Sometimes the day begins at the end
Where discoveries, surprises open in
Imagination has spent the hours grip
The way things were slipped silently.


Love Mary **

Plastic caterpillars
Which came from Japan
All different colours
Can be held in the hand.

Peacock and Cabbage White
All with suckers and feet
Some have horns
Those you can’t beat.

Love Mary ***

Offer quietly the edges of your mind
Transversing memories in our time
For though we are saddened
We still shine
This lover of mine.

Love  Mary ** happy birthday husband for the 7 th September

Climbing the stairs
Pockets full of water
The son’s voice
Fell backwards
Inside of her.

Trying to explain the beauty
Of Barenboim playing Schubert
With Martha Argerich
She heard Evelyn humming
From the classical book of Trolls.

Somewhere in the South
There was talk of Derrida
And binary opposites
And social distancing
Whilst the music played on.


Love Mary **

VIctoria sandwich
Is my favourite cake
Bought from ch ch chr
In the park
It can be cut into three
And stored in the freezer


It lasts for days
And goes crispy
When dry
I love it.

Love Mary

So many times
I repeated the space
Transversing the content
With my thoughts
They never got fully digested.

I would wake, acknowledge another day
Face it diffferently but the same
Inbetween the bird  would sing
The day advance into Autumn.
The year begin to creep to its end.

Love Mary **
Love Mary **

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

Marianne Moore

It had not been easy
The storms were blowing
I turned in bed gently
Hoping not to be dead.

Stages of terror crossed
The heathland; I came
And sat beside your head
You tried to give me strength.

We flew up to the mountains
Two birds with golden wings
And hid our heads in the foliage
Of darkness without sin.

Love Mary **

Out in the garden is the place to be
Cutting and pruning the old oak tree
Edging the grass to where it should be
Hoping the sunshine will again be me.


Love Mary

This Is Just To Say
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold



By William Carlos  William

Now that mother was gone
The house seemed empty of
All those buzzings and calls
I sank down the stairs looking.

Dinner a small affair of greens
Given by a friendly neighbour
And fish from the local mongers
But there was only one placing.

Love Mary **

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

He was all black and white
A fluffy rabbit in her hands
Bluebell was two and scary
Always doing a deed darey.

She tasted cheese and threw
It hard across the living room
Now able to talk learnt colour
Lots of animal noises like eek.

Bluebell was special with curls
A triumphant manner took her
She loved mermaids had costumes
Took them out toTesco’s shopping.

Love Grandma mary ***

Thé garden use to be a complete circle
Drawn out with string taken from centre
to the circumference by hand and edged
It was called a fairy ring around witch
grew many flowers.

Love Mary x

Your struggle , the pots
Blue oxide is inflexible
The grim reaper returns
On a note of savage trust.

The struggle is each day
And lingers to get it right
Then your spirit lifts lighter
The edges spread, smudge.

To Ian my painter friend.
Love Mary

Over his years he had collected then
Not being sure of their date or place
Finding them digging the thatchers
Seventeenth century wasteland plot.


Stone Age in style and shape combine
To give a sense out of today’s machine
Fashioned by hand to be implements
On a windowsill now like organic rocks.


Love Mary **

Now we find
The garden
Sweet with lavender,
The roses giving out
Their perfume,
Still air after the storm;
Scorched pavements
From sun's shining;
Hollyhock coloured stripes
Horizontal laddered stems;
Quietness in the afternoon hour
Before the coming home
Begins.

Love Mary ***

I see you along the river banks
Dipping those black shoes in wet
Whisking the wild flowers pinks
And mauve with Florence hiding.

It is a bit of wasteland decorated
And an old church wall and ivy
You play and sing imagining all
Where did you come from littlest.

Love Grandma ***

The London road is tree lined
Privet hedges and brick walls
With cast iron railing half way.

You stand mouth down turned
Yellow plastic butterfly in hand
In your ‘no added sugar stripe’.


A heart dripped out of you at the
Red painted door and Geranium
Moving is hard to say goodbye.

Love Grandmaxx

The ceramic ***.

