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 ***

By the river just outside Paris George Seurat
Painted his tree trunks using black conte crayon
In a cream sketchboook
The year was 1893.
Critics say of this work,
All most black,
That it is hovering between
Regularity and irregularity
Reversing the lights and shades
I think he was just trying to get it right.

Love Mary x

integrity
ɪnˈtɛɡrɪti/Submit
noun
1.
the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
"a gentleman of complete integrity"
synonyms: honesty, uprightness, probity, rectitude, honour, honourableness, upstandingness, good character, principle(s), ethics, morals, righteousness, morality, nobility, high-mindedness, right-mindedness, noble-mindedness, virtue, decency, fairness, scrupulousness, sincerity, truthfulness, trustworthiness
"I never doubted his integrity"
2.
the state of being whole and undivided.
"upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty"
synonyms: unity, unification, wholeness, coherence, cohesion, undividedness, togetherness, solidarity, coalition
"internal racial unrest threatened the integrity of the federation"


honesty
ˈɒnɪsti/Submit
noun
1.
the quality of being honest.
"they spoke with convincing honesty about their fears"
synonyms: moral correctness, uprightness, honourableness, honour, integrity, morals, morality, ethics, principle, (high) principles, nobility, righteousness, rectitude, right-mindedness, upstandingness; More
2.
a European plant with purple or white flowers and round, flat, translucent seed pods which are used for indoor flower arrangements.


Thank you English Dictionary
Love Mary

And the trouble I'm in
But oh the beauty it brought me
In between
And I dance in my dresses as loud as could be
And bounce off garden walls
Happy in the breeze.
Collect pretty buttons and put them in a tin.
I've always been crazy
Did I ever win?

Swayed in the arms of another
Stamping the floor of my dreams
Carried the flowers
Picked by a stream
Pink, blue and white
From the groves of delight.
But I've always been crazy
And that's how it ends.

Love Mary x

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

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 ***

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

So many have I watched
Falling, dripping, rolling
From the clouds to earth.
Catching in my mouth
The taste of dust.
Trickling between cloth and skin,
The groove in my chest.
And the splashes fill the puddles
At my feet where I stand
I'll be a single drop of rain
In the palm of your hand.

Love Mary **

Find a Daisy and pick it up
From garden fronts
The gathering begins
A few leaves on a stem, fluttering,
Snap!
And in a pocket lays
Side by side
To a thread of black eyed germanium
And thé peppery seeds of aquilegias
Falling into seam corners,
Creeping up pathways
Hollyhock rings put in
And then take a chance
With stem of pink pearly,
Ceanothus.
Collection complete for Monday
Trot home to find compost
Then *** up in the sun.
My little treasures from
The free world .

Love Mary **

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 ***

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 **

Why have your teeth fallen out
And your hair turned grey?,
Said the child with golden locks
And an inquisitive tongue
Which swept around words
And tasted thoughts
Like a juicy vitamin pill.

Her Grandma who was old
But had a mind which curled
Like the scraps of a ponytail
Explained that this is how age is
Changing one like a chameleon
To a different state
They smiled together.


Love Grandma Mary x

The children stood the sea beside
In toes the seaweed hair
A row of beauty just begun
To float a sparkle in the air.

Love Mummy **

Tell me a story Daddy one about
When you were in the war.
That time your boat got bombed
And you nearly went down with it all.
Of how you lay on the ship deck
Motionless, frightened and still
Fearing your body was covered
In blood, but only a sea water spill.
Of how pleased you were to be safe
Just splashed by the salty spray
From that enemy torpedo that suddenly
came spinning your way.
And then how you were rescued
After hours floating in the sea
You all waved to a passing troopship who stopped and carried you free.

Daddy tell me about your days in the army
When you climbed the pyramids high
You mates that drowned in the water
Those for whom you had said goodbye.
The Little girl, in Egypt,
sitting on your knee,
Her clothes ragged and tatty,
Her hair a mass of black beads.
Sunshine in the tropics, a bunch of photographs,
They help me tell your story
For that I am very glad.

Daddy tell me a story one about when you were in the war.
We haven't had any wars lately
Not in this country I can recall.

Love Mary ***

In remembrance of my dear Daddy whom I loved so much.
All sitting round the red Formica kitchen table eating Sunday lunch and hearing about your army days. ***

Little crown of gold resting on green
Each floret a circular gem, a princess
A friend, healer sustainer, nature into
Flower laid in the grasses as I walk by.

Love Mary ***

Behind almost all things
Where the trees meet the edge of the frame
It could have been not this but that
In the distance is a darker shape
Its  position decided on a collection.


Falling like snow without regularity
The canvas surface is patches of colour
Horizontals and verticals intersect
The park with its green avenues
Glides in and out of a century of stories.


Its conclusion resting
On a final brush stroke.

Love Mary xxxxx

Floaty in your flowery dress
Its layered skirts spill out
And climb you do
The wooden slide
Under the ancient tree.

