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

Stop it sister
Evelyn as a lady bird.

Love Grandma Mary xxxxxx

If I could I would hold you all
Tucked hands into yours
Close eyes together
Finding lashes brush
And where you move
I will stop you
By a loving more
Penetrating and
Unbearably beautiful
Than imagination
Can predict.

Love Mary ,Mum, Grandma ***

Sixty-six years living in a country I respected
Never regretted it, admired, honoured.
Finished!
The treatment of the underprivileged
Is unstainable
The law allows ******
Of the innocent,
Cruelty to the old,
England has failure
Running through
The arterial map
Corruption explodes
Its ***** fingers
In the corners
Where they should
Show love.

Mary x

Your hands are stiff but I take them
Feeling how cold in spite of the sun
But today we will drive you to Ventnor
It's been sad these years without Mum.

The wind is light and the sky azure
Memories flood through my brain
Today we will drive you to Ventnor
Have lemonade and ice- cream again.

Love Mary ***

Evelyn is five years old
And cheeky as Mr Toad
She likes using *** and poo
And being really quite rude.

Everything is a bit of fun
Eating cereal, crumb by crumb
I watch her on my télé face
And laugh when she is a disgrace.

Love Grandma Mary xxxxx

The gardens are having their wedding day
All dressed in shades of white
With bouquets of greenery
Tucked neatly out of sight.
Magnolia Stellata
Grows a feathered gown
Fit for any regent queen
To stand and take her vows.

Less extravagant but equally graced
The Camelia is in full bud
Clusters of rosaries
Pinned against leaf lace.
Of all my loves is The Bride itself
Abundant in its ecstasy
A cascade of loveliness
Showers like pearl beads.

Not forgetting the Snowdrops
The Brunnera and Daffodils
The Weddings are for all of us
To stand and watch at will.

Love Mary

I lost my maidenhead
In a big, big bed
It was not frightening
Or particularly exciting
Waiting out the waves
I lay in myself
Wondering how long
It would go on
Sweat and soft breath
Rolling together into a ball.

Stayed all night and in the morning
Saw the room
Daylight filtered through half opened curtains;
It was nice this silence
This getting to know
For the first time, another,
A man, son and brother,
Someone's father.

You stood behind me
Looking in the mirror
My freckled face, make up gone
Showing you me;
And now we were one in some unaccustomed way
We belonged to this room
Covered in your clothes
Ornaments on a fireplace
Watermarks on the ceiling
I liked it here so far from home
Mother's little daughter did it
All on her own.

For my dear Rog Love Mary ***

Why did they let me die
Not even try
Incompetent errors
Written on letters.

No excuse can ever
Be made for their say
One day they may
Pray.
Unlikely I must say.

Love Mary x

I wonder if I said nothing would you know
Could my name be drawn out along a lane
Cut- out stencils for an autograph
Hardened plasticine creating the frame.

Maybe the more that is said, the less heard
So sit beside what is not my poetry and
Remember in the grains of time what I am
All that is ordinarily attributed to a friend.

Love Mary x

Everywhere you look
Evil is masquerading as good
Care companies, aid agencies
The church.
Humanity has not evolved.


Love Mary x

As soon as the light turns grey
I begin that same journey
Knowing the night will be unsettled
A repeated wakfulness
Winchingly carried out near to tears
For the exercise so carnivorous.

Love Mary xxxx

You are my dream child
Flashing across words
Dancing along the table
With ripe apples and pears.

Nothing is more momentous
Than your smile below blue eyes
And golden hair tied in one braid.
I glimpse myself in your gaiety.

The gift of speech an intimacy with you
Your reading, sharing, laughing, cheeky
I have to say goodbye my dear Evelyn
Stay happy and watch the flowers grow.

Lots of love grandma Mary xxxxxxxx

Along the fence, in a line my pots do stand.
And a row of dried Hollyhock stem heads
This is my life along the fence on a warm day.

Love Mary xxxx

Say goodbye for me to the window cleaner
And the people who empty bins
The man who delivers the papers
And all those parcels for my sins
Give a kiss to the tree cutters
And the people who pass by
And don't forget my dear friends
The ones who were too shy.
I've had enough of all this stuff
The pain and dragging on
My family, too, are tired of the veiw
And even the letterbox moved.
Phone calls I make
Are just a mistake
As the answers I get are insane
The best I've known are the artists
Who all have an open heart
They know there are no answers
That's why they do art.
So leave out the platitudes
Let's get down to the truth.
Say goodbye for me to the window cleaner
He's made my vision great.

