Falling upon a crooked stone
That lent itself some space
In the highest tenements
A malevolent elf smelt.

In the borders of mistrust
Where the baddies grow
Getting fat on mincemeat
Trying not to show.

A scraping of butter
To put on salted bread
Was never brought
To justice, no whistle said.


Love Mary x

And I know you
In my flowery nightgown
On your feet I do stand
We climb together
The stairway
And my hair falls
All around.

Oh such beauty is this love
Of a mother for her child
As she bends just to kiss her
Turn the light off at the wall.

For what is treasured
In the moment
Will ever remain
Of our closeness
Mother and daughter
A joyous refrain.



Love Mary ***

Looking through my photographs
For an image that will last.
Having something to say
About how I lived my days
Individual not in disguise
No forced colours or inverted skies
Or those enhancements using other links
That make your mind blink.
Has to be simple not constructed or planned
Touch of serendipity lending a hand
So my new update from a photo I take
With a child's windmill and a bird on a slate
A friendly sheep , a ceramic heap
Scattering stones, last season's bulb grown
A clematis shoot ******* with string
These are some of my favourite things.
For what is beauty but a surprise
Something unexpected, a moment's desire.

Love Mary

I want to tell you about our cat
He was big and fluffy, like a furry floor mat
Moved from a house a few yards away
Adopted us and came to stay
Our big, fluffy, tabby cat.


Use to sit on my mother's knee
Kept her warm as warm could be
He had big paws just like a lion
Could give you a scratch if got alarmed
Our big, fluffy, tabby cat.


And though we all loved him
His temperament was fierce
Kept those paws ready to pounce
Snarled and hissed given a chance
Careful we were of that cat.

One day we noticed Fluff could not see
Kept banging his head on the garden tree
No longer could find his dinner plate
Now we knew it was getting late
For our big, fluffy, tabby cat.


For days and days we all did cry
No warm patch where Fluffy resides
In the garden under some flowers
Where the Spring bulbs grew scented hours  
Lies our very dear, Fluffy cat.



Love Grandma Mary **
For all my grandchildren

The skies have been overcast, lately.
Draining the flowers of colour,
Bringing Autumn varieties adjacent
To August stock.There is a tiredness
In the stormy winds, a dusting of dry leaf.
We bring water in cans to restore
The last of this Summer's glory.

And hope for just a few more days
When one can bask in the blueness
In ignorance of Winter's call;
With the months of indoors
When perfumed air is gone.
The dampness in spider's dew
Replacing our Summer song .

Mary

Eight pots under my front window,
Not selected but a random collection,
Presents in tubs, seed floated flowering,
Remains of painstaking gardening,
And days of inspiration and sun;
And still in one a yellow wallflower,
Finding a home, colourful and bright,
Not waiting to dance but abundant self,
Bearing out the winter storms,
To give its beauty in return for chance,
Underneath my window sill.

Mary Kearns

It is almost dark through the curtains
The cold creeps around my bed frame
Where sleep in no longer restful times

Soon the visitors will come to the door
And I will try my best to offer warmth
But the difficulty will be much a climb

I say sorry that, today, one cannot give
And whisper across the room my quiet
While they can only imagine, love notes.

And on the floor the two children play
Beautiful in their Christmas costumes
Blonde and flaxen haired in the lights .

I managed to give out warmth then.

Love Mary ***

What is the reason for the letter I thought
Reasons are never what they seem to be
Behind each reason are many and varied
Incidents that cause a reason to develop.

Returning to the letter arriving today
For whom was the information written
An escape, a break in the transmission
A protection of denial and valsification.

So does truth exist in reason, can it be trusted?
Is it there for ownership of personage?
I sink down in sorrow at the realisation of this
The fact the letter was meant for reason not truth.

Love Mary **

Corruption is a silly voice
Shiny with its own virtue
Nebulous, brimming gall
It thinks clever, dumb thing.


And when open, the pen slips
Onto flippant shoes, smiling,
And hands cradle evil on line
This person is hard to define.

Love Mary **

Waiting out with feet in the sea
The little boy called Charlie and me
He wore red and I wore green
Love to swim in the spangly sea.

