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 Dec 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
I like hedges long, short, slim, wide
Curving round bends on ends
It has to be Privet, smells divine
Like a strange type of wine.

Outside mansions or on council estates
Scruffy and woody where leaves flake
Cut into chickens or kangaroo topiary
Covered in Christmas lights at night.

I just love Hedges.

Love Mary **
 Dec 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Oh I love your dancing
Tapping out the beats
Joe Sugg with Dianne
Red hair to the roots.

Quirk of the Charleston
Bad boy of the Street
Thatcher of countryside
Took Strickly by sweep.


Love Mary 2018
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
I laid them on the old brick wall
Those many coloured hollyhocks
Their heads now cracked and open
Their stems brown and dried.

And as they pass, the friends of mine,
Gather in their gardener’s hands
What next year will begin to grow
The following year stand tall.

Love Mary ***
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Evolution set us on the wrong path
Being about the survival of the fit.
Which means shortage crucifies
Those who are disadvantaged,
We can never become wholesome.

To evolve the good in us
Many try for justice but usually
Regardless of their own decline.
Most don’t realise the guilt cut,
So much is just genetic code.

This is the lesson humankind comes to
Learn on the presipise of its own demise
But in reality it has always been too late.
Lonely, desolate it creeps along the beach
Cradling the possessions it collected in life.

Love Mary x
But there are good deeds given with love which redeem a few thoughtful souls.
Thank you to those I have known and cherished .Love Mary xxxxx
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Daisy got up early
Just as the day began
Clipped in her earrings
Combed her brown hair
Put on the clothes
At the bottom of the bed
Looked in the mirror, quickly,
Then went and got fed.
The breakfast room was cosy
All the family there
They all shared cornflakes
Burnt toast in the air
Then time for coat on
And run up the road
Working for the people
The ones she does not know
A good person is Daisy
Found what she's about
Writing gave her a mission
To fight others' plight.


Love Grandma ***
For my lovely granddaughter Daisy xxxx
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
As I stand and think
Any ideas fall or rise
According to other elements
The day maybe cloudy
Or full up with fog
So remembering is banished
To the outskirts of town.
Seeded thoughts lie dormant
And in this metamorphosis
Take flight
Never to lighten the world
With a flowery rose
Or cast wisdom on the stone.
I might think mightily
But fall to earth in despair
Mistaken by virtue
Or an over risen ego.
And so the slow decent
Only to rise up
In fallow field made of straw.
Capture me whilst energy
Still flutters, before
Thought in its watery
Words is submerged.
For without it
I was not.

Love Mary
Remembering Wallace Steven .love Mary ***
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
So many have I watched
Falling, dripping, rolling
From the clouds to earth.
Catching in my mouth
The taste of dust.
Trickling between cloth and skin,
The groove in my chest.
And the splashes fill the puddles
At my feet where I stand
I'll be a single drop of rain
In the palm of your hand.

Love Mary **
Inspired by The Highwaymen .
Love Mary x
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
So there you stand dressing,
Tying that hair in the tightest bun
******* round with a ring
Your coat dangles fluffily in the wind
And he's waiting near the seat
Without wings, holding half a glass
Of lager.
Red shoes send you upstairs
Clickety-clack on the metal trims.
Then the children arrive from school
By taxi paid by you.
Now you're poorer
Than before
And the pub sells
Chips and beans.
The baby's smiling at
All of the people
So you can't win.
And daddy dangles
A silver chain
As if this is what you need.


Love Mary x
For my dea Lizzie , Bluebell, Delphi, Hugo and Ruby .
Love Mum , Grandma ***
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Under a hermit sky you sit
The roof has fallen in and the poem
Begins.
But your not reading the quest
Answering only questions
You like the best.
There's a boy crossing a river
So you decide to fall in
Chasing the dog as he swims.

On the river bank someone calls
And for a minute
You decide to revise.
Taking a pencil to write some lines
Like 'I'm extremely bored'.
You attempt to comply
But all the words flake
On the black and white screen.
At least you don't have Fakebook.

