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262 · Mar 2019
Winter treasures
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2019
Why Winter more watery
Are your tears?
Thay hold to the silence
Of the music that stopped.

A rose and a clementine
A muscician and a clown
A Curate with a Bible
These gatherings we are.

Love Mary ***
261 · Apr 2018
Nuska, a brown mottled cat.
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
I have to go to the pussycat heaven
There to find my friend
That brown mottled tabby thing
That sat on the sofa end.

He'd been about almost all our life
Since marriage a time ago
Saw the babies born to us
Loved them right away.

He was a very treasured cat
We knew he was not well
But suddenly he disappeared
Out our cat- flap door.

A last journey of exploration
Steroids helped him run
Let's really hope dear Nuska
Had one last day of fun.

From Evelyn ,Florence ,Alex and Tasha
To their deavely beloved cat of
Fourteen years .
Love Mary x
261 · Feb 2018
The sisters two
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
The garden leading to her Edwardian house
Came swiftly off the main road
The front path straight and lengthy
With bobble brick edging in grey stone.

Roses gathered irregularly along the borders
And a privet hedge lined the perimeter
Needing lots of attention in the Summer months
A few small trees and bushes broke up the space.

Every year I would visit my mother's sister ,Betty
Very different from my mother in outlook
As the front door opened the aroma of sweetness
Gathered from the year's cooking apple crop.

And so it would be a weekend of difference
Spread out as the art books lining the walls
A collection of shells, labelled with dates and places
Displayed on a trolley and covered with cellophane,
An old piano,  Boosey and Hawks, on a side wall
And record cabinets containing her favourite music
Everything had its place, still, motionless, peaceful.
259 · Jan 2019
Aconites
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
Ballooons bouncing between the stars
Little ladybirds lighting the Lily path
Whirligigs whizzing near an open door
Aconites in ascension this Winter hour.

Love Mary ***
258 · Nov 2018
‘Housey’
Mary Gay Kearns Nov 2018
I stood at the forest gate
Waiting for the hare
And down the road
Came ‘Housey’
Hare completely unaware
His legs were stiff
His arms in gloves
And on his head
A crown
He looked much smarter
Than any frog around.

Love Mary ** Grandma
258 · Dec 2019
In the garden, my friend.
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2019
In the garden ,my friend,
He tends, pulling and digging
Cutting back so hope can Spring
Filling in next year’s spaces
With renewed life.

I have known this slowness
For many a year
Working through paintings
The death of his father
This slowness is my acceptance.

Love Mary x
257 · Aug 2018
Together .
Mary Gay Kearns Aug 2018
In Summer when the dew lays down
And fragrance sears the sky on high
We walk where yellow cowslips dine
And we go so slow.

Love Mary **
257 · Jul 2018
Tales from a bedroom.
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
Four little mice
All dressed nice
Decided they’d
Learn to fly
So made some wings
From plasticine
And things
Stuck on stars
From a sweetie jar
Climbed the ladder
To top of their beds
And floated gracefully
Keeping their head.
My four little mouse
Friends.

Love Mum xxxxx
257 · Jan 2019
Alabasters.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
I found you on a train
Sitting opposite me
Face to face we were
So you could see me.

I had my best coat on
Leather M@S brown
Things in the pockets
Buttons to turn around.

When we got off
The sun was in the sky
Went to see the Alabasters
They were a surprise.

Love Mary **
257 · Apr 2018
A Book with Victoria
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
From' Twopence to Cross the Mersey' we became friends
Finding in each other's soul a companion
And so we trudged, together, pushing the unwieldy pram
Along the streets of Liverpool where the river swam.

Structure, meaning, characterisation, the book had its plan
But we loved dear Helen, little waif from another span.
The waters had their beauty that we could see,
Finding yet another  moment to share a read.



Love Mum ***

Thank you dear Vics for all the good times we had.
256 · Jun 2018
The divers
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
Who are we these people who sit with words
And an audience of silent poetic spectators
Day after day we need to write to be heard
For there is no where else that these words
Can be said, read, understood.

Our country, and habitat matter not
For we are like invisible spirits
Sending out messages
Philosophical statements
Because politics has failed
There is no representative
For the majority.

