We live in a territorial state
Where doctor’s receptionist
Wear chainmail and carry axes
To save guard their sovereigns
From interference.

Responses  sound like an offensive
Battling against imprisonment
I am polite, ask kindly
Tread lightly.

I am a poor, weak patient
I pay for your services
We are unequal as I am ill
You are healthy and fit.

What has happened
To make you so unkind
Disrespectful, blind
Your turn will come .

Love Mary .

And perhaps only childhood
Nailed me to the cross
Standing in the brilliance
Believing what was good.

Now thoughts just embers
Ashes fallen flames
And bend to sweep the dust
Of those promises broken again.

Love Mary x

I dressed  you daughter in smock cloth
It sewn with mother’s loving touch
A blue check white embroidered dots
And buttons, sashed will fasten back.

Everyday you kissed me goodbye
In your blue candlewick dressing gown,
The cat rushing out of the door
In his hurry for freedom.

A peck on both cheeks and a spoken phrase,
Always remembered till this day,
"Rather be late than the late",
I waved back till you closed the door.

Love to my Mother ,Grace Emily Westbrook.***

We never matched it together
But your waves were curly and grey
I flowed with golden heirlooms
******* in bunches that day
And we walked so slowly the road
Where we lived
The home that you made me
Was ever so good
Full of the love
Any child could need
Oh Mummy I miss
Your sweet perfume .

Love Mary **

I lost you at the corner
As I turned round to go
The little child with me
Had simply flown
Down I laid my basket
Carrying my heart
Bravely searched
The pathways
Before it got dark;
Then like a wonder
I saw your shining trace
Tugged you up close to me
Kissed and kissed your face.

Love Mary x

The words were deviously writ
With good hid well behind the line
And faithfully did fly the woods
To run the gauntlet and despise.

Love Mary x

I have to travel in my head
Travel when tucked in bed
Around the country’s edge
Remembering all my friends.

Love Mary x

Bought from Clements on a cold afternoon
A coachbuilt navy Silvercross pram
For my third and beautiful little lamb
And when she was born at six pounds thirteen
I wrapped her tight and placed her inside
She had long black hair brushed in a peak
And more lovelier a sight could not be reached
And destiny played out its days and more lovelier
She became each day and now at forty- four
Has four to love and tender and put in seats of cars
Not gigantic coachbuilt stars.

Love Mummy ***

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

Second daughter you were so kind
When your baby sister was around
How can I capture thee
No words are lovely enough to be.

Love Mummy x

beautiful poets
For me the end
Keep me near you
In some way..

Love Mary

The first crimson rosebud appeared
In a garden made out of lovedreams
Given and built from deep intuition
Watched each day for the new growth.

Love Mary

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, would find tiny creatures of delight.
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 thetrees 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

Out of the door past the flowering Camelia
And barely bursting rose buds
The white hellebores with their
Down turned eyes
And swaying narcissus
I run to catch them all
As they scatter the road
With their dancing
Tripping in and out of rhythm
With each other
Throwing ***** across
To catch,
The wind gathers them up
To the park entrance
Our lovely park
Green with many trees
I reach them at last
We float down the avenue
Linking arms with
A child's pleasure
We are here
All together
Forever.

Love Mary **

I see you tot, you wobble a lot
On balancing legs along the edge
Holding chains you do it again
And kiss curls brush your face.

Love Grandma Mary x

Let me take you from your bed
Kiss you gently on the head
Heap you to my willing breast
Fold you in loves tenderness
Though the night may still be dark
The house is cold with no fire
I never minded feeding you
Being woken all night through
In my nightgown I stood by
Watched the clock move the hour
Longed to have us skin to skin
Your baby hair and dribbly chin.


Love Mummy **

I know a little girl
Who lives down a lane,
In a house made of brick,
With white window frames.

She is waiting for her sister,
To be born very soon,
Someone to play with,
She'll be over the moon.

Her name is Evelyn,
Mary, Janet Granger- Kearns,
Quite a long name,
To remember and understand.

Evelyn loves her Piggles,
A soft cuddly pig,
She takes him everywhere,
He is ever so good.

A little girl of sunbeams,
With a halo of gold,
Someone oh so special,
She always says 'Hello'.

Love Grandma **

He slept till eleven a quiet new babe
A sister and brother to love and enfold
A dream of wonder, a wonder of surprise
A poem to open a person to know.

Love Mary

The day bites in through my window
A brightness of sunshine reflects
Crossed lines on my wall, oblong
Birds sing no songs these days
Waiting for Van Gogh’s Starry Sky
And the faith of a good man.