It had been admired from afar for years this large ceramic ***
With its abstract animal markings and David Austin old rose
Neglected by the continual change in temperature and attention
Ten years of survival had been amazing outside this small home.

The lady next door was to gain a gift as the family were selling
She gained the ceramic *** to be cultivated to her delighting
Next year it would be colourful with a variety of pretty flowers
One never knows if one waits long enough how the stars shine.

Love Mary **

Pushing the half dozen sodden flakes of corn
Round the bottom of the Willow pattern dish
The woman wondered how she could endure
The continual daily struggle to exist and enjoy.

There was always Evelyn with her warm heart
And Florence curly in the sunlight smiling out
Two little precious gems conjured from a book
Always ready to give whatever they were able.

Love Grandma Mary **

Daggers in the heart
Spiders on the wind
À hopelessness inside
A battle within.

For those unaccustomed to lies
The daily briefings leave one pain
That any government with shame
Could be blatant in unfaithful words.

Love Mary **

You are my future
Standing in the bamboo
Safe from the crowd
Sheltered, protected
Blowing in the wind.

You wear the blue coat
The one that I bought
With fur edged hood
You loved the surprise.


Love Grandma xxxx

We are holding on
On thé edge of time
Looking out
Crying out loud
Is this the beginning
Or is it the end
Life as we knew it
Folded down.
Love Mary

I had no valentines card
To give you
So I made you one
From an Ann Cockerill
Advertisement painting
Of a *** of Spring flowers
And wrote on it
In my poor hand
Love you

Pinky Woo **

He puts out his tiny hand
To hold my finger
In its red glove
And his mouth curves
Into a smile.

Such a welcome
For an elderly me
I want to grasp his soul
Be part of those first steps
Taste his world.

A splendid moment
For us all three
My daughter
And her third son
A blonde wistful child
Full of poetry.

Love Grandma **

The tears of the world are a constant quality .Samual Beckett.
Talking of his mother he said.I am what her savâge loving has made me.


Love Mary

Lilies
Will you wait by the lilies side
In your flowery shirt
Wait for me by the church
In the country road, casually,
And carry me home at last
Never, longer to be alone.

Love Mary xxxx

A life.

Our lives come and go like the blossoms on a tree
A story told by many voices
It cannot be conveyed with any accuracy
Beyond that of dates and time
For the rest remains a secret
Nothing can describe.
Neither plan nor preparation maps our path
For it meanders like the tributaries of a river
Into unknown clearings
Stopping short of perfection
Clinging to the goodness found
Loving where it can that night owl of wisdom
Belonging to a tribe of people
Who at the end pick up the petals
And put them in a drawer
Saying this was he or she
Who we came to know
Whose name in an address book
Brings tears to our eyes
This was a life.

Love Mary ***

Between ‘Call the midwife’
And ‘Dark materials’
Lies my world
A world of reality.

Inhabited by great empathy
But mostly indifference,
Cruelty, liars and vacuous space.

It, this world, has been deteriorating
Continuously for thousands of years
Through greed, selfishness and destruction.

If tomorrow ever rescuers the day
Let it be bright with love and sorrow
And children play in the long grass.

Love Mary **

I can’t, simply can not.
Stretch out the time anymore
The rod is broken
An avalanche has fallen
On this sleepy town.

And so shall it be
Until the world
Gets better
Then we shall see.
Go safely my friends
For you are loved.

Mary ***

This is my end
And I know it
Don’t want
To show it
But saying
Goodbye.

Love Mary **

It has been months of misery stumbling on
Everyday even the effort of rising exasperates
I eat chocolate, peel an orange, open a surprise
For my last taste of a Christmas no longer enjoyed
But thank you for trying my loves.
Thank you for trying.
From Mummy Mary xxxxx

I have listened to all the sad poems
Played the list of songs that weep
In reflection my heart regrets
All the things that went wrong.

Take me from the howling wind
Release the archer’s bow
Let me float to the heavens
And sing me a lullaby song.