Our words a last plunge
For freedom
In a world of autocracy.
So we dive deep
Swim out against the waves
Floating in waters of truce
Hoping that we can
Make a difference
However small
To enlighten,
Comfort
And share
The best we can find
Of our humanity.

Love Mary xxxx
Thank you poets
256 · Jan 2019
The Tree.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
The tree stood for thousands of years
Its evolutionary path an unimaginable
Journey
Nothing disturbed either its pattern
Nor days;
A new virus evolved blowing its way
Eating its bark and destroying its leaves
Its pattern broken
Took fastly and down it fell
Leaving all that had passed
Behind;
Only rings and fossils
Tell of its life’s secrets
Crustationes carried in the wood.

Love Mary ***
255 · Mar 2018
Halves
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
I feel you slip in beside me
We sleep as two curled
Cashew halves
Sitting inside each other
Naked flesh close, embedded
In a permanence of love.

Love Mary ***
To my darling Roger for so many years of warmth and cuddles .Love you for ever .Take care my dearest boy .Xxxxx
253 · Jul 2018
On the bench.
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
On the bench sits Roger
My lovely old codger
Long, silky, grey hair
A beard that rambles
Everywhere,
Two soft, brown eyes
Gentle hands
A book to read
That is my man.

Love to Roger from Mary ***
253 · Feb 2018
A gentle touch
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
The room was full of a quiet light,
She lay back in the chair
Letting peace find her,
Cradle her in its arms.
Everything seemed still.
Then she noticed the curtain
At the bottom,
About the height of a child,
Moving.
She said it was like a baby
tapping it from behind.
She had to go over, eventually, and look.
Nothing and no reason for the curtain
To have done that.

She had longed so much
Just for some comfort.
To know he lived
And lived her as she had
Lived him.
She was very emotional
When she called to tell me.
She said "Mummy at least I know he's ok...
I am so sure it was him."
She just felt after all this time,
That he was letting her know,
He was there.

A few weeks after, she found out
She was expecting a baby.
A sister, Bonnie, for Alfie.
He was letting her know,
She was coming.
Sometimes,
Time is different in immortality....
to how we see it.

Pam's beautiful phrasing/words in a poem
By me.
Love Mary ***
253 · Oct 2018
Autumn Beauty
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
And so they cluster frilly spinning dancers
Across the Autumn stage
Yellow centred bodices
The lilac, white and cerise petals
Of Michaelmas Daisy remembered
Each year flowering for us always.

Love Mary x
252 · Jan 2019
My invisible.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
My Invisible friend.

If I pass you bye on that day,
Please don’t judge me as I rush away.
If I fail to see you,
Don’t presume I even knew
How to discover or trace you...

Call my name my heart will soar.....

My invisible friend no more...
Written by Pam Turner for me as I fade.
Love And thank you Mary xxxxx
251 · Jul 2019
Rememberance
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2019
There was silence at the station
The waves crawled up the beach
The angels blew their trumpets
The seagulls gathered in heaps.

One hundred and one jellyfish
Spreading out in golden bands
And a line of iced cream cones
Danced along the yellow sands.

Love Mary xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2019
It may take years for poetry to be acknowledged but when it is
Great truths unfold 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
Selfinterested and infested.
So dear poets write for humanity that your words touch those servants of change.
Altering understanding
To the reality of nature’s innocence and the wickedness of
history and humankind.


Love Mary xxxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2019
Cousin Jennifer sat two rows in front
In white dress, a handmade cardigan
My nan’s works annual Christmas do
There were two tickets for me and you
I wondered about you, never met before
A once in a life time meeting I saw.

Love Mary ***
250 · Mar 2018
Silent light
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Light falls softly its mellow tints
Caressing all that is touched
A girl in traditional Dutch dress
Holds back her tears ,and,
Placing finger tips
On the keys she begins to play
A quiet melody.

We cannot see her sadness
For it is hidden by position
So she cries in silence
To the mirror above
The rectangle of answers
And to her left a young man
Watches, without a word to offer.

Love Mary x
After Vermeer The Music Lesson
249 · Apr 2019
Tangent
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2019
People just fooling around
With others minds
Bending what was standing straight
Crushing crooked the uncluttered
Web of simplicity until one is blind
Please in this desperate hour
Open the windows of awareness
Where the Spring bulbs flower.