Love Mary ***

Together the time lifts and separates
Those for whom there is no shadow
Slowly undoing the winching gears
Watching the guide rope flop water.

And if you hear my song of depart
Do not cry for today is your happy
Birthday hours and it must celebrate
All the days that belonged to ourself.

Love Mary ***

She came into my arms
Soft flesh over bones
Sweet smile curved lips
Only for a while we played
My new grandchild Primrose.

Love Grandma ***

If I could, above anything
I would paint the world
Flake white
But it would soon
Get *****.

Love Mary x

The child asked the rainbow man
If he ever cried and why
Lifting a big drop of rain
He let it splash at her feet
And now she knew why
The rainbow man cried.

LoveMary ***

I fall into your words
They scatter my thoughts
Swirling radiant flashes
Of remembrance brought.

Love Mary x

I leave you this as one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry ever written. So moving and yet full of metaphor and tenderness in the words .
Love Mary xxxx



“Snow was general all over Ireland…” The last paragraph of Joyce’s The Dead

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
The Dead
James Joyce

In the front bedroom
I have been for years
Watching the birds
In the Sycamore tree.

Love Mary

Meeting off the road where grass doth grow
Not far from the number ten bus stop
We together unsure of what
So I stretched out on this bench
The night was dark and wetly damp
You in your new boy clothes
Handsome but already chose
I didn't want to marry you
Or even spend much time
Just for half an hour or so
Sweep you with my arms
And so we tip-toed round the hour
Stroking things we should not
Until the street lights began to fade
Then, separately, we left that spot
Goodbye was not necessary
We never came again
Knowing this was not
Lovers' knot
But just experimenting.


Love Mary

Read a passage by Herman Hesse
Who wrote about trees and what they meant to he.
Got me thinking about our Park
And the two trees that were never apart,
One was tall the other smaller and rounder,
They lived together in a binary state.

The Summers came and went until in Winter
One looked bent,
Slowly after melting snow the leaves began
Not to show,
The smaller tree, for it was a she,
Got cut down leaving only he.

Now in the park and proud
The tall tree has his hour
Although a singular frame
The patch of earth still remains
On which he cherished his love
The best companion he ever had.

At twilight when the light is low
He hears the rustling of her leaves
And sways a little to and fro
Just to let her know.


For my dear Roger , love Mary xxxx

You paint pictures of small ceramic bowls,
Copies of tree trunks from George Seurat,
A single Plane tree in the local park and
A red apple which use to be two.

I read you my poems over the mobile
The one about the boy on the beach
You liked as it recalled your childhood
Its mood is wistfully sad, we share that.

Love Mary x

The boarding party.

The gathering was informal
Dressed in what was comfortable
For the cold February day.
Here in front of the window,
The panoramic view across
The fields
Stationary as a postcard
Supported only memories.

My father leaned on the chair
As he always had when
Talking about too many cars
And the age of girls having babies.
We listened trying to avoid
Time passing
Trying to be brave for him,
For ourselves.

The Norman church on the Alan Bay
Road, a place of historic beauty,
Where on holidays we stopped,
To eat the days remaining sandwiches;
Received our mother into the parish
There reunited with her father, Frank.
In the air a gentle voice called helping
tired feet make that last mile home.

Love to My mother Grace Emily Westbrook and my dad Eric William Henry Ayton-Robinson .

At the end one has to acknowledge
Staring into the eyes of another
That there is always betrayal
But Love understands this
And is not ruptured
Steadfastly it continues
Doing what it is
Which is to
Live.

Love Mary xxxx

I use to take them,
Pocketed up against naked flesh,
Torn by hand so stem might survive,
Hidden before the park gates.

Yet there were gardens,
Along well walked streets,
Where I remembered flowering
Stalky jewel headed, against sky.

Slipped silently up the sideway,
Grabbing fists of seeded promises,
For next years storms,
And a nominated plot.

'Open Gardens', thief pickers paradise,
But a note on my garden wall
Says, 'help yourself', for we are
But a substitute for the birds.

Love Mary
Xxxxxx

Evelyn came back to me
Came over the ocean
Over the sea
Worried that she might forget
The daddy that she'd always had.