The sky blew over a cobble stone
Dropped some raindrops that afternoon
It was very dippy in the weeds
But fun was had by Charlie and me.

Love Mary **

Ingmar Bergman externalisés by
Using women in his films to
Understand himself.
The two sides of himself.
So much of myself and my awareness
Of the graces of women come from my
Mother. The way my father treated
My mother was an sustaining influence too.

I remember my mother’s grey curly hair,
large ******* hanging like two full plums.
As she washes in the bathtub
Rounded belly, dark, floating, soapy ***** hair
Mother is forty - four.


Taking me into *******, softly, quietly
Mysteriously, my ******* are budding, two pink *******
A pretty navy padded brassière to wear under my blouse
When I go to school. This blouse is nylon and translucent
Womanhood that wet place of secret
sounds, scents and shapes.


Thank you mum for helping me to become a woman to take into my ****** form and become all that I did,Love you.

Love Mary xxxx. Your daughter.

A birthday gift was given in Autumn
To a girl younger than her blue eyes
She held out her hands to this bonny
Babe and cradled her all the way home.

In the middle of the road stood a toad
All dressed out in green and gold
He did not frown to see those prettier
Than he but wondered at such ecstasy.

Love Mary **

The past is a different country they say
Lost to us, lonely, forgotten, gone away
But that is our choice whether it remains
Or with glass ashtrays and photo frames.

Our past is a history of learned transcripts
Of written letters , conversations we had
It changed each future life that is now led
A continuity of patterns discarded or glad.

Love Mary xxxx

Love Mary x

I really did not know what they meant
Standing on the outside
Like nothing was of importance
Other than the coming along
The day splattered with rain
Spreading the newly bared earth
The weeded area with breathing
And the afternoon sprang tears
While **** Robin
Sang his song.

I keep going back
To the spot
Where the ocean meets the sky
And I am that child
Who never cried
At the front of the bus
Holding onto the rail
So I don't roll my head in the clouds
Watching the farmland slip by
It was once I.

Love Mary **

Have you seen Delphi dancing
On the sand in the Bay
Arms outstretched to catch the moonshine
All the fragments of golden spray
And her feet scatter the sandstone
Her body sways as if to say
Listen as my heart flies skyward
On this glorious of days,
Along the beach the people gather
To watch the plaited maiden dance
Far away in her dreamland
She always gives what she has.


For dearest Delphi when she was seven.
Love Grandma ***

The wonders of a morning
Is watching Evelyn dress
She does it as slow as a feather
Falling from a great Oak tree.

Each item of clothing lifted
From the floor where it rested
Pants, socks t-shirt, pinafore,
Cardigan, shoes, coat.

The show complete
The child ready for school
Shows her shells
From her small collection
Ammonite, cowie, conch and
Waves goodbye.

Love Maryxxx

Tall Nettles cover up the corner, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out and the harrow made of stone:
Only the elm **** tops the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like the most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, neve lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.


By Edward Thomas.
This is just so unbelievably magnificent .
Love Mary x

The briar and rose of Autumn lends light
All covered in harvest ripe berries and leaf
The bird on wing flies high against winds
And pulling over hats we trundle the shred.

Love Mary x

He was in the garden
It had been a long time
Pulling against the weeds
His elderly mother in a chair
Reading the newspaper.

The woman watched on
Pallid in the light
They helped each other
It was Spring, bulbs out
The news was about Brexit.

Love Mary

White legs enter the sea
As Icarus falls from the
Sun baked clouds
His feathered wings melt
And then disintegrate.

The day is clear, calm
Not noticed as he falls, silently,
Into deepest waters of bay
All busied themselves
The light craft sails on.

The fisherman’s line stretched
The shepherd gazes at the sky
The bowsmen drives his horse
And birds spiralled overhead
Sailing boats bob in blue.

This is how it is in the land
Where no one is noticed
Brueghel and Auden knew
The hardship of reality
A sad perpetuating song.

Love Mary xxxx

This is my final pathway, I walk with slowness and sadly
Brushing the foliage loved and cherished with light kiss
These paths, spreading the sunshine of little child to greet
And guiding my heart from here to there until we meet.