Love Grandma
For Milo love Grandma

Hope the revising is going ok.xxxx
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
My father had a propensity for a peculiar type of sparseness.
Enhanced with items of furniture collected from many sources.
Not a mean man but coming from a very poor family off Labrook Grove in London his few possessions were meaningful.

In the 1970s my parents moved to Totland to take up residence in a new bungalow on The Isle Of Wight, situated overlooking rambling countryside and narrow, windy lanes.
There was a wide but shortish back garden needing to be established. The front garden a sloped bank to meet the pavement.
Mother brought with her, from Streatham her London home, favourite hardy shrubs easily transplanted.

My father retired early finding the strain of being a hospital administrator at St Georges Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, too taxing.
Recruitment was problematic and mainly filled with applicants from overseas.(Not much has changed in fifty years.)My mother wanted to spend time with Frank, her father, sharing his latter years at Totland where he and his wife, Gwen, lived overlooking the Solent on a considerable plot of land.
This included the new bungalow built about 1952-4 and designed by John Westbrook, Frank's son, and acres of beautifully planned flower gardens, a vegetable patch and large wooded area where the trees held tiny toys, to the magic of Tolkein. As children this place was as close as one could get to paradise.

Usually we entered by the back lane entrance rather than from The Alum Bay Road. The plot stretching between the two.
The rows of backgarden fences looked much the same
Crumbling and split wooden planks, large tree roots
Dividing up the length and making mysterious openings
Where rather dilapidated gates, latched firmly
So animals could not stray,
Allowed for the start of magic.
Out of all these fences one belonged to my grandparents and
Through which our travels to Narnia began.

So twenty, mainly, glorious years on The Island, enjoying its many beautiful walks, the beaches and a few precious friends and neighbours. It had been my mother's dream to inherit her father's bungalow and spend her final years watching the boats float on the Solent and breathe sea air sitting on a swinging seat surrounded by primroses. Unfortunately this dream did not materialise due to my mother's poor health. But she was grateful for the years Bill and herself  had together on that green and pleasant land.

My maternal grandparents were, quietly distinguished, letter writers
Who embroidered their days with poetic licence. They had few visitors, apart from the local vicar, the vet and gardener. Gwen being a rather possessive and eccentric lady and having no children of her own, treated the dog as one would a child and life centred around dog walks, feeding and playtime. Frank was also frail and being older than Gwen needed much care and attention.They both liked to read and write letters which they did after lunch with an added snooze. Every day flowed with regularity and neat routines interspersed with many hours tending the garden, picking raspberries from heavily laden canes and gathering long, plump runner beans.
Throughout the Summer months high tea was set in the garden on a rickety table, and consisting of thick slices of current bread coated in salt free butter, a variety of homemade cakes, sandwiches, and ice cream and jelly with a *** of tea or lemonade.
I am reminded of 'The Bloomsbury Set' and Vita Sackville -West, a tranquil but harassed life with too much need for perfection.


Geographically some distance from our London home visits, both ways, were infrequent and by the time I was about nine Frank was too old to travel to Streatham. However their presence formed a significant part of our lives and is still with me today.
Unfortunately letter writing was for my brother and I a chore not undertaken with glee,
Especially as the gift was often a box of embroidered hankies sat in someone's drawer for an age.

The family structure, having married in their fifties, consisted of Frank and Gwen, Mother and always a wire haired terrier, often renewed as age took this species young. Mother was in her nineties and having brought up Gwen and Kath singularly now lived with her daughter in the bungalow at Totland on the Alum Bay Road.

Frank had been part of the Boy's Brigade movement from his teens, taking his love of camping into his marriage to Alexandra Emily Giles, the mother of his two daughters, Grace Emily and Betty Rose. His wife sadly died in childboth leaving the girls orphaned at five and seven.
Frank then moved from Reading to Tooting in south London and married Vera, a girl of twenty one, to whom he had a son, John.
Vera was flirtatious with the boys in the brigade and left Frank and her son, John, at the age of nine, to the care and protection of my mother Grace who was then eighteen. Grace loved them both but it restricted her life and she feared she would never marry. However she found my father, a wonderfully loving and wholesome person who made her very happy in most ways.

Throughout my mother's and John's childhood time was spent camping on the Isle of Wight and so strong associations were made with Totland where the brigade camped in a field in Court Road.