Love Mary **

These poems gathered together in
Harmony are my life in pictures
The thoughts, blessings, memories
Hours of pain and suffering put aside
For the love of those most dear and
Others new to me whom I share my heart
For I have not travelled alone on cold nights.

Love you all Mary **

In the garden ,my friend,
He tends, pulling and digging
Cutting back so hope can Spring
Filling in next year’s spaces
With renewed life.

I have known this slowness
For many a year
Working through paintings
The death of his father
This slowness is my acceptance.

Love Mary x

The pots on the backroom table
Contain out of shape Money plants
Where neglect has transpired to
Let growth gather at the top
Green and succulent whilst
The stem remains dried out.

Decisions to throw away
Are repeated weekly
Destroying a life is difficult
The attachment overgrown
The atmosphere is winter damp
The pain woody and long.

Love Mary

I couldn’t tell you why
Not here and now at least
You would never understand
Could not understand.
The structure of our thoughts
Make such complexity impossible
The greatest sadness is that our lives
Are lived out in such perverse ignorance
All that we remember is the apartness
How we bind ourselves in love to lies.

Sorrow is like the shattering of glass
Broken biscuits in tins
The howl of the workhouse
We as frail as a bird’s wing.

Love Mary
Xxxx

We say we do not know our purpose
Only that it is the right thing to do
Providing providence in its pursuit
Any fear we will confront and conquer
So said the wise child and the white bear.

Thank you for your genius Philip Pullman.
Love Mary

Your hands hardened by love
All the watering and wiping
Lifting loads up the steep stairs
The blue enamel bowl rounded
We are together stilled by ends
Tangled socks and the touches of
Long grey silver in the night.

Love from Mary xxxx

I have learnt to expect nothing
Content on the pillows with my
Failing eyes and intense thought
We were made remarkably simply
So in the end just dust drifts down.

Love Mary

You are my earth bound chatterbox
Showing the world off to its best
The party always begins when you
Switch me on and finishes with an off.

Love grandma **

It was Sunday, Mum away
The weekend holiday
Choosing ‘a no added sugar dress’
With its diagonal stripes
Break dancing like joins
A symbol of 60s voguing.

Evelyn down loads a drawing programme
On her IPad and
begins to inhabit
The kitchen table
With colourful trolls
Florence her sister is two and a half
With a head full of curls and twirly skirt
Herself two and half years older.

Love Grandma Mary

She was that child of my son’s
Facing me each morning
Two hundred miles distant
Through a glass screen iPad
To start the morning hour.

Asking me her, grandma Mary,
‘What shall we talk about now’
Alex’s voice. Shouting Reading
So  she spoons breakfast cereal
And turns the pages of Peter and Jane.

Bouncing about in the early lighting
Against a wall of coloured drawings
On a blue wooden chair with aprons
Filling that loquacious mouth to the brim
Using uncommon words in her speeches
And cuddling ‘Rainbow’ her stuffed rabbit.

Love grandma Mary

On the back of a green sleeve
We tackled the holes
Mum and me
He came to the door just as before
But nothing changed
Exception remained
I felt the impossibility.

Love mary

The full blood count was up
The oxygen level edging down
We saw the last scans results
Tears dropped
The radio went off
And the curtain flickered.

Love Mary **

Will you wait by the lilies side
In your flowery shirt
Wait for me by the church
In the country road, casually,
And carry me home at last
Never, longer to be alone.

Love Mary xxxx

I met them on the roadside
Silky black ,smooth ,padded
There were two,  gathering
In the hour before sunset came.

I felt the cold chill my bones
Festering the marrow to dark
Then it happened like a bark
Time to say goodbye to Silky
And Black the cats.

Love Mary. **

You painted my pots when times contained pain
And the *** was a silent ceramic vessel of peace
It contained no words or inscriptions, images just
Light reflected from window panes to a hurt soul.

Love Mary

It hadn’t been good that year
With emptying drawers
And foraging around the Azer
Finding seed pods fallen in the
Yellow grief stricken grass lawn.


People visited in their silks
Stretching hands to comfort
What could not be tolerated
Infiltrating the harsh reality
Suffering with bespoke smiles.

Love Mary