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203 · Apr 2018
The cats are back
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
Evelyn whispers to her plastic cats
That they are all girls
The boys come in sheep and piglets
And hide under cardboard, gravelling.
She likes to crunch the kittens into
One section of the many
In the title play case
“Kitty in my pocket”
That I bought her.

Love Grandma ***
202 · 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
202 · Jul 2018
A scattering of imagination
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
Down the isles of wooden trestles
Set out in a quietly painted hall
The children look for the familiar.
Things, lost, things from loved sets
Pieces remembered and missed.
Clutching small change and a bag
They roam, searching the emptying
Surfaces in the hope of recovering.

Some children are selective buying little
Only the important objects that inspire
An unusual fossil, book on ammonites.
A collection of perfect My Little Ponies.
Then the scrambler children who stuff bags
To overflowing with excited assortments
Picked almost at random for a chance
Their to be explored strewn across kitchen
Table with an audience of friends.

There was always a late arrival just as doors
Were about to close and tea hatch latched.
As crowds diminished, looking became easier
Finding that magic dropped on the floor.

Love Mary x
202 · 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
201 · Jun 2019
We need to talk.
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2019
The journey made together
was  from unusual parts
Not described in travel journals
Or found on catalogue displays

Listening as it did to hardships
Courage and the wings of a dove
Sweeping the gauntlet of choice
Honour and the white stars above.

Love Mary ***
201 · Mar 2018
Daisy got up early.
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Daisy got up early
Just as the day began
Clipped in her earrings
Combed her brown hair
Put on the clothes
At the bottom of the bed
Looked in the mirror, quickly,
Then went and got fed.
The breakfast room was cosy
All the family there
They all shared cornflakes
Burnt toast in the air
Then time for coat on
And run up the road
Working for the people
The ones she does not know
A good person is Daisy
Found what she's about
Writing gave her a mission
To fight others' plight.


Love Grandma ***
For my lovely granddaughter Daisy xxxx
200 · Apr 2018
Permanence, transience.
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
We sit together collecting,
Gathering out thoughts into
A permanence that will last
Stroking them as we neaten
Each flat with our kisses
They hold our beginning
And roll up our end
For though we were
And evermore maybe
I must go
And you must stay
To look after the garden
That I made.

Love Mary ***
To my darling love Mary
200 · Apr 2018
Back of the bike
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
Oh my pretty one you sit so still
Not a wiggle or a shuffle
Even in the chill
Your coat is red
Hat white fur
My baby bunnykins
The miles we saw.

Love Mary x
For my Lizzie love Mum ***
200 · Jan 2018
Bonny child
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
Bonny Child

What shall I teach you
My Bonny child
The history of England
Written for our hour
The places I visited
Are but few
You will do better
I'm not in the que
All that is good and wholesome and true
These are the words I'd tell to you
Yet as I speak them and watch your heart grow
I know there is something you ought to know
If we do our best there is no guarantee
That life will be splendid
Happy as can be.
So what can I teach you
My Bonny child
What words of wisdom
Can be your flower
All I can say
Is I'll be by your side
Put myself second
Give you a smile .

For Alex , Tasha and Evelyn who do it well .
199 · 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
199 · Oct 2018
The wings .
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
Let winter be me in harvest fairy breast
No dipping of moon to touch the sky
For undo I can’t the flower and bud
And shallow in my journey do fly .

By Mary ***
197 · 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 ***
196 · Jun 2018
Autumn half-term
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
They dipped in Serpentine with shoes
The leaves of Autumn sail side up
And children, four, remember now
In pleasure, wind swept, hair filled days.

Love Mary xxxx
195 · 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
194 · 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 ***
193 · Mar 2018
A flower's Beauty.
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Although I wore my best wings
Which took me as fast as light
And though I ran trembling
All through the night
Even if I called your name
I knew you could not hear
The distance was too difficult
More than any words.

So taking from my back
I put down my wings
Picked up a flower
And we began to sing
Saw in this beauty
All that you were
But just could not
Get to you, anymore.

Love Mary x
193 · May 2019
Borage.
Mary Gay Kearns May 2019
‘It was my borage’, said the woman
Seemingly in extreme surprise
That he wanted it.
It was their Wedding Anniversary day
Thé 21 st of May
Forty nine years ago
As usual peace
Smiled on
In the fridge.

Love Mary ***
193 · Jun 2019
Tumble.
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2019
When you tumble out of bed
Knickers round your head
You begin to float around
And the ladybird falls down
Onto a floor of soft brown.

Love Mary x
193 · Jan 2019
Far out.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
Far out a small seabird called
Across the peaks and troughs
It was lost, laying out timely
Memories in its mind
Ones to carry carefully
In the dark night.
Beruffled and brave no longer
In the the harsh storm
Trailing its tail feathers
In an attempt to reach
The bliss of oblivion
And curl up forever.

