My neighbour is on her balcony shaking out blankets.
It's nearing Easter and her family is coming to visit.
She stands motionless for a moment to watch the blossom being snatched by sudden gusts, then settling as a skittering of ivory snow.

It's always blustery at this time of year,
that's Nature's way of getting rid of rotten fruit.

She drapes the blankets over the balustrade, then secures them with wooden clothes pegs.
That's when I wave to her.

Usually, the cleaner comes in, but today she wants to do it herself,
to prove that she still can. It's a small thing that makes her happy.

She says there's not enough time left to be bored. So twice a week, she drives into town
to meet for coffee with other people like herself.
Her car is very reliable. She remembers her husband telling her to get things checked
before there was a chance of developing anything faulty.
He died last year, but life has to go on – for her own sake.

In this country, when a partner passes away, the one that's left behind wears black -
that's why she wears her pink dress -
just to let them know she has a mind of her own.

She loves her life here, but misses her grandchildren growing up -
that's why they come.

Last year, one of the boys told her she'd shrunk! But it was he who'd shot up like a flowering
pea, putting out tendrils to test an adult world.

When solitude becomes too much for her, she comes round.
“You could die in your sleep here,” she tells me
“and no one would find you for weeks. When they eventually did, they'd carry you off in a pretense of black to a place where everyone's forgotten.”

That's why today, she's shaking off her blankets.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2013

At an angle of ninety degrees,
two trees share the same plot.
This one grazes the eaves,
seeking vain attention in the window glass.

The other, its grey ghost lazes
prostrate on the herb garden, reveling
in secrets of lemon balsm and thyme.

At night, the first becomes demonic,
obliterates the universe,
branches scraping the pane, scratching
like fingernails on slate,
its coppery leaves trying to get in.

Its partner slinks to earth,
seeking solace,
wringing conterminous roots till sunrise.

I've had my fill of these unrested moments
fighting the pillow, not settling.
There is no joy in seeking stolen stars.

My dilemma grows horns.

I half dream of ******,
at least amputation.

But even the dimmest light shines in the dark -
I consider its tormented destiny.

At daybreak, like a ****** I scale its gnarled branches
ridiculously one-handed,
the other a keen-toothed weapon.

I am an agile goat shinning upwards
feeding on dreams of peace.

Lost in the sky, I become sap,
melt into its arms,
(a vertiginous release)
I become a curved branch.

(There's someone standing in my elbow!)

Leaves helix down, settling on autumn crocus.
“Look!  Gold on gold!"

The grey ghost yawns, grows its shadow,
waves its arms demanding justice.

I wave back.

Suddenly terrified, I secrete an invisible scent.
The branches contract, tense as ligaments.

My heart plummets, rolls out recumbent,
presses heavily on the earth
listening to fleshy roots recede.

A few deft cuts......

Sun gutters through bereft spaces,
striking the window.
Both trees a shade lighter, a lighter shade.

Tonight I will dream under visible stars,
feel the moon's half-light slide over me.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012

“What kind of life is this?”
Pradesh offers his hands in supplication.
“We should warn them there's nothing here.
My family sold land for the journey.”

Here in a back street
eager to disclose his inner space
Pradesh drags clear a square of chipboard
distressed corners shedding altered wood.

He breast-strokes through a gap
kicked into crumbled brick,
swims in against a thankless tide,

Imagines he's safe here in this place
veiled with yellowing plastic,
the stench of decayed waste crawling  brittle walls.

“Others venture here too – in their thousands.”

“We are the Nameless Treaders of Earth.
We share the same contiguous roots,
the same seed, the same flowering.
We share the same goal – survival,
even the unscrupulous....
even you my friend.

Mindful of dissolving into prickly cynicism
he slumps onto his lath-thin mattress,
draws up his knees foetus-style....

and slips into half-sleep, submerged in dreams
of a home to which he can never return.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012

Tedium brought them here.
Bored with routine head-counts,
museums and man-made landmarks.

Impulse told them
To flatten the silent fronds,
Blindly tear down the hampering vines,
Rattle the industrious cities beneath their feet.

Curiosity led them
To this patch of unkempt squitch,
This sacred space littered with clean bones.

No words came with them.
Only Observation...


... a leaping fire tended by savages
Polished teeth strung around their necks,
The bark-ridged skin,
The supernaturally piercing eyes,
Their ashen members grazing the farinaceous earth.

At the heart of this sacred place
Littered with the clean bones,
Condesention covered them with coats,
Misinterpreted grins exposing evidential remains.

Fear penetrated their too-white skins,
Their souls through the sockets of their eyes,
Their clattering teeth.

All this is true :
The scattered bones,
The brass buttons blinking through starved ashes,

The arrows in a glass case.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012

Trapped in the definition of his interior,
he had become an invisible thing.

In moods deeper than dark ebony
repetitive folding and unfolding of nefarious reasons
pushed him to step outside his restricted vision.

Lost perhaps?
Or provisionally eclipsed?

A luminous slash hinged his door,
the cicatrice between brooding paralysis and explicit dreams.

............

Here on the ledge,
teetering on the cusp of obscurity and mountains blinding peak,
his sight catches a net
streaming from an open window-
billowing freedom.

A metalic thread glitters through him,
its coppery tang branching across clenched fibres
igniting his fingers, his tongue.

A mute cloud disperses.
He stands in the presence of a revelation.

Through the smoke of his eyes
he steps off the threshold
plunging into burnished sun,
his head incandescent with foreign scents.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012