Can you see it that nomadic crowd jostling
For space
Standing in front of their favourite icon
Shuffling from left to right
To get a better view.
The room sways with the heat
And iPhones click, flick
Behind knitted gloves.
Picasso does not smile back
He is too busy with his legacy
Now handled by many
While he sleeps in his Château
Graveyard.
Tatters of conversations
Continually talk of
Sexuality and his women,
Usually to the negative,
Other than those who
Might see beyond this
To the structure of drawing
And years of observation
That brought him to
This spot.
What do we take with us
Leaving for the streets,
A catalogue?

Lavender lays where the spider cries
On the gravel path by the lawn
The licacious tree spills its leaves
And the spider runs around.

If I could give you a book of thistledown
Lined in sashes of jade silk
And edged in purple squares
Your days fill every page
And every day be you.

Love Mary

To miss the early morning birds
To miss the sound of the milk can
To miss the postman with parcels new
To miss the children off to school
To miss you close the door at six
And welcome you back at nine.

Love Mary x

Shades of green and a lichen fence
Leafless bushes embrace telegraph
Triangular factory roofs make hills
In the patch of lavender’s sunshine.

And two paths, worn grass journey
Of favourite places returning home
Break into the emerald field of love
Where our walking brings strength.


Love Mary ***

The trees were back to front
On the wrong side of the shade
Unbalanced in the garden
Reminded her of toytown
Where there was Noddy.

And those yellow bricks
Where she slid her fingers
Smooth arcs of space
To hide under
With big rabbit.


Love Mary x

I felt such profound sadness when she told me
Nothing inside me moved
No sense of delightfulness
As there would have been
All that imagining and planning
Others rejoiced, congratulating
And looking forward.

Not noticing my pain
Feeling the emptiness inside
I was an outsider to pity
Holding dignity close
I told of my pleasure
Nurturing a broken heart
In a speechless world.

So slowly she bent feeling the curve of her back
As though someone had uttered long sad words
The endings floating in the window telling tales
As she swivelled on her tarnished leather boots
The sky stopped its pulsating beating and she fell
Dropping all she ever had been or would ever be
In a scattering of moments loved and missed now.

Love Mary

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
**

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

The Winter song lay on the carpet
Its notes the colours of fallen glass
Stained from a Summer’s heating
Brilliant in the sunshine’s blast.

Fear me not those the leafless call
This tune is overturned and brown
My whiskers are curled with bows
And my hair combings of grey ***.

Love Mary xxxx

The birds came to visit
Early in the morning
Waiting by the dolphin
And porridge bowl.

There was a Peacock
An Eagle and two Pelicans
A Perigine Falcan, a Macaw
And a nest of baby Birds.

Evelyn ate her breakfast
Read her phonic words
And talked to Grandma
It was a sunny day today.

Love Mary x

Women - sounds, scents and shapes.
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 and father.The way my father treated
My mother was a 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 place of secret
sounds, scents and shapes.


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

Love Mary ,      Your daughter. Love you ..

I dangle like the Willow tree
Few of leaf and spiralling
The dance of the finalists
Caught in Winter sneeze.

So much beauty holds on
Asters like gold buttons
Scarlet hollyhock flower
So swished by rain drops.

Of Purple leaf cherry plum
Bringing Spring’s first blossom
Branches brushed in white
Against a colbalt cold sky.

Love Mary ***

The road, stretchy silver slug trail
Pinned between house and branch
Winds its way upwards
Then down towards mud tracks
Filled with reflected grey
As the sky starts another
Day in December.

Love Mary x

A little girl sat at breakfast eating
Her cheerios with a straw
She commented about all things
In her upsy downsy voice
The world seemed so colourful
As she smiled at her sock animals
And the plastic mammoth by her plate.

She was nearly always late for school
As there was just too much to say
But daddy and her usually made it
Evelyn loved school but was equally
Happy at home with her family
She drew beautifully images of animals
From a television programme, it helped,
They were so friendly with big eyes.
She was an unusual four year old.

Love Grandma  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

Upon many a dusty ledge
Laden with dried out heads
Of flower stalks and silken
Shine, stood in silent scent
That little *** of mine.

