The past is a different country they say
Lost to us, lonely, forgotten, gone away
But that is our choice whether it remains
Or with glass ashtrays and photo frames.

Our past is a history of learned transcripts
Of written letters , conversations we had
It changed each future life that is now led
A continuity of patterns discarded or glad.

Love Mary xxxx

Love Mary x

The candelabras light up
Down avenues of parks
Palest of yellow and pink
Against Summer’s green.

I see the old climbing logs
But which place declining
The dead wood of childhood
Or today’s magic shining

And skipping along the path
I know not here or there
Only that lighted candelabras
Were fleshy in the air.

Love Mary **

How many lifetimes would I need
Merely to read aloud
Only the names of those who died
At the hands of the predators,
The unaccountable rulers,
The great dictators.
Only to make a start,
I would set up my soapbox at Hyde Park Corner
Keeping apocalyptic preachers company,
Or occupy the Empty Plinth in Trafalgar Square
With a friend, a lunch-box and glass of water
And read aloud to those who might listen
And those who care,
From a text that would solely consist
Of a verified list
Of innocenct lives lost
In the entrenchment of every autocrat
Who in his lust for power
And the creeping poison of his paranoia
Tramples on justice,
Makes torture a tool of government,
Imprisonment his answer to his critics
And execution his advocate.
And as each page of the list would fall
To be floated away by the wind,
My friend who surfs the internet
Would step up to supply me
With a new list to dismay and terrify me,
A list in forty languages and more
A list to extend
And exceed all other lists that went before.
And he and I, alternatively,
Reading in relays would take breaths;
Speak up, read on;
As if by calling out a name we might restore
The breath of life; or at least,
A stranger in the milling crowd
Might, after half a day, exclaim
‘I knew him!’ or ‘I remember her!’,
And justify the roll- call,
And suddenly give sense and resonance
To names on pages blowin’ in the wind .

By John Garbutt

In the ashes of division hope ignited
Unity decided a new fate, in its wake.
My father lived in Chester Road,
Off Ladbrook Grove, eight children
In a tenament flat back to back.

The poverty of the forties are
Now palatial palaces, white pillared.
My father joined the army to escape
To marry and move to Streatham,
South London, to an Edwardian terrace.

Notting Hill, the divided community
Chelsea and Kensington let it happen.
My grandmother moved to a new town
And this year we all watched on TV
Grenfell burn as an inferno in the dark.

Love Mary

Everything just becomes things
Things to put on the shelf
Things to put in the shed
Things to take to bed
Pictures on your wall
Mats on the floor
Clothes in the cupboard
Jewellery boxes to store
When what we need is
None of these
But to be loved
And adored.
That’s all
But costs more
Than Everything.

Love Mary **

I just buy things
It takes space up in my mind
From meteorites
To flying kites
Chewy bites
Lemonade slice
Book on poets
How to sew it.
Marzipan friends
It never ends
I just buy things.
Why?

Love Mary x

Love Mary x

I come from sunlight,
      The sweeping of leaves,
      South London streets,
      Lurburnum seeds;
      Hot semolina,
      A spoonful of jam,
      Hands full of gooseberries,
      That's who I am.

      I come from rose petals,
      The sound of the fairs,
      The smell of candyfloss
      Mist in the air;
      I come from warmth,
      My parents hands,
      Outings to parks,
      Both small and grand.

     I come from knowledge,
     True and false,
     From nursery rhymes,
     And stories and pictures of God;
     I come from gentleness,
     A quiet afternoon,
     From visions of loveliness,
     Sewn on a spool.

    I come from two worlds,
    With different ways,
    A threaded pearl necklace,
    And sensible soles
    A mother and father,
    I think I knew,
    I came and I wandered,
    I looked at the view.

       By Mary **

Here comes Margaret, it is nearly four
Takes her all day, to get out of doors
Makes it to the park
A few hundred yards
And back again, slowly, within the hour.

As she returns, Roger sets off
Carrying a note book
And wearing a cagoule mac
A five mile walk, twice a day
And factual writing recording his stay.

Wind direction, southerly, position of the sun
Underfoot weather conditions
A man on the run
Ducks on the pond, birds in the trees
How wonderful it is and all free.


Mary has a black car and rarely walks
Since losing her husband she rarely talks
The pavements are a sadness
Carrying memories of happy times
Walking together on Sunday afternoons.


Pat, goes gently, her knees are bad
Many operations has got her this far
Stoic disposition she loves the flowers
Looks at the gardens for many an hour.

Walkers of the roadway, kindly, unite
Giving to each other love and insight.


Love Mary x

I took the left path where hydrangeas grew and sleepy primroses under woods, edged shady trees.
The empty stream ran quietly dry
With grass cuttings piling high.
If one peeped, one would find tiny creatures
To cast a sparkle here and there, a delight.
So on tip-toe, with sandels bent
Up high I reached to take
The plastic fairy as she twirled a pirouette
In a theatre made by chance.
Reflected in a silver mirror intwinned with ivy branch
A mottled foal tends his dreams and Chrismas robin chirps.

My brother took the right hand path where the trees grew fruit
Ripe berries from the gooseberry bush bulged their prickles.
Dangling from hawthorn now a cowboy with a hat
Looking for his fellow Indian with the yellow back sack.
Sheep gather in a hollow, dark, protected from the sun
And Mr toad, now lost of paint, has turned a bit glum.

And so we leave our woodland friends and travel up the *****
Winding round the rose bed and goldfish where they float.
Then up we climb, the middle route, to jump the pruned clipped
Hedge.
The lawn divided in two halves, a contemporary taste.

Now we're nearly at that place where if one was to turn
Could see down across the land
To the sea and sand.
Of all the beauties that I've known
Nothing beats this Island home.

Love Mary x




My grandfather’s retirement bungalow was in Totland Isle of Wight.
It was named Innisfail meaning ‘Isle of Ireland’.
Behind, the garden led down to magical and delightful to children who came as visitors. My grandfather would prepare this woodland with some suitable surprises.
The garden and woodland deserved its own name and in retrospect
Is now named ‘Innislandia’ to suggest a separate, mysterious land.
Beyond the real world.
In the poem A Country Lane on page 8 the latched gate is the back gate to my grandparent’s garden and bungalow in Totland as above.

At some point
One realises
It has always been
About someone else.


Love Shakespeare

Who walked to the end of a road
And turned back?
Realising the reason had been lost
Like a paper handkerchief
Just dropped on the pavement
Getting wedged between cracks
Arriving home with the sadness.

I wonder where I was all those years ago
Not a twinkle in a soldier’s eye
Nor the girl who took the guides
To them I became a surprise.

I lay down on grasses green
With Pooh and Eeyore
In Hundred Acre Wood
Hope Eeyore has his balloon.

In my mother’s bookcase
Is where I would be born
In the names of wildflowers
And the songs of the birds.

My father’s walks in London Town
Hyde Park Corner, The Serpentine,
Visits to family in Chester Road.
This is where I would learn to know.

All those years ago I never knew
Who I might be coming to
But never was there a single regret
The couple that loved me were the best.

Love Mary ***

The sea quarrels with its maker
Twisting and turning
Hunching heaps of gravel
Onto the dry sand.

Life fights out its dignities
***** and hand
Leaving trembling
What was given and planned.

Love Mary