May 2024
'SWEETNESSE READIE PENN'D'
The room is
flooded with time
like sunlight that has
gotten old
our faces...fishes
swimming in the shiny table.
I am totally absorbed
drawing intensely
Mandrake the Magician
Mighty Solver of Mysteries
gesturing hypnotically at
his evil twin brother Derek.
Lost in The Sinister World of
"8".
The nice lady
talks funny
like people do
in American movies.
I am told she is
my aunt from Chi-ga-go.
Well, whatya know?
She watches the lines
flow from my pen
to make the Magician
happen to the page.
"Now...that's magic!"
she says.
Her backlit hair
glows like a halo
holy as an angel
glimpsed on a Sunday.
"You're my little superhero!"
she confides in me.
She takes the first ever
colour photos of
...unbelievably us!
She even lets me
take her and the horse.
My pulse going click-
-click-click.
She can't get used to
the fact that
"...there are no toilets
either inside or out..."
The table is a brown pool
we fishing for thoughts.
We live in this
timeless mirrored moment
as if it is
all the time
that will ever
be.
We listen to the grass
growing.
After this I will never
ever see her again.
Now I stand
in the ruin of this house
as if time has
broken down
her voice all sunlight
and birds
"Gee, you
got curls
...just like a girl's!"
stroking my hair
over and over.
I wear her touch
even to this day
like a glorious
flower in my hair
her smile forever
turning into
a kiss.
*
I was dumbfounded to stand in that room where I drew and talked with Aunt Peggy. Nothing but a ruin now that nature is reclaiming and time is clawing back from the humans. I have very few moments of her but this was the one I remember so well and she was so kind and loving to me. I remember her trying to remember a line of poetry about love and sweetness. Of course now I know it is from George Herbert. So I wrote a poem about that( for me)timeless moment. She had brought me a treasure trove of comics and I was in comic heaven! My favourites MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN...DOCTOR STRANGE...THE PHANTOM.
She came in whilst I was drawing and just talked to me about everything and anything and watched as the drawings emerged. She was so gentle and kind and she smiled and smiled and her smile always turned into a kiss! She wore lovely dresses and talked funny and the lack of toilets was very disturbing to her as it was to me! We were both mortified!
She was amazed I could recite all of THE CREMATION OF SAM MAGEE and Hood's I REMEMBER I REMEMBER without breaking my stride in drawing. This was of course due to my Dad telling me them over and over again...he was my best book!
The quote she was trying to remember was from the last verse of Herbert's second JORDAN POEM from 1633. She made me discover George Herbert just like Nelly turned me on to Aldous Huxley's ISLAND. I just soaked them up like the process of osmosis and there they stay to this very day. I was always weaving "...myself into the sense" of who and why and what things were.
As flames do work and wind when they ascend,
So did I weave myself into the sense.
But while I bustled, I might hear a friend
Whisper, 'How wide is all this long pretence!
There is in love a sweetness ready penned:
Copy out only that, and save expense.'
Flew over to Cork for three days to catch her daughter which was quite wonderful...a river of faces flowing through people. Saw cousins I hadn't seen for over 30 years! And there I was standing in the ruin of this cottage and the room where this tiny moment happened...it all came flooding back...I was drowning in time.
The room is
flooded with time
like sunlight that has
gotten old
our faces...fishes
swimming in the shiny table.
I am totally absorbed
drawing intensely
Mandrake the Magician
Mighty Solver of Mysteries
gesturing hypnotically at
his evil twin brother Derek.
Lost in The Sinister World of
"8".
The nice lady
talks funny
like people do
in American movies.
I am told she is
my aunt from Chi-ga-go.
Well, whatya know?
She watches the lines
flow from my pen
to make the Magician
happen to the page.
"Now...that's magic!"
she says.
Her backlit hair
glows like a halo
holy as an angel
glimpsed on a Sunday.
"You're my little superhero!"
she confides in me.
She takes the first ever
colour photos of
...unbelievably us!
She even lets me
take her and the horse.
My pulse going click-
-click-click.
She can't get used to
the fact that
"...there are no toilets
either inside or out..."
The table is a brown pool
we fishing for thoughts.
We live in this
timeless mirrored moment
as if it is
all the time
that will ever
be.
We listen to the grass
growing.
After this I will never
ever see her again.
Now I stand
in the ruin of this house
as if time has
broken down
her voice all sunlight
and birds
"Gee, you
got curls
...just like a girl's!"
stroking my hair
over and over.
I wear her touch
even to this day
like a glorious
flower in my hair
her smile forever
turning into
a kiss.
*
I was dumbfounded to stand in that room where I drew and talked with Aunt Peggy. Nothing but a ruin now that nature is reclaiming and time is clawing back from the humans. I have very few moments of her but this was the one I remember so well and she was so kind and loving to me. I remember her trying to remember a line of poetry about love and sweetness. Of course now I know it is from George Herbert. So I wrote a poem about that( for me)timeless moment. She had brought me a treasure trove of comics and I was in comic heaven! My favourites MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN...DOCTOR STRANGE...THE PHANTOM.
She came in whilst I was drawing and just talked to me about everything and anything and watched as the drawings emerged. She was so gentle and kind and she smiled and smiled and her smile always turned into a kiss! She wore lovely dresses and talked funny and the lack of toilets was very disturbing to her as it was to me! We were both mortified!
She was amazed I could recite all of THE CREMATION OF SAM MAGEE and Hood's I REMEMBER I REMEMBER without breaking my stride in drawing. This was of course due to my Dad telling me them over and over again...he was my best book!
The quote she was trying to remember was from the last verse of Herbert's second JORDAN POEM from 1633. She made me discover George Herbert just like Nelly turned me on to Aldous Huxley's ISLAND. I just soaked them up like the process of osmosis and there they stay to this very day. I was always weaving "...myself into the sense" of who and why and what things were.
As flames do work and wind when they ascend,
So did I weave myself into the sense.
But while I bustled, I might hear a friend
Whisper, 'How wide is all this long pretence!
There is in love a sweetness ready penned:
Copy out only that, and save expense.'
Flew over to Cork for three days to catch her daughter which was quite wonderful...a river of faces flowing through people. Saw cousins I hadn't seen for over 30 years! And there I was standing in the ruin of this cottage and the room where this tiny moment happened...it all came flooding back...I was drowning in time.