Saw her coming across the floor
Through the airport's open doors
First a smile and then a tear
Glad to have her daddy near.

Back at home it is just the same
Just as if she'd never roamed
On the settee made for three
Evelyn, Tasha, the cats and me .



Love Evelyn to her daddy .
From Grandma Mary ***

Emily Dickinson
Why do I love You, Sir?
480

“Why do I love” You, Sir?
Because—
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer—Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows—and
Do not You—
And We know not—
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so—

The Lightning—never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
Because He knows it cannot speak—
And reasons not contained—
—Of Talk—
There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—

The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
Because He’s Sunrise—and I see—
Therefore—Then—
I love Thee—

The light is slowly dipping
Moving from bright to dull
We trip along the road
Mum ,dad, my brother and I
Reaching Freshwater Bay
As the windows of the pub
Turn on.

The pebbles drag themselves
Back and forth on the beach
Boats, far out in the Solent,
Hooting  and shimmering
As the red sunset fills the sky,
We huddle together hurrying
Before night fall completes.


A quick dash for home
Moving fast along the country lanes
Under the harvest moon
The warmth of the day lingers
And birds put their songs to sleep
At last the line of Chalets' appear
Tucked away amongst trees.

Unlocking the door
The smell of wooden floors
Hot tea, sandwiches
A biscuit or two.
Then to the comfort
Of soft sheets.

Love to my Mother,  Father and brother, Richard,
For all those lovely holiday spent together .
Love Mary ***

The trees are blowing houses
In the damp air
I fight for breath but no one comes
My love is getting fish and chips
And the jacket potato will be baked
I have spoken and been silent but
The tree still breaks and what is learnt?
Sorry to those who could not listen
The houses will be re - filled with
Someone.
Love Mary ***


Love Mary

A line that announces the heart
And stays embedded in lovers
Pale yellow dressed girl breathes
Leaning across blue hyacinths
And wildness tornados the night
As silkily she touches the moon.

Love Mary x

To be loved to death
Is a remarkable saying
Its meaning, meaning
More than any card
Any bunch of flowers.

The lifting is divinities
Holding out anniversary
Slight flickering fingers
Touch flaky, silver skin
And love breaks the sky.


Love Mary **

Whenever my mother went out
There was a place I knew about
Not a step too far
Up the stairs and behind the bars
Along a dark and narrow hall
My parents bedroom door.

Standing outside in my dress
Could I enter without a trace
My fingers grasped the handle ****
Twisted gently the door was fast
Found the chiselled metal key
Opened the door quickly
Stood a while least I collapse
The smell of sweet lavender plus
Stretched out on my parent's bed
Bounced a bit it must be said
The springs were rather creeky too
Wondered what they would do
Two pillows at the head
And a candlewick bedspread.

What intrigued me most of all
The dressing table mirrored wall
Creeping to the window ledge
Peered around least I be found
Intrepid invader of secret worlds (drowned)

The top drawer was the best
The others containing mainly vests
And neatly folded underwear
Stockings rolled into *****
Pulled open the heavy drawer
Began my journey to explore
Opened up the jewellery box
Placed the trinkets on my chest (lap)
A moonstone set in filigree
My grandmother's, I do believe
Clipped it round my slender neck
Held it up with great respect
Then a golden nugget chip
On a sort of safety clip
Came from a mining town
Somewhere in Cape Town.

Rings and other dainty things
Curry grips and cream tins
Powder puffs and pink rouge
Pear earrings with a *****
Letters bound up with string
Hankerchiefs written in
A little note I did write
When my spelling was not quite right
How I loved all this stuff
Smelling of my mother's love.


Love Mary x

For just that, I opened my eyes to watch the seagulls
Circle the cliff face, swooping and diving,
Black and white above viridian tides.
On top deck of those cream and green country buses
That bumbled along, taking the dips and hollows
As though a 'Big Dipper' at Margate.
There was such little stopping the journey
Seemed seemless as the sky.
And we,
Hanging out the window to catch the wind.

Love Mary x

Who walked to the end of a road
And turned back?
Realising the reason had been lost
Like a paper handkerchief
Just dropped on the pavement
Getting wedged between cracks
Arriving home with the sadness.

I can't take my shoes off the road
Verbally swimming me out
On the surface I see all the words
Gliding over each other, waiting.

Choosing is the reason for living
Placing and position another
My purpose gigantically impossible
But the errand earnestly strong.