Love Mary ***

There are people who know what your heart desires
Without asking
They travel on the same bus route
Look out of the same window
They are rare.

Love Mary x

The Camelias think it is Spring
One white bud ,two red
Daffodils lift a head
And the aconites
Shower a golden ring
And yet last years hollyhocks
Still in leaf ,promising flowers.
The skies are overcast
The air damp and crisp
Inside my window
I notice the change
It is January 2018.

Love Mary **

If travel be not in the head
What else can its name be
For the imagination is how
We see and travel a concept
That moves in picture books.

Mary **

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;



         Close to the sun in lonely lands.



         Ringed with  the azure world he stands.



          The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;



           He watches from his mountain walls,



            And like a thunderbolt, he falls.

Her name is that
Of past hours
From days of power
And magnificence
When marble busts
Were cast
To satisfy
The desire
For eternity.

But this little beauty
Will not end her days
In  lofty halls
With locked and barred doors
The dust settling on her hair
For she will be suspended
Captured and rendered
On all the screens
That can be seen
From phone to
The Internet
And global websites
Printed texts.

Her name is Delphi
Youngest child
Full lipped star
Hair falling long
Over her arms
Eyes dark under
Arched brows
Peachy cheeks
Tanned skin
In the princess dress
She loves the best
From Asda or Primark.

To my lovely Delphi of the dollies love from Grandma xxxxx

White Syringa’s fragrance gently sweet
A cup of tea and painted orange bench
With Fluff, a tabby cat, your gardening shoes
Stay longer, mother mine, how I love you.

Love Mary

My mother sat by her father's bed
As he took his last breath
It had taken all day
He had listened to the news at one
Then slowly gone down hill.

They called the local doctor
To give some relief
But he was out on a house call
Attending another ones grief
So hand in hand he left this land.

After the funeral at the top of the hill
In Christchurch graveyard
He was laid to rest, this being his will.
My mother, a person of wisdom and myth
Rang me each day to tell of her progress.

Before he left, her father had said
That if he could he would try
To let her know he had arrived
So everyday whilst on her walks
She looked for a sign that talked.

And then one day after quite a while
Found a lamppost and near the ground
Were written the words ,"I  am".
And this was enough to put her trust
In a life ever after and a father she loved.

Love Mary **

The Footfalls of Memory



Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

By TS Elliot

We fell about laughing as if it was yesterday
Scraping the tea stains from the sink
With glorious soapy bubbles.
Handsome returned from his park walk
Holding his diary like a black bible
Going over the weather details
As any diligent meteorologist.
By now the sun had risen to its peak
Giving out heat to two blind mice
Sitting together on a waste bin
Unable to sing as their batteries
Now lay useless inside.
Dinner was salad and fish
Followed by a bag of chocolate raisins
In hard to open cellophane.
It had not always been like this
But now only the essentials
Of posting a letter
Took over time .


Love Mary xxxx

A lane that connected two extreme differences
One a shabby, littered covered entrance
Where scraps of rope doodled round lampposts
And trolley carts became abandoned aliens
With twirly wheels from mechano sets.
The smell of discarded waste and ash
Made one hurry forth pushing bicycles
Starting the downhill roll leading to Lyles Lane


Covered in a green canopy of trees
The air fleeing past as we gathered speed
Up the steeps and along the flats
Feeling the freedom of escapism
The lane joined the outskirts of the town
With the sublimity of the countryside.
Pedalling on six bicycles.


Love Mary

BY EDWARD THOMAS

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.


Such an incredible poem by this young soldier
Who died in FWW.

Sometimes the membrane, that transparent shield,
Splits, letting in a grey torrent of stony hail storms
Breaking the apple as it falls bruised base to earth
And no words ever replace the missing numbers
Or comfort those who choose a blinded alleyway
For them it will be life encased in time grown old.


Love Mary x

The war memorial stood at the bottom of the hill
In the shade of towering trees, bordering
The graveyard.

A  pinicle of white marble
Above a patch of names
Inscribed on mottled granite
And opposite the sloping
Steps to the bay.

Was it James, his youth wasted on war,
Holed and shell shocked
Who marched passed
Twelve years before my birth?
Before this spot marked
A pleasure beach
And spades were
Brought not guns.

So to remember those
Brutalised from wars
Marking their place in this passing.
And to James
I hope you brought children
To build castles
In the sand.