Mary ***

Where do we meet ?
Can it be said
You have the same words
In your head
Or ideas reframed.
Do your eyes drop tears
And your hands reach out
To touch the soil
Do we ever meet
Different voices in the wind.

Love Mary ***

The frost curls round grass
I can smell its coldness
Tips of ribbon ice on green
A woman’s shadow wave.

Up above a velvet field
Glistening citrus glows
The sky a streak of blue
Mornings’ Winter snow.

Love Mary ***

The old cot .

In our back garden when I a child,
Against the wall and near the top
Stood our old baby cot.
It was painted blue
As my brother came last
A cast iron frame and mesh base.
It now supported my mother's flower pots.
For years it was left abandoned in the rain
Till the paint peeled off and rust got in.
Still it stayed I was over ten.
In all the photographs, there
Remains, this relic from our early days.
Eventually, I moved away
And know not what happened
To it to this day.

Love Mary **

Things never got any better, she laughed
Shuffling down between her two children
One a girl of eight and the older boy, ten
The new addition looking bewildered
Cradled in canvas carrier peeped out .

So here we were all over again, the six family
It had been but four, eight years ago
But one moved in and another departed
And baby boy surprise ****** his tongue
This had been an extraordinary year for all.

Love Mum xxxx

He left her for the keys
Standing in the hall
Shamefaced secret.

She watched him
Walk down the road
To catch the bus.

We all know wrong doing
And do it anyway
Never seeing.

They had been on the bed
A bunch of keys
To his office.

She had moved them
To under the bed
Out of view.

He needed them for work
At Hyde Park Corner
To open building.

Had she seen them
‘No’, she said.
Lied.

Her brother got blamed
After keys were found,
She kept silent.

This is one act of cowardice
One thoughtlessness
Never to be repeated.

Love Mary x

The Darkling Thrush.

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to me The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy, *
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew, And I was unaware.

31 December 1900

By Thomas Hardy

In a garden that edged the farm
With cast iron railings as a fence
And windy plants that claimed the bars
Stood a little girl.

Dark her hair and dark her eyes
Against a short and checkered dress
There she was with a birthday cake
On a table on the ground.

Bigger than she herself
This cake two tiers high
Decorated in scalloped lace and yellow
Piped flowers.

Pretty little daughter of mine
Though only two
You smiled away with gladness
And I, so loved you .


Love Mummy x

I will meet you in the rays of light
At the edge of the outer most galaxy
And there we might recognise each other
in the cosmic dust
And in quietness love again.

Love Mary x

Adlestrop
BY EDWARD THOMAS
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The grass cut winter short
Fog frozen on the briar
Parables use to be told
In the fields far below.

Taking the long way round
As coldness turned to frost
Find that our hearts do melt
As a whistling stirs the throat.

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

So I took the dress
Freshly ironed
The lingering warmth
Over head and neck
Letting the weight
Gravitate down
Settle around
Below my knees and
On my thighs
Where the pleats rise
The belt folds
Above my hips
Starting where the zip slips
Up one side to oblige
Pocket guides open wide
Then I turn to
And undo
All the buttons straight through
From breast to hem
Over and over
Again.

Love Mary x

Where is that girl
With the growing hair
And lips like cherry,
Asleep on her pillow,
Out with a fellow,
Watching the rain
On her window pain,
Thinking life over,
Taking her time
To find the right mind?
Stay close my beauty
Let the wind not blow
But rock and enfold
That girl we love so.

For Daisy Love Grandma xxxx

Do not let the days grow old after me
But polished with that ever sparkling
Anticipation which sets hearts aglow
They are the same street’s arching aways
Intermingled, the comfort of green trees.

Love Mum ***

Your poem dances, flounces
Making a rhythm into a hum
Woodland spirits from Isadora
Duncan to Barcelona, flemenco,
The Merry Widow’s mythical song.

Railway cuttings
Cut through my mind
The emptiness
Of what’s left behind.

A flower garden of wildness
Between broken sleepers
Who now find comfort
In railway suburbs.

Love Mary x

I never bought The Twinkle Annuals
Slipping off the eBay page after six
It is one of those days that drizzles
And bedtime gets closer each time.

Love Mary ***

Why said the plain looking man
Whose feet clipped the lanes
Is this world so corrupt and cruel
Has it always been this way?

