.
Her three sons
Middle aged and modern
Stand miserably with their Father
Standing in suits in the municipal crematorium.
Rain and wind, my Mothers enemies
Howl and lash outside
Lost without their old victim
Inside aging relatives
Exchange scared glances
Wondering who is next.