Love Mary
248 · Mar 2018
Ever
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
The garden sweet
But the indoor roses
Will not keep
Not for times
Ever wanting chime
To linger longer
But do not weep.

Love Mary **
Love to my family and thank you .***
248 · Feb 2019
The tales of two cities.
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2019
The coppice was full of bird songs
And daffodils so fair
But I can no longer see them
For my eyes are dim with dispair.

Could not reach the truth
It was taken without heart
Lies broken somewhere
Stuck in a conjuror’s throat.

Mary ***
248 · Oct 2019
Thé Flow
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2019
Trembling I lift the curtain
To let in the morning lightly
Time has taken away its beauty
Falsing the temperature down
And I cannot stem the flowing.

I’d found culture in my youth
Explosively exciting ,excruciating
In its weapons of desiring dressage
But now the limpets cling to a soul
Holding high the corsets of a cage.

love Mary
248 · Aug 2019
Repaint.
Mary Gay Kearns Aug 2019
Today lent itself to lending
Borrowed number
One hundred and four
The care carrying gardener.

Now the Robbina is robbed
Of half its branches
The grass a carpet
Of strewn lances.

And Rosalind
The pretty repaint
Sits on the shelf
And smiles.

Love Mary **
247 · Apr 2018
A sigh
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
That late hour after school
When all is mellow and gentle
The quiet light licks the sides of things
Making pale shadows as we begin.
Unroll the mackintosh and onto
The ground put out our frugal
Tea that we may eat after
Climbing the trees.

For these times are long past
But to see all the leaves
And stones in the dry earth
And feel that warmth of you
Our mum and the courage
She had. For that walk
Was not an easy trek when tired
And your eyes only wanting
A sigh as we both played
It was such as is given
By a poor man.


Love Mary





Love Mary x
For her mother Grace with lots of happy memories ***
246 · Jul 2018
At the station
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
On the seat my legs would swing
letting a shimmer of party dress,
Under light coat, catch the light
Of the humid Summer sunset.

Outings rare as we waited the
Twitch of electricity, flashing,
And the train rolling into view
Coming around a sharp bend.

Lifting possessions we boarded
Finding a seat near the window
Watching the sodium lights
Turn orange in the darkening.

Watford to Euston in twenty minutes
Only one stop at Harrow and Wealdstone.
We disembarked through ticket barriers
And up the sloping tiled floor to Euston.

Love Mary x
246 · Aug 2018
The chess set .
Mary Gay Kearns Aug 2018
Here I stand in the row
Waiting to get my prize
The needlework certificate
I choose a chess set
Not to play chess
But because I liked
Shapes .

They would be my family
Mum and dad ,
Prefects at school
Brothers and sisters
An unusual menagerie
Of souls
On a black and white board.


Love Mary x
244 · Apr 2018
A Wintery spell.
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
The weather speaks its wintery tale
On this last day of April
Sending mayhem into bush and tree
Shaking the blossoms in their break
For bud.
The Bride drops her veil
Under Flowering Cherry wings
Red Camelia broaches
Fall as from a night at the theatre
Lost forever in a carpet of dreams.
Around the perimeter
Everything sways
And the blue cloaked conductor
Orchestrates from
The washing line .

Love Mary
243 · Nov 2018
When it rains.
Mary Gay Kearns Nov 2018
She opens her tin
And in liliaceous
Paints rain drops
Big drops, small
Drops and splashes.

A background of
Pale grey washes
Allows the drops
Of rain to settle
Creating spaces.

Then in come the
Animal people
With curly hair
And bright hats
To keep off the rain.

It is fun to paint
Getting into worlds
You don’t know
And play and dance
While it rains outside.


Love Mary *** Grandma x
242 · Jan 2018
The Empty Field
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
The Empty Field

In a cornfield lay a young girl,
With hazel eyes and brown curls,
Every Sunday she courted him,
After church when the light was dim;
Their love was the sweetest breath,
An unconsummated tenderness,
Lips touching, arms strong,
Did not hear the coming bombs.