Love Mary **

Only on week days when the sunshines
Do I chat to my Evelyn about all times
She has mouthfuls of honey and yogurt
Reading new words in her school book.

What is it to stop and watch the day break
Misty on window frames, dewey in grass
To see a young life take a step into this day
Secure in her treasures the drawing she made.

Love Grandma **

It grew out of disappointment
That solitary word, indefinite
Lay on the back seat for years
Unneeded, lame
So when it erupted, a surprise
Hanging like a tarnished shade
Devoid of all light.

Love Mary **

Wait, I hear you tipping through the long grass
A trumpet of flowers and an armful of love
My heart is a crystal of raindrops fair
And you are my fairies who fly through the air.

Love Mary , Mum , Grandma x

I think I’ll call her Griselda or Florentine of the sea
She is lovelier than a star fish with eyes of green
And hair twists around this, brown ringlet, queen
Constance of graciousness a madamoiselle’s dream
Mood matches her dresses, bohemian with a spark
And nothing deters that subterranean love heart.

Love Grandma to Connie ***

Daisy you always loved me,
As I loved you from the first
We played together, talked
Ate sweeties and cakes
Watched television.

To be with you each week
With my bag of goodies
They are special memories
They are what is meant
By a life.

Love Mary x

Under the blanket on a warm afternoon
With a faded sunshade over our heads
Mother and I would lie waiting for rain
And talk of her mother, with big blue eyes
Who died in childbirth when thirty-five
Leaving two little girls, Emily and Rose
And a tiny son who lived but two days
Always an absence for my sweet mother
But always a beautiful presence for me.

Love Mary **

Evelyn looked at the path in front
Meandering into the dark woods
And quietly considered the future.

Nettles grew about the side edges
And beetles and caterpillars climb
Hidden from bright hungry beaks.

She heard small animals twitching
And smelt the river’s down flows
Groundcover spreading its beauty.

The world was peaceful in her hand
And dad holding tightly the morning
As they walked slow along the curve.

Love Grandma **

The Lonliness of that road
Leading to a point
Ending in finality
Finishing quite frank.

It is green and far to be seen
Closed equilateral triangle
Destination, deciduous
Leaf, never to regrow.

Love Mary **

Now it is me.
Love Mary

When we go aboating on the Norfolk Broads
Taking all our memories from the years before
As from childhood after the Second World War
Holidays were a speciality greatly to be adored
A prized commodity, a delight to be taken right
So going aboating on the Norfolk Broads was all.

Love Mary

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 **

It is so sad when the weather is bad
And you can’t go out and the freeze does bite
And the dogs stay in with basket bins
The children play upstairs today
It is so sad when the weather is bad .

Love Mary **

I love the way you sit
Your long leggies taut
On the soft furniture
Coloured socks on toes.

I love your long fingers
Spread out on keyboard
Intent on dancing about
The tap, click of moving.

I love your face in beard
Flowing silver silky hair
Rests on wide shoulders
I really, really love you .

Mary xxxxx"

The bungalow stood empty after he died
Garden shoes hugged the porch step
The glass panelled front door showing
Pale translucent echoes of familiarity
Through its six oblong windows.

I was never allowed to visit
After the day of the funeral
Never able to bounce on the
Cream candlewick double bed
Which had been home.

Or to collect cuttings from the
Dilapidated garden, just a rose
Or two would do to recall a day
Of Summer and deckchairs
Tea and cakes eaten with care.

I was never allowed to embrace
Years of happy holidays shared
Breath in the beauty of memory
Deep down where flowers grow
Never allowed another Spring.

Love Mary xxxxx

07/09/2019

Tiredness sets in
Round the mulberry bush
Under a fake stillness of rain
The porch door handle opens.

It will be a late birthday for some
Tea at eight with family and food
Such a shocking affair without her
She sits by the open window tears.

The cards stack up on the mantelpiece
And a veggie meal with crisp savoury
A game of Cheat and Misfits completes
A day of chivalry, prowling the boards.

