AGENTS OF FORTUNE

Mr. & Mrs.
Death
lying side by side

in a morning that
has not as yet
made itself up

Mr. Death is snoring
waking Mrs. Death
it's always the same

Death is dreaming
he is living
inside his dream

"Fred. . .Fred!"
hisses Mrs. Death
but he dreams on

who would have guessed
that Mr. Death's first name
would be of all things "Fred"

"Fred!" she shouts
finally managing
to drag him from his dream

"Wot...wot!"
snaps Mr. Death
"It's time!" Mrs. Death says

Mr. Death mumbles
gets up unwillingly
grumbles

brings Mrs. Death
her breakfast
"Thanks love!" she smiles

"Well I must be off!"
Mr. Death sighs
"Got a busy day today!"

Death had been dreaming
that he had been alive
that he wore flesh

but the War
drags on and
always a war

he's wanted at the Front
Mr. Death so tired of it
all

"See you soon!" Mr. Death  yawns
but Mrs. Death has turned over
gone back to sleep

snoring she dreams
that Mr. Death doesn't
have to go to work

that they could be
just for once
ordinary folk

Mr. Death
closes the door
as quietly as he can

hums to himself
Blue Oyster Cult's
"(Don't fear) the Reaper"

THE LAST NOW

May my death be
an improvisation

a casual glance of sun
obscuring the scream of brakes

so that I may never know
I am dead

rather than the slow dying
of a hospital bed

the endless moment
overflowing

into the last
now.

And let there be
no funeral service

spare me your tears
so that only in death

do I become
the "good man" I never was.

Scatter me amongst
bird song

so that I am
now the sea...now the sky

the line in between
an end and a beginning

this new
horizon of self.

COMES A MOUSEY

"Comes a headache you can lose it in a day,
Comes a toothache see the dentist right away;
Comes love nothing can be done! "

she wiggles her fingers
she wiggles her toes
tries to mouth the words

she gurgles in her cot
waves her head about
hits her mobile toys

I sing her old jazz
standards from the first
day of her life

from tiny tot
to the toddler
of now

she can join in
and sing
with relish and delight

and demand of Daddy
"Sing me mousey
Sing me mousey!"

"Comes the measles, you can quarantine a room
Comes a mousey, you can chase it with a broom
Comes love, nothing can be done!"

Comes love, nothing can be done

Comes love...nothing can be done

Comes love . . .nothing. . .can be. . . done


*(


Comes Love" is a 1939 jazz standard. It was composed by Sam H. Stept, with lyrics by Lew Brown and Charles Tobias. It was featured in the Broadway musical Yokel Boy, starring Phil Silvers and Buddy Ebsen where it was introduced by Judy Canova. It was sung by me all around our house so that my little one soaked it up by osmosis and came a time when she could sing it along with me and being a little girl the comes a mousey was her giggly favourite bit and I would always let her take the lead.

MR. DADDY SOFT-SOFT

always her fascination
with me
shaving.

this her early morning ritual
observing each action
as if it were holy


I hide my face in foam
“Santa Claus! Santa Claus!”  
she chants

winces with delight
as the razor
(she gulps)

goes over my bump
without
slicing it off

the shaving
uncovers
the me she knows

“Soft…soft! ”
“Mr. Daddy Soft Soft! ”
she gurgles

in a lather of laughter
“Me now…now me! ”
she pleads with me

I take the brush
coat her reflection
with foam.

I shave her
with the tip
of my little finger

her reflection sniggers
&
she sniggers too

later, in the early evening
she appears
bearded in fresh cream

she shaves herself
with a lollipop stick.
“Me... Daddy now...see! ”

I cha cha cha her
on the tips of my toes
as she clings to my

fingertips
dancing around
the living room

one delighted
half shaved
little girl

one delighted
soft soft
Mr. Daddy

OMBRES
de nous-mêmes
ANCIENS



April in Paris
John Donne has indigestion
pines for words from the Isle of Wight

"...whether I be
increased by a child or
diminished by the loss of a wife..."

his baby is born
dead
his wife lives

words...words
these creatures
made of ink

he begins his Anniversaries
Elizabeth Drury becomes a symbol
for the death of youth and beauty

Ben Johnson scorns
such
extreme lamentation

"If it had been written of
the ****** Mary
...it had been something!"

"...she, she is dead; she's dead:
how wan a ghost
this our world is..."

"the imputation of having said
so much
...to say as well as I could...

an Emperor is
about to be
elected

the busy old sun
rests for a moment in
an empty room

AND THE BEAUTY THAT BREAKS FROM THEE THEN!

Here in Stratford
upon Avon

our love so
(so Shakespearean)      

“...this the very naked name of love...”

& here
upon this
naked hillside

hidden amongst summer’s
long tall grasses

each time
our loving

graced by the presence
of a windhover

as if Gerard Manley Hopkins
blessed our union

sending us this sign

touching us with the beauty
of his lines:


“...a billion times told...lovelier! ”


*

   This windhover(kestrel)       seemed to follow us through the unfurling story of our love and always appeared when we were making love whether it be a hotel bedroom or a sunny hillside.   As if it were the same windhover watching over us or a blessing from Fr. Hopkins whose poem I had always loved since I was a child.

    Here then was the beauty of this woman before me waking to our first morning ever together and her beauty almost blinded me and so the misquote of the Hopkins line...'AND the fire that breaks from thee then...' as her beauty flowered in my mind and almost eclipsed me. Her tongue had taught me comfort...her touch had quenched my tears...had touched my heart. Suddenly love had found me and I surrendered myself to the tenderness that befell me with even the littlest of her smiles.

   And yes...she was 'a billion times told lovelier' than I could ever have imagined her. I was blessed and she was my blessing.


And here is Hopkins...in all its wonder and glory!

                         The Windhover:

                         To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion. King-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
  No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and **** gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"FACTS ARE VENTRILOQUIST'S DUMMIES."


“In the dark silence, in the void of all sensation, something began to know it. Very dimly at first, from immeasurably far away, but gradually the presence approached. The dimness of that other knowledge grew brighter ...”


― Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop



the shepherdess turns
and in turning
turns into porcelain

as does the chasing shepherd
as they are caught in that
one fleeting moment forever

an ormolu clock
announces that it is the ormolu clock
and that time must have a stop

which is the Huxley novel
the Duchess has been reading
before she expired

dust gathers upon
the chasing and the chaste
porcelain figures

the ormolu clock
stopped in its tracks
has forgotten all about time

the novel lies on the floor
as if a victim of crime
dogeared at page 39

what happens next
the Duchess will
never know

and her fancy
of the porcelain come alive
dies with her

the fire stirs itself
and a loose coal
burns a hole in the carpet

the cat sees all this
and thinks nothing of it
resumes the process of sleeping