Two years in the field they lay,
Grew closer at each passing day,
Spoke their dreams under the sky,
Hoped that neither soon would die;
A ring she wore upon her hand,
Something simple to understand,
His name was Bill and hers Grace,
Unified by a single faith.

At eighteen he went to war,
Left his sweetheart by the shore,
Held her warmth against his chest,
On his shoulders her head did rest;
Then one night she had a dream,
He came to her, it did seem,
To say one last goodbye,
To the girl to be his bride.

She waited but not a word,
From her handsome airforce boy,
Then it came, told how he died,
Flying in the blue so high;
It was the first day of his war,
That took her first love and her joy,
Now in the cornfield under the sky,
The grass has grown where she did lie.

Love Mary
Based on my Mother's life
My mother Grace Emily Westbrook and her first boyfriend Bill .
Based on true events .Mary
242 · Mar 2018
Dear poets
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Follow me dear poets all your days
Take me with you to a land of secrets
The worlds' where you do play.
I know you friends by your words
The poems that you choose
By the names that you call yourselves
The photos unused.

Love Mary **
242 · Jul 2018
NYE BEVAN
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
I remember that first excitement
Flowing through my heart
Pumping the life within
The baby soon to become
A son or daughter.

And I walk in gathered dress
Blue it was, with broderie anglaise
On a square yoke, falling
To above my knee
The doors slid open
Welcoming me in
The reception of life.

Recalling simply kindness,
A resplendent building,
Efficiency.
Open that year, 1970,
All ready for me.
And she was born there
Named after a ward
Katharine Maria
Seven pounds and eight ounces,
Dark hair and eyes,
And I felt loved.

Today, forty seven years on
And where love flourished
Weeds grow
Along the corridors
Of power, the *****
Toilets, empty beds,
No one wants to be
Here anymore.

We all left for home births
Our husbands and families.
Was the decline our fault?
Did our selfish desires
Perpetuate indifference?
I stood and cried
Watching the perfection
Of an idea wash away.

Love Mary x
Watford Maternity Hospital was a magnificent venture .Beautifully equipped , friendly , disciplined by a ward Matron .Babies in nursery to give mothers a rest .Restricted visiting times , great food, selection hot drinks before bed.Oh the drinking chocolate and Ovaltine and Horlick .Nurses to help breast feeding and bathing of baby .We had a good rest , we made friends .We took it all for granted and wanted to go home quickly to be with partners .Could not appreciate how special a sanctuary it was.Never cared for or loved as much by strangers .Hardly used now all go home after six hours if can and most of the wards have become general medicine .If only we had realised the beauty of what we were given.Love Mary x
241 · Dec 2018
Covers .
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
I struggle to pull the bed covers
In this little room of walls
Surrounded by images
That touch my soul
And days and hours
And folds.


Its been coming a long time
The whispering in the dark
The jackal on the road
The night shadow
And the lark
Singing.

Love Mary ***
241 · Mar 2018
A child's delight
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
There in a garden with flower beds
Laid out with a patch of green between
And old pink roses smelling of cold cream
Spread out in an oval ring
Asparagus fern blows in the wind
Sending its red seeds into the lawn
The birds sing in a damson tree
And I sit upon a rubber tyre swing.

So I recall those warmest days
When there was nothing but play
And the quietness of those times
When my mind was mine
Never went away.

Dear little girl in your simple dress
Lying with the sun
Watching the shadows move about
Their shapes cast on the ground.
Finding only what was good
Under the prickly gooseberry bush
And ants and snails to watch all day
With fondness and respect.

But time and peace end in ways
None of us expect
But the Beauty of those years
None of us regret.


Love Mary ***
240 · Jan 2019
Last journey.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
Wisdom is not born but grows
Harboured under great uncertainty
Found from a struggled life
Known at the end as beauty
The integrity of the soul’s
Last journey.

Love Mary ***
237 · Dec 2018
Eloped.
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
The morning lay hazy in the blue
A fantasy of candy floss mists and dew
The trees on either side of the road
Water colour Cotman patches of ochre
Dabs gently mixing
Caressing the unclothed hedges
Where berries formed
And what we shared
Eloped the earth.