You make the fun festival in bright shirt.
New slippers and a collection of children
You are my lion king flowing silver hairs
On a back broken by labour and lifting.

Love Mary to Roger xxxx

Where did we get to

On a red trolley bus the last of its kind
I sat with my dad in 1959
I remember the overhanging track
And the clickety clack
The sliding sound
Of steel abound
And the brakes hissing out near the ground.
Ladbrook grove in London town
Where my aunties lived around.

Love Mary

Sit with me in the darkness
On the edge of the eiderdown
As your fingers turn the pages
Let me be who I am.

The fairies fly from pages
And the horses ride to town
My love for you is greater
Than the stars on my wall.

Love Mary ***

Those pink blackberries hard as stone
The taste of bitterness and hairy stalk
The  sort of colour made with a mixture
In plastic bag catching the end of season
One more drip of divine wine to taking
The bushes continue their few bright tips
And picking hurts the fingers till sorely
It is Autumn stocking in its cold offering
In the evening when people return home
We were special in our togetherness.

Love Mary ***

The way opened out
And to get through
A bend was needed
Leaning against twig.

So thoughts gathered
Head strong
Across the empty ditch
The company leaped.

The other side was a purple haze
Drifting about above woods
The tops of the trees twittered
And twinkled and fluttered.

The company entered the woods
Lifting lightly their dress
Surrounded were they by
Bird song and flowers
At their feet.

Love Mary ***

Lime green light
Shines softly through the breaks
As each bush stalks into day
Walking the wilderness road
Distilled morning moves the sun
Under a diagonal sprayed sky.

There is a mystery here to make
Taken along telegraph lines
Colours carried across space
White wistful clouds
Rise up towards the majestic
Mauveness and morning awakes.

Love Mary ***

It may take years for poetry to be acknowledged but when it is
Great truths unfolded that leave one tremulous with beauty and
Awareness so great that the world turns in disbelief.
Somehow there are no other legistrators of the truth for all are self
Selfinterested and infested.
So dear poets write for humanity that your words touch those servants of time.
Changing understanding and open minds
To the reality of nature’s innocence and the wickedness of history and humankind.



Love Mary xxxxx

They were moulded together like turned wood,
Carved and twisted made to last,
A man and a dog, a Boxer dog,
Travelling along our road.

Love Mary **'

Ballerinas are floppy things
They're all skirt  and no wings
Fairies are a better sport
Travelling the globe without a thought
Floating about is very nice
Unless you get tripped
By the old rosehip
Then ballerinas are better
Indoors out of the weather.


Love Mary Grandma

The days always had Red Robin and Cyril
And us two sitting on the cold back step
You ninety - four and me in my late forties
Red Robin came forward, hop, hop, hop
And took the cheddar from you old man.

Days of simplicity when the bluetits nested
And the birdtable was filled with seeds daily
Your strong hands, tapped up the peanut tin
Your son shaved the stubble on a rough chin
This quietness was rewarded by many birds.

Love Mary ***

The swimmers and paddlers.
Hello swans with your brown signets
On the near edges where the weeds blend
And the green meets the trusted stoney bed
You frighten a little with those huge wings
The strength to **** if fear struck an orange eye.

The ducks and drakes trailing fluffy ducklings
So linger daring the hands of bread and biscuits
A continuity of return until fat and bloated, stop.
Their tail feathers sharing a twitching line march
As they swim back to the safety of the reed beds.

Love Mary

I liked it, that time of adolescence
When my heart and body gripped
Tightened, relaxed and expanded
And the days spilled me all over .

Short dresses, small *******
Rolled their way with you
I loved to sit upon your knee
Head resting on you.


In that front bedroom with broken glass
And curtains grey, unwashed opened to
The streets below and our bodies warm
Curled and curved together in the light.

Love Mary x

I will walk with you
Down the beauty of this world
Holding on to you
As we gather conker shells.

We will find each day
Filling up the sun
Where the harvest mouse
Sings a harvest song.

I will climb with you
The green hill in the glade
Watching for your shadow
Bouncing free and still.

We will be together
As we pass the church
Faithful friends forever
Even if it hurts .

Love Mary
**