It takes from infested waters
The dark black tulips of Spring
All that has covered me over
Until the last swim begins.

Walter W Hoelbling 22h
out there
once you let your poems
fly freely
out into the world
anything can happen to them

and it does
poems free world

Darling daughter, Victoria, I think we both know
That staying away from each other was the best.
For the suffering I have to bear is not for you to
Witness and rather joy sit in your lap and be near.

I have no regrets and privacy is a necessity now
So I might slip away leaving a glimpse of sweet
Memories and a bundle of cardboard boxes for the
Children when it comes to opening time.

Bring beautiful Arlo to see the garden I made
And dad has another grandchild to cuddle.
Sad for the time we never had but glad of what
We did together over the years .Bye Bye Birdie .

Love Mum Grandma ***

They all spoke at once,
Claiming their first choice of pose:
Reclining sublimely on mattress,
Or balancing slightly on toe,
Some wanted seated sedately,
Others curled up into a ball.
Whatever it was it was difficult,
I did get paid after all.

So after position was chosen,
Took quietly to my place,
Hoping that comfort found me,
I did not get a pain or an ache.
Found a patch of grey on the window,
To focus my gaze for the day.
Then drifted off into dreamland,
Until my head fell away.

Love Mary **

Sitting round the radio,
We would listen to the play,
Broadcast every Saturday,
In the evening with lights low,
Wrapped in our blankets,
All snug and warm,
Sharing so many stories,
Of lives both great and small.

Those days I remember,
For the closeness that we felt,
Our little family, never remote;
'The Deep Blue Sea',staying behind,
For its impact, of a solitary kind.
Nothing like the radio to let the eye find,
Pictures in the imagination,
Are the very best kind.

Love Mary ***

Achievement wore her smartest frock,
Held out the drapes that all might see,
For a while it danced within her frame,
Delighted at such a fiery flame,
Then quietly laid down in a box,
But its wonders did remain.

For a time I took photographs
In black and white
To enhance
What is timeless
And thus free
From the world's
Scrutiny.

In layered petticoat
Edged with lace
White and flimsy
Which did float
Wellington boots
And handknit coat.

******* ribbon in her hair
The fairest waves
Lay just there
On her shoulders
Round her face
A touch of angelic grace.

I took my Daisy
To the shops
A yard or two to pop
To get something
Nice for tea.
Biscuits, sweets
And ice cream freeze.

As with an artist's eye
Could not let this moment by
Blonde curls she peered around
I captured this without a sound.

The photograph of a little girl
In an undated world
Classless, nameless
For all to see
The wonders of simplicity.

Best photograph I have ever taken. Thank you Daisy  May , love Grandma ***

My babies.

Scrabbling up the wall of desire ,
I took them in my hands,
Bundles of cuddly babies,
With ribbons in their hair.

Oh they were ever so pretty ,
With chubby fingers and toes,
I wrapped them up together,
And in a basket they did go.

Sometimes they were naughty,
Would not have a bath,
Had to bubble them all over,
They thought that quite a laugh.

The babies came everywhere with me,
Never, left them at home,
People on the buses,
Occasionally, did moan.

But my lovely babies,
Decided to grow up,
Found one did not need a ribbon,
Because, he was a lad.

Now I have no babies,
They have all flown away,
Found other babies,
To go and make a home.

Love Mary , Mum , Grandma ***
For my 3 daughters and one son.Thank you so much for being great children.xxxx

Coming to my door
In coat and hat
You bring me food
And this and that.

We try so hard to find a smile
We talk a bit just for a while
I love you more than I can say
Stay with me darling
Till evening is still.

Love Mummy ***

If I read anymore of your poems
I shall merge.

Love Mary x

To the words of Cat Stevens I sing
Wailing about in front of the glass
You are my everything.

No longer frilly
Abandoned buttons and bows
Took to wearing breeches
And baseball shoes.

Now she’s having a baby
What will that do
Change our young Lily
Into two.

Love Grandma ***

Their out of the office,
On another line,
Away today
Be back Tuesday ;
Can't take your call
Right now
But if you leave your number
We will get back to you!
I am sorry this mail box is full;
All the lines are busy right now
We do apologise;
This person no longer works
In this department;
Please hold the line.
This Extention is unavailble.

Living in a world of excuses
And abuses
Lies and deception
Poor reception
Does my head in!!!

Mary