Love Mary ***
192 · 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 **
192 · May 2018
The best of things
Mary Gay Kearns May 2018
Bonfire Night .

Under night sky its navy soot
Circular spirals of movement
We children watched
As dad opened the box
Mum gave out chestnuts
And humbugs
In our long back garden.

A match took off
Sending shivering sparkles
Upwards in coloured lights
Then the falling to earth
To dissolve
Melting into the cosmos
As sugar in a glass.

Cocoa in a mug
Surrounded by love
This was a best day
Of my life.


Love Mary ***
Thank you to my parents for all their love .
No one loves you as a parent does.Mary
191 · Mar 2018
You put it down
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
On the grass you laid down your palette
Usually, white, two yellows, two reds,
Two blues and occasional viridian green.
From these you could mix every colour
You might need.
With sensitivity and a palette knife
You brought the avenue of trees to life.
It depended on mood or season of light
The temperature of day
The time must be right.
Sometimes limited colours
Helped to create
The surface's luminosity
Using yellow ochre
red, black and white.

Love Mary ***
191 · Nov 2018
Even the birds (2)
Mary Gay Kearns Nov 2018
Where did it come from that perpetual silence,
Hanging in the air becoming thought,
The birds knew it before the dawn calling,
And embracing lovers touched by a first kiss,
Perhaps in the waiting there are moments

Love Maryx
191 · 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
190 · Jan 2019
Running.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
Small one, did you catch the ‘hello’ running
Between the Sycamore trees
And catch a winged seed head
As it floated down to breathe.

For the table is laid for supper
Garnished with all you gave
And I will catch you running
Running on quite brave.

Love Mary ***
190 · Apr 2018
Bluebell and Daisy
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
The first daisy was your first flower
As if you knew not its name but its power
Caressing fingers found as the sun shone .

Love Mary
Grandma
190 · 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
190 · Oct 2018
My children.
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
My children, four children
Always little children
Be happy children
Under the Autumn sky
Mummy says goodbye.

Love Mary xxxx
Sorry my lovely four , you gave me so much love .
Mummy
189 · Feb 2018
A birthday to remember
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
A birthday to remember

Today I'm three what a surprise,
We're all going for a ride,
Off to the find a secret place,
Filled with colours, a landscape,
Inside the halls are brilliant lights,
I can walk and run about,
Mummy follows close behind,
I can even hold her hand;
Then there's music from a band,
All is wonderful I do expand;
Now it's time for home and tea,
Daddy made a cake for me,
I watch the candle as it blows,
Another birthday and so it goes.
Thank you all my family,
For taking care and loving me.

Love Grandma for Evelyn ***
188 · Sep 2018
The ditches
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2018
Not know the cold that froze in heart
For blister it brought to thought its friend
For bare it spread the land to take
In ditches left lame a scream in pain.

Love Mary x
187 · Sep 2019
Could have been.
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2019
I could have been so much more
One of those girls who was seen on stage
Dancing the red lipstick off the page
Chasing sparks out the window of love
But I died earlier than time allowed.
So goodbye..


Love Mary xxxxx
186 · Jun 2018
The photograph
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
You expect a caress when together
But too shy her nearness frightened
So arms held straight to girl’s side
Both stiff and awkward in company
The mother-in-law looked at camera
And the girl faced the grassy lawn
She remembered this action years on
And regretted how youth falls short
Of love in embarrassment and desire.

Love Mary x
For Gertie my very dear mother- in - law who I cam to love dearly and misss still today .Love Mary
186 · 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
186 · Dec 2018
Toy whistle.
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
Oh mother I remember you creeping
So quietly in your quiet slippers
On Christmas evening so late
After the street lights had gone out
Up to our bedrooms.

And holding red crepe bound net
Stockings filled with all that you had
Place these one at the foot of my bed
And one at the foot of my brother’s
Each one filled with a tangerine:-

A pink or white sugar mouse with
String tail and red sugar piped eyes,
Chocolate money, rubber end pencil,
A cardboard card of four tiny plastic
Baby dolls with stuck on dresses;

And a few other treasures to surprise;
A tinsel bauble, ribbons and slides,
A toy whistle and a silver crown;
My mother’s purse was never full
But her heart was and so loved.

Love Mary xxxx
186 · 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
185 · Apr 2018
The back of your coat
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
Ate holes in my heart
It was humble in the way
Quality without exuberance
Maintains.
There was a slight flap at the bottom
Below which showed your tanned
Stockings and low heeled brogue shoes.
You left my house after tea to be home
Before nightfall where my father
Would meet you at the bus stop.
Your greying hair cut short in waves
Peeped from under a headscarf.
I walked you to the path where
No longer were you in sight
As you turned a bend onto the
Main road to catch your bus.
At this point I felt every texture
Of your tweed coat, its solidity,
I longed to hide inside and get
On that bus returning with you
Forever.