Love Mary ***
236 · Apr 2018
The undeniable boy
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
The daylight paraded through the stainglass heart
Clipping the edge of the stairs with dancing hues
The boy tall and fair picked up his bag
Stepped outside with a menagerie of thoughts
Into his world where the alligators were friendly.

He was a flaneur, in the making, after Manet
With the odd misspelling and circumvent
Adding a silky flourish to filtered words.
But was it enough to guarantee sixth form grade?
His propensity for idleness a growing concern.

Getting to the shops, early, before school
The boy bought another pair of white shoes
White was his favourite, a sort of purity.
It helped, this buying of things, to dissipate
The consumption of unending urban terrors.


Love Grandma ***
Love you so much dear grandson.Grandma xxxx
235 · Mar 2019
Queenie
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2019
Beautiful black girls
With their fuzzie hair
Arms in abundance
Rich golden words
Oh how they give
Speaking of mandkind
Let me dance with you
Our knees pat and beat
Fingers tough together
Then the music speaks.
235 · Sep 2019
What are words.
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2019
‘I am an ideas babe’
That’s what my granddaughter said
She is just five.

Love Grandma xxxxx
235 · Sep 2019
You remembered.
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2019
It wasn’t always that you loved me
Sitting on the floor with crossed legs
But now when the tide left driftings
You came to me with your words
And I remembered even in the sky
You wrote my name with stars.

Love Grandma Mary xxxx
235 · May 2019
Parties
Mary Gay Kearns May 2019
I suppose parties could be fun
Dressed up all prettily by Mum
Present in hand here we stand
On the front step
Like in the Ladybird book.

The door opens into Jane’s world
Hand over your coat to someone.
Down the linoleum hallway,
Into the front room of delights
Dropped handkerchief on floor.

Two cut - out books for party girl
She’s opening my sparkly cat card
The one with a feather and pearls
The paper piles up on a chair
Susan’s mother announces tea.
234 · Nov 2019
Ipad you.
Mary Gay Kearns Nov 2019
You are my earth bound chatterbox
Showing the world off to its best
The party always begins when you
Switch me on and finishes with an off.

Love grandma **
233 · Mar 2019
The wild swans at Coole.
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2019
The Wild Swans at Coole.
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
233 · Aug 2019
Collection point.
Mary Gay Kearns Aug 2019
He collects his bag
Catches the bus
Returning with two items
From town centre.

Tomorrow; gardener,
Lady sort.
First gardener in fifty years
Mowing grass, bush cutting.

He wonders how far
He has come after that call
Stating changes
The dust settles slowly.

Love Mary xxxx
232 · Jul 2019
Mayhems.
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2019
They give you this
To hide
The pain
That hacks the brain.

And all the blame
Of man disdained,
Dismounted.

The blight on the rose
Hesitated, grey dust
Mildewed, mated.

The cabinet makers’
Opened the latch
Threw the petals in.

Love Mary **
232 · Nov 2018
Woven love .
Mary Gay Kearns Nov 2018
Those rugs were your years
In patterns and shapes
Majestic remnants of
Outer wear cut and woven
To make rugs to keep
Us all warm.

Love Mary
231 · Feb 2018
To a boy called George.
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
I told you yes when I meant no
I told you a lie about caring so
I told my dad I was shy
That you unkind
I began to cry.

He met the boy
And told him why
I did not turn up
He told a lie
Now is time to tell the truth
I'm sorry
I misunderstood
What was right
And what was strong
Not to tag you along.

You had one bad eye
And I was scared
I was uncomfortable
I am aware
So please forgive
It was me was blind
Sorry that I was so unkind.

Love Mary
231 · Jan 2018
The paddling pool
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
The Paddling Pool.

Leaves decorate its surface
Like tiny bobbing boats,
Hands swish the clear water
Against a background of blue paint;
Tips of seedheads from the Sycamore trees,
Float their aeroplane wings.
Always in shade
This edge of the pool
Gathers the year's dusty weather
In its gully.
Trousers rolled, skirts tucked into knickers,
The children paddle;
Not minding the stone sharps
Beneath feet.
Gritty from recent storms,
It is still a delight
Under the trees
In the evening sun.

Cassiobury Park in the 1970's
By Mary Kearns
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