AS ONE
( for Miss Tilly & Miss Tiddles )

the kitten has no need
of time
it lives in the meow of now

the toddler too
of time cares nothing
cries only for the now

both watch
as the world assembles
itself around them

they gaze
into each other's eyes
smile with recognition

they treat each other
as equal
beings

they play with the moment
rolling it around
as if it were a bell in a ball

they are both startled
by the shadow that
grows out of them

neither kitten or girl
can understand the stranger who
mimics and mocks them in the mirror

now their shadows hide and
there is no body
behind the mirror

grandfather clock
spits out time
in sharp short ticks

both girl & kitten
laughing at it
wondering why it cries

they live in the endless
time of
no time

a moment is
a forever
a play thing

girl & kitten now
asleep in each other's arms
Time has been turned off

the world sneaks away
here a blob of green
there a shred of red

inside their heads
kitten...girl
share the same dream

"...IN THE DEPTHS OF ETERNITY..."
(for Jeremy Loynes)

the sea was trees
as if trees had awoken
from a dream that they were sea

great waves of trees
rose up...rose up
like forests walking

they the sea trees
"thousands deep on every hand"
the poet holding them in his mind

the clouds too
were a sea in storm
the moon drowned

Edward Thomas
H.D. and me
trying to contain the sea

in words
ha ha
mere words

*

Hilda Doolittle's fabulous OREAD much much loved by me from childhood...I have often quoted it to the sea itself in Malta or Ireland in an attempt the calm the frightened sea...it usually succeeded and just as usually did not! Some seas were pleased to hear the poem...others wanted to maintain their mystery.

The title  and quote comes from letters by Edward Thomas in THE ANNOTATED COLLECTED POEMS.

"I fell into a deep sleep; and in my sleep I had a dream...a great forest hung round about. The might of its infinite silence and repose, indeed, never ceased to weigh upon me in my dream. I could hear sounds: they were leagues away. The trees...must be thousands deep on every hand."

Edward Thomas

OREAD

by  H. D.

Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.

SLOWLY, SILENTLY NOW THE MOON

I treasure this little scrap
of moonlight you left behind
as you stepped into memory

you recede from me
like a sea
running to meet its horizon

you imprisoned
in (your own) parenthesis
the words continue without you

Death unclasps
the Present from the Future
now all things are Past

*

Written somewhere over the Hindu Kush

What happens at death....time instead of being joined up writing or linked to each other are unclasped from each other and the link is broken...everything is now made of past as there is no more future.

Written for my sister Junie...a little scrap of a memory...just the back of a bare heel leaving a room and stepping from a moonbeam...impressed itself on me though I was only 7 and there it stands...lonely and insignificant until flying to India I look out the window and underneath the Hindu Kush crawls by like a petrified sea and this tiny moment comes to visit me.

I can still hear her reciting SILVER by Walter de la Mare to a me that was only three.

OUR AVATAR

our Avatar
who art
in Cyberspace

hollowed
be
thy name

thy w.w.w. com
thy "#1"
be done

on earth
as it is
in the ether

give us
this day
our daily tweets

and forgive us
those we delete
who have unfriended us

and lead us
into temptation
( lol )

but deliver us
from evil
( ...not really )

for thine is
the Twitterdom...the facebook
& the google

for ever
& ever
ahhhhhh....men!

"...TO MAKE MUSIC THAT WILL MELT THE STARS..."
( For Ray of the Pools )

So, here we are
in Flaubert's garden

as if he has just
gone in and

will be back
in a moment.

We wait for him
to return

chat amongst
ourselves

intimate
with his very thought

having travelled
through his mind

and not mere
summer tourists.

We feeling we have
just stepped out from

a time machine and
a servant informs us

we have just missed the master
who had been called away.

We pass his photograph
with his melancholy gaze

"...it seems to me,,,"
it whispers as we past

"...that the rain is falling
through my heart...

,,,causing it to crumble into ruins.”

We return to his rooms
the mummified heads

stare back at us
through glass

screaming silently
"We were once like you!"

A fly argues
with a window pane

much as it did
a hundred years ago

time lost
between the tick and the tock

but now the sunlight
grows old

and outside the 21st century
awaits

angry at our escape
into another time.

I shush it
with a wave of my hand

“There is not a particle of life..."
I tell it

"...which does not bear poetry within it”



Musee Flaubert et d'Histoire de la Medecine
51 rue de Lecat, 76000, Rouen,

Flaubert's house but also on show...two mummified heads in a glass case, a full mummified body in a casket in a glass case, the skull of the Marquis de Sade and some plaster death masks of criminals that were guillotined!

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.”

― Gustave Flaubert, November



I wrote this after Ray Pool gave me a copy of Madame Bovary which I had last read when I was 12 so I needed to read it this time around as an adult. It was the writing on both occasions that got me!

CHEVAL Á BASCULE EN FEU

she keeps
the room
just as it was

as if
Death
had never entered it

still
turns
teiderdown down

still
straightens
sheets

still
plumbs
pillows

brings breakfast
every morning
just like before

but
there is no before
anymore

even
the future
has vanished

one day
it hurts her
this haunting

the room has become
a shrine
and she its priestess

so she decides
to burn the past
escape this trap

the wind
turns the pages
as the books flame

dolls
melt
in the witch hunt

a rocking horse
is on fire
its mane a flame

"Go now!"
she commands
"These are only things!"

she hides
her daughter
in her heart

where nothing
can touch her.
fire reflected in her tears

*

She hunted down all the dolls and they were all burnt at the stake so to speak. Two reactions to grief in the one person...preserve everything...destroy everything.

I WEAR LONG SLEEVES EVEN IN SUMMER

(blue bruises
bloom
on my skin)

I wear
long sleeves
even in summer

the memory of
his flashing fists
even the memory hurts

first I lost
my smile
it somehow floated away

(blue bruises
bloom
on my skin)

next I lost
my flesh
until I was nothing

but skin and bone
my curves...my *******
vanished into themselves

"All...something...
is...grass!"
I quoted to myself

I wear
long sleeves
even in summer

the woman
in the mirror
who claims she's me

isn't...isn't!
a stranger holds
my eye

I...
...I
look away

(blue bruises
bloom
on my skin)

I wear
long sleeves
even in summer