Love Mary ***

Take me not to any dusty hall
Where flowers dressed in vases stand
Or windows paint the saints of old
And carpet in panels kept
For no time did I linger here
Though tried in vain a search
So take me to that wooden bench
Where all around roses bow
And while still sad the birds will sing
And bring merriment to such loss
And children walk the many paths
Where bamboo rises in a clump
And Camelias embrace azaleas
Lay your hearts in this place
And be comforted, now, by
Thoughts of Summer sun.


Love Mary x

Oh poet of the moonlight stars
Wondering up into darker space
Searching for gallaxies of stars
Jupiter and Mars.
You're out in the cold
For hours and hours
With your binoculars
I'm all tucked up in our bed
Long asleep
While you're afar
My beautiful traveller of the stars.

Love Mary ***

I love the bauble tree fern
Out towards the sun you go
In decorations of crimson
Your seedlings circle rows.

Love Mary x

Looking lovingly at a painting by Constable
With a slow moving stream in the foreground
And a man about to get into a boat,
Salisbury Cathedral in the background
Its magnificent spire rising to meet the sky.

In a hundred years will these monuments
To religion, power, weath still stand stately
Against the incoming tide of the new world
To transmit a meaning?
And if we be spiritual beings where can we fly?

Can we be welcomed, cared for, listened to
In a world lost in fiscal concerns, selfish, predatory.
And a chair to bear our burdens in the quietness
Of an afternoon light,
Carried by the sun through stainglass.

Or on a hillside be humbled by a simple cross
A clunp of earth filled with flowers.
Let us think why and what it is we need
So that those churches owned by power
Wealth and history become owned by us all.

Love Mary ***

Way slide on grassy hill
My mother bride laid down
The air warm with tenderness
My father neatly gowned.

Oh love of sweet moments
Come gather in the hours
Wrap them in secret’s scent
Hidden from the showers.

Love Mary x

On my wall
I have a little picture
It is of an apple
That was the sitter
Painted by an artist
As yet unknown
Living out his life
All on his own.
I like the apple
It's simple and complete
Speaks of many voices
And tastes so sweet.
I look at it  each morning,
Just as the sun awakes
Reminds me of happiness
The loveliest of states.


Love Maryx

When I die it is not for you to cry
For you gave me love and sanctified
All that I needed was given in the wait
On the garden seat where I knew you
So tussle not in the shadowy days
Just be with the things that I made.

Love Mary x

Aunty you were like poetry
Missing out the boring bits
Brimming over with flowers
Telling stories of distant hours
Your hands varnished in cerise
Up close, like wisteria, hung
The softest of black curls.

You made the simple day
Unbelievably lovely
Crystal earrings caught in the light
Cake eaten with a silver teaspoon
The world was magically composed
From your colourful robes
And I would sit at your feet.


Love Mary x for her Aunty Elizabeth

I use you like an old tool
Something I can turn over
***** in tight so you stay
After I have moved off.

You fix what is left of me
Tied down, knotted silk
A binding of age and beauty
My hair, still plaited, remains.

Love Mary x

The moon in a deep blue sky
Barest of Winter foliage
Two yellow beacons on the road
Lighting our way
And the evening is cold.

Love Mary ** ***

I measure out my days
Not in the expected ways
With outings to friends
People popping in
Sunday lunch
A telephone call
But by how far
I can fly
Without any wings.

And in doing so
Turn it into
Something
Beautiful.

Love Mary x

I only have words
If they are of use to you
Pretty ones and silly
Ones with a lot of chew.
These words that I give
Are all I have for you
So put them in a paper bag
And open when you choose.

Love Mary x

Stephen, love surrounded you
Tragedy befell you
Corruption embalmed you
We all failed you
You made us better people
You made us more aware
That for racial hatred
There is no room to bare.

Nothing can replace you
A boy of seventeen
Helplessly slaughtered
In a London scene
Remembrance of you
Is the best we can give
Beautiful boy
Just wish you'd lived.

Love Mary x

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

Trouble me not with all those woes
I fear I can do no more
I sat out the evening folk
Met with the crowd for sure
But nothing, nowhere
Listened
Or even twitched a bell
Did not pick up a pen
And never did yell.

So my story ended in ditches
The daisies covered my soul
And I was not missed
On the open road.

Love Mary **

There you are Evelyn with hair in clips and smiling lips,
Eating breakfast from the tip of a dolphin
dish,
With head on one side and gorgeous blue eyes,
You tickle the world with surprise.


Love Grandma xxxx

We watched the black and white movies
The old ones from the thirties
With Gregory Peck.
His favourite was
‘South Pacific’
And he would whistle
‘Some Enchanted Evening’
As he came home up the lanes.

Love Mary