The two bungalows were approximately two to three miles apart.
My mother visited Gwen and her father twice a week spending
A couple of hours sitting in the open planned hallway, glass doored, which faced onto the Alam Bay Road. If warm it would be brunch in the garden at the back. These visits were my mother's anchorage with her life as she missed me very much and her grandchildren in Watford.

Innisfail (meaning- The Ireland of Belonging) was the name of my grandparents' bungalow. ( please see below for more lengthy meaning and interpretation, kindly, written  by John Garbutt).

My parents' bungalow was named  'Crowhurst'  and carved on a wooden plaque as a present by John Garbutt my auntie Betty's partner. The origin of the name came from a retreat that my father, Bill, attended and connected to a church in Streatham where I lived as a child.

Almost all my childhood annual holidays were taken on the Island so we could visit our grandparents and my mother spend time with her father. After my parents moved and I married and had children the pattern was repeated. And till this day it is a favourite with all my children and grandchildren. A special place fixed in time and beauty.

The bungalows are both sold now as their residents have all died.
Clearing out the garage of my parents' bungalow my brother found many of my father's precious possessions although the house was quite sparse still having the wooden floorboards laid when first built twenty years before.

May they all rest in peace .Love Mary ***

My Family and our long and happy connections with The Isle Of Wight. By Mary Kearns April 2018.
John Garbutt wrote the following piece on the meaning of the name 'Innisfail'.

My belief that the place-name came from Scotland was abandoned
on finding the gaelic origins of the name.
‘Inis’ or ‘Innis' mean ‘island’, while ‘fail’ is the word for
Ireland itself. ‘Innisfail’ means Ireland. But not just
geographically: the Ireland of tradition, customs, legends
and folk music, the Ireland of belonging.
So the explanation why the Irish ‘Innisfail’ was adopted as the name
of a town in Alberta, Canada, and a town in Australia,
can only be that migrants took the name, well  over a century ago
to their new homelands, though present-day Canadians
and Australians won’t have that same feeling about it.

------------------------------------------------------------­---------
The bungalow was designed by John Westbrook, who was an architect, as a wedding present for his father and Gwen Westbrook.
I do believe he also designed the very large and beautiful gardens.
I no longer know whether the bungalow is still standing or what it may be called .Mary xxxx
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
That late hour after school
When all is mellow and gentle
The quiet light licks the sides of things
Making pale shadows as we begin.
Unroll the mackintosh and onto
The ground put out our frugal
Tea that we may eat after
Climbing the trees.

For these times are long past
But to see all the leaves
And stones in the dry earth
And feel that warmth of you
Our mum and the courage
She had. For that walk
Was not an easy trek when tired
And your eyes only wanting
A sigh as we both played
It was such as is given
By a poor man.


Love Mary





Love Mary x
For her mother Grace with lots of happy memories ***
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
“Play it like music”,  James said.
Slamming himself into an armchair
The boy took another ride with despair,
“He criticises everything”.
I cuddled him with my words
“It was very expressively played
I like it that way”.

All the years he had tried to please
Fitting in with people’s demands
Braving himself.
He admired his stepdad
Accepted and understood
Affection was not easily shown
By those damaged themselves.

His mother found a lover to hold her
The boy laughed thinking life a joke
Respect faded.
At least James he thought clever
A strategists, of sorts.
Peter was so loving to be flimsy
Like the soft cloth on the door.


Love Grandma xxxxx
Great boy,  lovevyou always
 Sep 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
The daylight paraded through the stainglass heart
Clipping the edge of the stairs with dancing hues
The boy tall and fair picked up his bag
Stepped outside with a menagerie of thoughts
Into his world where the alligators were friendly.

He was a flaneur, in the making, after Manet
With the odd misspelling and circumvent
Adding a silky flourish to filtered words.
But was it enough to guarantee sixth form grade?
His propensity for idleness a growing concern.

Getting to the shops, early, before school
The boy bought another pair of white shoes
White was his favourite, a sort of purity.
It helped, this buying of things, to dissipate
The consumption of unending urban terrors.


Love Grandma ***
Love you so much dear grandson.Grandma xxxx
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