Up in the apple tree a bluetit sang
And robin answered ‘yes’ friend
It’s always been wrong
But freely we sing for you.

Love Mary x

The fairy danced upon my shelf
Ethereal like something else
She caught the glow of shaded light
Her footsteps silent in the bright


Oh little prancer of my dreams
Stay a while don’t leave too soon
The night is coldly the stars out
Wish me first a peaceful night.


For all little children..
Love Mary x

Little one when the Cuckoo calls
And the roof shivers with tiny feet
You snuggle in so close
I can’t exaggerate the heat
Of love .

Ten pink toes peep from your gown
I look at your fingers Summer brown
And the curls on your head turning
Round like golden apple peelings
And we smile .

Love Mary xxxx

I like hedges long, short, slim, wide
Curving round bends on ends
It has to be Privet, smells divine
Like a strange type of wine.

Outside mansions or on council estates
Scruffy and woody where leaves flake
Cut into chickens or kangaroo topiary
Covered in Christmas lights at night.

I just love Hedges.

Love Mary **

He took up his stealth
And went to Norfolk
To where his boat was moored
Near a small hotel he rested well
And watched the sun go down.

The peace beyond all understanding
Overtook his mind and all the days
He sailed away over the Norfolk Broads.
Until it came to the crunch and he had to
Write,
Some poetry to linger in the wind.

Love Mary xxxx

Turning towards the left
My ponytail followed me
With a flick catching the sun
I liked flicking my hair
Feeling it brush my shoulders
And presence of a tied bow
Circular plastic clips
Holding the whispy bits
Often on a Sunday.

Love Mary ***

The wind snapped in his tongue
A cruelty beyond measure
So in trembling fear she floated
Downstream to the edges of time
And in that way said goodbye
A thank you for everything.

Love Mary x

Betrayal is the limitation of thought
Its perspective allows incorrections
Arrogance caused by inexperience
Disasters catapult false fabrications.

The little chapel stands at Walpole
Owned by the independents
Here the grass in the churchyard
Flutters those who knew too well.

Love Mary ***

No one faced it as Picasso
With such an honesty
Baring the truth of
Simply wearing out.
His last portraits,
Full of anxiety,
Eyes laden with fear,
But at least he had it,
That creativity,
To give each day a point.
And what he left us all
Was more than beauty
But the humanity
Shared by all
To take us safely
Home.

Love Mary x


Love Mary ***

As handsome as a lion
Tall with crew cut blonde
Hair and articulate
To the point of nausea.

Too young to give me
The eye or a glance
But was my brother's
Friend from The Bec.

The four of us played
Bridge, a heated game
Where intelligence rules
And chance gets a bite.

Paired into twos, competing,
Boyfriend and I, unequal
Richard and Colin, unequal
The serious and comedians.

Sitting opposite our partners
Reading expression, important
Prediction the golden glitter
Siblings had only expectation.

Love Mary x

Is it ever worth being young
So much wasted time
All that glitter that we found
It was lonely in the inside.

Prettier than a sparkly lollipop
Never stopping not to shop
Or to gather finalites on a ride
I will see you to say goodbye.

Love Mary ***

Swinging skirts,  dancing rings
Girls playground, plaits begin
Up against the old brick wall
Hand stands and cartwheels
Revealing all.

What it is to be a girl.

Love Mary

The days come faltering now
My worn out shoes bear stone
In shades of grass they walk
No more the butterflies talk.

Love Mary x

Brightly balloon got marooned
On a wet and windy afternoon
The rope got caught on a boat
Which took to sea with sailing.

On the beach was captain Jim
Swam to waters to pull boat in
Strong and fast grabbed mast
Untied cord and got onboard.

Brightly smiled to be rescued
Riding back on Jim’s nap sack
Together they reach the shore
Time for tea and baked beans.

Love Mary ***

Treasure the path we walked along
It was not chosen but became a song
Not for freedoms are we born
Nor for the cowslips at dawn
But somewhere in our hours
We give to others
More than a smile .

Love Mary ***

It took a long time
Does one forget how
To put into perspective
This life of ours.

A few words locked in me
‘Grandma Mary, just want to
Say thank you for all the
Things that you gave
But no more at the weekend
Love Evelyn.


Love Grandma Mary xxxxx