Your feet do add a child’s dance
Strapped sandals in the sun
And all the while your sister plays
Beating her own trunk song
A dream time for the young.

Love Grandma Mary  x

Brave little ducks
Swimming in the water
Brave little ducks
Doing what they oughta.

Along came a swan
A black necked swan
And the little duck
Went quack quack.

Love Grandma xxo

By the time I got to see him
He was an old man grey hair
Thinly combed across his head
Still loquacious, bending over
Stewed apples gathered from
A wind swept garden of falls.

A proud collector of knowledge
Across boundaries and wisdom
Stretching age ‘youthfully ‘at gate,
City centre and poetry recitals  
With copies of books for selling.

Love Maryxxx

Millions of stars
Budding into life
Filling the universe
With coloured light
From the exploding
New planets born
But nothing to guide
No morals formed,
Just indifference
Circles the globe
What is the purpose
No one knows.

Love Mary **

Falling sun’s rays
Roof tops crisp
Triangles with chimney pots
Plum cherry blossom white
To match my daughter’s rose.

Love Mummy **

Sailor sail on by today
And cowboy hold me
I will love all that is you
And the tree will stay in
The night sky.

Love Mary ***

Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close *****-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

‘Stain upon the silence’, Samual Beckett said.
Have we all done this?
Thomas Hardy’s  poem
‘The Darkling thrush’.

Have I left my stain
Can you hear my call
‘In my poem ‘Even the Birds’?

Did I make it through
All those words and rhymes
To find something worth the saying?

Love Mary **’

Oh I love your dancing
Tapping out the beats
Joe Sugg with Dianne
Red hair to the roots.

Quirk of the Charleston
Bad boy of the Street
Thatcher of countryside
Took Strickly by sweep.


Love Mary 2018

Scraping before the rain.

Arriving on time ,
Before the rain had begun to fall,
Took the wire brush from his bag,
One to replace his father's,
Which now remained a garage relic
It's few bristles showing years of use.
Brought back memories,
That sound of scraping,
As he cleared the years debris.
So much learnt from that man,
Respected and loved by a son.
Now doing the same for others,
Scraping before the rain.

By Mary

Xxxx

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

Then she realised, as we all do,
That to be free she had to give it up
Give away the beauty that clung to her
The perfumed roses filled with bees
From the splashing pools of water lilies
And move to somewhere more hidden
Where what mattered was not life itself
But giving it away
Slowly and gently
Letting the seabirds
Carry her clothes far out
Over the gold
Where all that playing had gone on
And shells gathered
Open oneself and throw
These shingled things to the sky
And not worry anymore
Just let it go.


Love Mary **

With bruise I uplift all my sorrow
On scratch and pain now leaching out
And hurt so long no longer feel
Where tenderness caresses bone.

Love Mary x

Picking icicles from window
Sharp and cold under cut nail
And wetness into cuff of dress
With water in stains on wall.

Each breath a melt and flow
Drips as metamorphosis go
The sky a heavenly promise
Of snowflight by nightfall.

Love Mary x

Hands, rough, gather up two handfuls
Tugging the brown-gold silk into piles
Feeling the chafing on back of my neck
Its tender movement is loved as comb.

A sharp scratch from crown to the nape
Tortoiseshell plastic slightly dusty grey
Divided, plaited, and tied with bands to
Black nylon ribbons, you kiss forehead.

Love Mary ***

A girl went to a party dressed as a fairy.
At sixteen what was she thinking?
Her wings made from nylon stockings
With cut off bottoms and sequin pins
Sewn on in a succession of rings.

All glittery bold in green tights
And hair curled with peroxide highlights,
She really must have looked a treat;
As the powder pink began to sink
And black mascara dribbled ink.

The fairy dissolved in tears and ice,
Ran screaming from the party house
Down the street in a tatty torn gown,
Until she was found and brought around.
This fairy needed to learn to fly.

Love Mary x

A silver dale stagelit on silhouetted horizon
Treasured musing in grassy hedgerows at dask
A walk under spells of secret cat calls
And hark the birds take night in flight.

You pretty of shade and hour have hope
Thank goodness you now fair long to become
The flower of days when Summer you danced
And woods rang gaily to the tuneful hum.

Love Mary ***

The grass yellow topped wet Winter
Separates forming trodden pathway
Between overhanging bare branches
A child might squeeze cautious now
The damp hangs like crystal pearls
Through we peep.

Love Mary ***

A cheeky robin sat upon brambles
Its red breast puffed and bright
Had fed on scraps from birdtables
A little king at rest.

Love Mary ***

We are but patterns
Made at a certain point
Our love and desires
Are patterns too
No different than
The leaves on a rose stem
Or spirals on a shell
When a pattern is disrupted
The organism dies.
But what is created by love
And empathy remains
Like poetry, music, painting
And literature to be experienced
As patterns
Love remains in the memory
Of those we loved
It is simple really.