Love Mary **
For my dear Gracey love Mary her daughter.xxxxx
#o
185 · Nov 2018
Time passed to chew.
Mary Gay Kearns Nov 2018
Along the line of shops at the bottom
Was a sweettie shop
Sunday afternoon and father fetched out sixpence
Whilst he watched the television sport
‘Go down to Martins and get a bag of chewy nuts,
Sherbet spinning discs and liquorice laces’
Put on my shoes and flew
There and back in a flash
Brother, dad, mum and I
Sat, ******, munched
Glued to the black
And white set.

Love Mary ***
.
185 · Oct 2018
Pam’s poem
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
Truth

Autumn and her berries come

Bringing warmth oh fire crave

Embers to the summer gone

A vision life takes
Mortals look for free

Tomorrow green on green we see

Not a dream
TRUTH
This was written by Pam for me .Love and thank you Mary xxxx
183 · Jul 2018
Cabbage White.
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
Down in the field where the dandelions grow
I took off my knickers and away did flow
Up on the hillside with a swish of my hat
Caught Cabbage White butterflies doing that.

Love Mary x
182 · 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
182 · Jun 2019
The beginning 1968
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2019
Flowered cotton smocked dress
And winter’s cerise woven coat
From Top Shop with its cheap belt
And front covered zip encased me.

As did your long arms and pink shirt
And together we stood at the bar
My heart lips of wine and your mouth
And you filled with brown beer.

Love Mary x for Roger.
181 · Jun 2018
You.
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
I greet your tenderest hands as one
Then time had beated out your name
And so with heart my hands did know
Two rings of gold this day behold.


Love Mary xxxx
181 · Feb 2018
Love
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
A little girl sang to me today
Sweetly and with care
She knows everything
About kindness
For that she has been shown.
That love nourishes the world
And is an armour against evil
Dear child stay bright
Displaying a gladness
And truth for ever
Love you Evelyn.

Grandma Mary ***
181 · Jan 2019
Oppositions.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
Optimism and pessimissism
A binary opposition
Unsuited to this world
Must change our way of thinking.

Use needs to be more particular
More sensitive
More refined
Find a better word kind.

Love Mary ***
180 · Feb 2018
A life.
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
Our lives come and go like the blossoms on a tree
A story told by many voices
It cannot be conveyed with any accuracy
Beyond that of dates and time
For the rest remains a secret
Nothing can describe.
Neither plan nor preparation maps our path
For it meanders like the tributaries of a river
Into unknown clearings
Stopping short of perfection
Clinging to the goodness found
Loving where it can that night owl of wisdom
Belonging to a tribe of people
Who at the end pick up the petals
And put them in a drawer
Saying this was he or she
Who we came to know
Whose name in an address book
Brings tears to our eyes
This was a life.

Love Mary ***
180 · Dec 2018
A single tree.
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
A single tree against a blue sky
A single tree
That is Me.


Love Mary ***
179 · Apr 2018
Happiness
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
Happiness is hairy legs
And a crimplene skirt
Cheap sandels on a patch of sand
Favourite sky with its clouds
Egg sandwiches and cheese
A mackintosh to sit upon
An old sunhat
The peace which is this day
Uninterrupted love.
This was my mother's loves .On Totland Bay by the boat house.***
179 · Jun 2018
The future and beyond.
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
Buttercups and Daisies
Now polluted flowers
Coming in the Springtime
In concrete made towers
While the trees are leafless
Now diseased and bare
Buttercups and Daisies
Don’t come up much here.

Love Mary x
178 · Feb 2018
Two Cats
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
A little boy read me his story
Written slowly and with thought
Listening inside his head
As the words he learnt to talk,
Saw his head intently bent
Earnest to get the right  scent,
Stopped here and there
Could he hear a cat's purr?
So the story became about
Two cats in a scary house
A nasty character masquerading
And spooky ghosties
Going through the ceiling.

Thank you Monty for your inspiration.
Glad you want to be a writer..

Love Grandma ***
178 · Dec 2019
In a tin.
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2019
I couldn’t tell you why
Not here and now at least
You would never understand
Could not understand.
The structure of our thoughts
Make such complexity impossible
The greatest sadness is that our lives
Are lived out in such perverse ignorance
All that we remember is the apartness
How we bind ourselves in love to lies.

Sorrow is like the shattering of glass
Broken biscuits in tins
The howl of the workhouse
We as frail as a bird’s wing.

Love Mary
Xxxx
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