Love Mary xxxx

Whenever my mother went out
There was a place I knew about
Not far away up the stairs
Behind white painted bars
Along a dark and narrow hall
Came to a locked bedroom door.
Took the silver chiselled key
Turned it gently as could be
Lest I be heard
Intrepid invader of secret world’s.



Love Mary x

See branch oh cherry blossom ripe
Below Payne’s haunted sky of grey
In mornings rain dripped clouds on high
The pink now wetted held to bough.

Love Mary x

Finding you ‘Tumbleweed’ was such a gift
A heart exposed, a gentle kiss
Laughter and smiles in the morn
The fun of joy each day reborn.

Build me your world in a picture
Of animals with big soft eyes
Remember how I loved you
Talking as you ate your breakfast.

Love Grandma xxxx

We live near the corner
Where two roads cross
Trees to the right
Give beauty and light
Ever changing colour
The Sycamore and the Pine
A Hawthorn  blossom, cerise
In Spring time;
Today this place
Is spread with snow
Patterned tracks
Where the cars go
Over garden walls
Ice drips stripes
Of frozen crystals
In the grey light;
This corner where we live
Is always a delight
A very spectacular sight.


Love Mary

Summer has arrived I see you dancing
Outside a soho bar, gorgeous woman
Humour sharp as ice, heels longer than
Cocktail sticks.

It is five is in the morning and you
Are shopping, food to start the day
The train rattles, jangling the wrist bands.
You uncross your legs, unlatch the door.

The children are dressing, bags scatter the
Work tops. You grab two hands
To walk the two miles to school.

Love Mum

We are walking with our long strides
Keeping time to the day
Finding hands beating music
As our feet skip away
And my knees take the floorway
Turn to you and say
It is now forever
That my loves here to stay
Then we join in the hoping
Fill the hallway with light
We are travelling in moonlight
For an everlasting night.

Love Mary x

She would toddle off unaccompanied
In a short Summer dress and cardigan
That few brisk yards across the close
It would be early and the child small.

This was a regular feature of dailies
And the old man and little girl had
Great fun in his large back garden
With tea and a marmite sandwich.

Love Mum xxxx

The lank winter stretched for days
Along the lanes and on hedge tops
Yet buds appear on new rose stems
Promising leaves for this year now.

If I had a kindling of the loves flame
It would for the ‘Bill Viola’ exhibition,
The mother holding her dead child
Crucified through misunderstanding.

Never let lack of empathy guide you
Or fill a heart weighed down, hurting
For the huntsman finds that cruelty
And wraps it in words of forgiveness.

Love Mary ***

In the middle of nowhere Evelyn thought,
Starting somewhere where time had stopped
And yet still it did not end like the Zoo train
With its certain length and specific destinations;
She clambered over memories, digging deep
Then it came that feeling where joy inhabited
And a warmth glowed up to join together
The parts that she had missed and not known;
The chair had been vacant, but for a few toys,
Scatterings of pleasures taken when not vacant,
She loved this turning over of her small hands,
It had been grandma's chair bequeathed to
A little girl loved so much the wind ached
And the clouds sobbed at their separation.
But the chair with its shifting images
Was where love resided, safely,
And Evelyn found what she needed
Cherishing that which remained.


Love Mary x

I asked a cricket if he please
Could come and play a game
With me
The wind was soft, the sky fair
He loved to touch my golden hair.

We jumped the pond in half a bounce
Travelled the bridge in delight
Then underneath the chestnut tree
He came, we both lay down to read
And I had made a friend that day
Please don’t ever go away.

Love Mary ***

When the water melted on the pond
The ducks slept in the green reeds
The moorhens, fluffy black, red beak
Kept close to their mother for warmth.

We hope for the bulbs to shoot bright
Knocking the world with lightening
The colour of sunshine in a paintbox
And all will be well for another year.

Love Mary xxxx

The candelabras light up
Down avenues of parks
Palest of yellow and pink
Against Summer’s green.

I see the old climbing logs
But which place declining
The dead wood of childhood
Or today’s magic shining

And skipping along the path
I know not here or there
Only that lighted candelabras
Were fleshy in the air.

Love Mary **

Citrus green of early morning sun
Interrupted by a woman’s shadow
As she looks where land meets sky
In the freshness of another Autumn.

Over the fields, past the evergreens
A silhouette of stillness newly open
Surprised in the glancing light here
A stopping place to hold ones breath.

Love Mary ***

In a field at the edge where
The Burnet's reproduced
Their dark wings with six red spots
Giving birth on our hands
From inside their chrysalis.

Mating from egg, larvae
To pupae and adult moth
Took about three weeks
We went almost everyday
The hot sun stroking our backs.

This was our moth Summer
Guiding our courtship with
Fluttering wings and newness
Stepping through the railings
To gain this precious time.