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Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
Dearest Dad ,I am sitting in my house thinking of you and how we would watch the cricket together on our small black and white television.I never really understood the rules but just liked being close.Then we would watch an old film or Western.You taught me about the famous film stars that you liked and the great singers.Mum would bring in tea and biscuits ,calling , '*****, nice cup of tea'.
I had wonderful parents, a great generation of people building a better country after the Second World War.

My father Eric, William ,Henry ,Ayton- Robinson and my mother Grace. Emily Ayton- Robinson ( née Westbrook)
You both always did your best for me and I thank you.

Love Mary xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Aug 2019
The tree stood in its shadow
Branches leaning slightly left
Surrounding field stretching
Green acres  of sun bright
Shapes against a cloudy blue.

Stone dry wall built to last
Marks out the foreground
Of sparkling citrus breath
Emptying of all bird sound
To the movement of a lens.

Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
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 **
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
I pick my friends because they don't need me
For like the flower and bee
It is a passing arrangement .
Not tainted by a smothering gasp
If unavailable.
Never wanted to be hugged
Other than by words
Beautifully written in letters
I am a contradiction.
Gregariously plain.
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
As soon as the light turns grey
I begin that same journey
Knowing the night will be unsettled
A repeated wakfulness
Winchingly carried out near to tears
For the exercise so carnivorous.

Love Mary xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2020
Pushing the half dozen sodden flakes of corn
Round the bottom of the Willow pattern dish
The woman wondered how she could endure
The continual daily struggle to exist and enjoy.

There was always Evelyn with her warm heart
And Florence curly in the sunlight smiling out
Two little precious gems conjured from a book
Always ready to give whatever they were able.

Love Grandma Mary **
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
I remember standing in the hall
Feeling wet stuff
In my smalls
Did not know what it was
Told my mother
She did rub.
Years and years
Of washing knicks
Then my daughter's
Joined in quix.
Now I'm old and grey
This problems gone away.

Love Mary ***
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
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
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 **
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.***
Mary Gay Kearns Aug 2019
The curtains hung in loops
From the missing and broken
Those brittle plastic rail hooks
Unable to be replaced, renewed.

So in the bedroom light entered
From the grey day at their drape
Singing in her sixty seventh year
Her only son a birthday song.

Love Mary
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2018
Together the time lifts and separates
Those for whom there is no shadow
Slowly undoing the winching gears
Watching the guide rope flop water.

And if you hear my song of depart
Do not cry for today is your happy
Birthday hours and it must celebrate
All the days that belonged to ourself.

Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2019
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
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
A ball of prickles sheared close
A sculpture in a park
Yellow segmented flower
With opening bud
A harsh world as
Hard as any prickle
A phone call to a newspaper
Editor
A cry for help
Lies in the light
Organisation
No trust
May this world
Treat you all
Much better
Stars in the night.

Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
Harriet and Hastings and two red robins
Arrived  one morning, unexpectedly,
In an Amazon cardboard box;
Tapping and pecking and scratching
They got out from all that cardboard
With a hop, skip and a jump.

It had been decided, by others, that
Their home would be near a lovely
Old Flowing Plum tree
Nestled between pink Cranesbill
And a variegated **** with mauve,
Candle flowers, in Summer.

Now in this garden lots of other folks
Lived sharing a small plot of land
Filled with shrubs and evergreens
Which included two Camellias, one red,
And one white, a climbing clematis,
******* with string, and Winter aconites.

Hustling for their patch was Danny duckling,
Samantha snail, Flippity frog, Tweeny owls,
Penelope pigeon, Woolly sheep and a few others
Often hibernating, sporadically, or out for the day.
So the new comers slowly got to know all
The inhabitants of 16 The Gardens, Watford.


Love Mary xxxxx
For Evelyn and Florence and their mum and dad xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2018
Harvest forgiveness while still fresh
Do not let it setter to rot in box
Rememember the calling came at dawn
The heart once peeled stays skinless.

Love Mary x
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2019
He did not drink
But sat at the bar
Waiting for her potato
The one she had daily.

Their life, the pub, he.
The potato was a food
To alleviate the painful
He gave it with his love.

Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
Cascades of red in Hedgehog Houle
The beginning of Autumn falls over
And breaks the greenest in morning
We pass the church arched doorway
And the hawthorn berries brightest.

Walking the steady step in this day
Finding the bend the windy winds
Show me little Alfie in his nestling
For love carries everything trusting
This pathway of flowing memories.

Love Mary **
Mary Gay Kearns May 2018
A little white *** grew a blue smile
It sat on the shelf
Thinking for a while
Opened popped two blue eyes
With a bewildered frown
And inside a figure moving around.

So the painter propped him up against a wall
Deciding on position, balancing it all.
After many years sitting with him
Watching the paint brushes
Applying thin
The artist put down his brush.
Just sat and looked at Little ***.


Eventually the painting got sold
Found itself in an Art show.
A lady bought him to put on her wall
Did *** feel happy, I’m not sure.
He liked his owner who made him
So sad and small.

Love to Little *** .

From Mary **
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
There she is the girl who always pushes prams.
Had so many
Were needed to transport her loves
Those soft bouncing things with wings
That look up at you in adornment
Or pull a soother from a mouth.

They go everywhere these warm little hearts
Wrapped up in fur jackets and shirts,
And how many miles have you travelled sweet maid,
Over the hills and far
But you always return before the stars
To the safety of the nursery.

For Lizzie love Mum xxxx
My third daughter .Love Mum
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
Oh so white you helliborus
And leaves of grassy green
Spreading stems of delight
And snowy open wings.

Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2020
We are holding on
On thé edge of time
Looking out
Crying out loud
Is this the beginning
Or is it the end
Life as we knew it
Folded down.
Love Mary
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2019
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
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
Watching the wooden slating,
Where window met sill,
Saw spiders creeping,
Under a full moon,
Owls hooted in the distance,
And the smell of country air
Seeped in amongst fresh sheets.

Our annual holiday on the Island,
Taking it in turns for top bunk,
And first for the bathroom,
Sitting on nylon deck chairs,
Eating cornflakes from a plastic bowl,
This was heaven looking back,
Unless it rained all week.

Thank you Mum and Dad
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
Hollyhocks grow
Where nothing else shows
In the cracks
Of paving slats
Under edges
Of garden hedges
Behind the bins
Where debis wins
Hollyhocks grow
Where nothing else shows.

Love to you all Mary , Mother, Grandma xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
To give up hope is a woeful thing
It leaves the mind an empty skin
With nothing to go around
And pointless visiting.

Love Mary x
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2018
Youth clatters itself on tomorrow’s hopes
Winding wistfully hair on cobweb dream
More beautiful the pathway widens heart
And thé fluttering bee falling nectar leave.

Oh pretty one pick up your dancing skirts
And find that arm around a narrow waist
He will sing you in the Summer nightings
And you will find the damson juice sweet.

Love Mary **
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
It was not to be Hoppedy!

I never made it past the shed ends,
Back to back at sixty five,
The gates for the everlasting
Had been closed down early,
When it came, to my days ride.

Shame as I turned that corner
Making  a maturing point,
Realising what life wasn't
Opening the seeds of delight.
But it was not to be Hoppedy!

Love Mary ***
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
Mary Gay Kearns Oct 2018
My last try to tell you
Far out I touch your hair
The greyness bleeds into mine
Long fingers dance the computer
How can you know
As you sit I wonder
Thinking your game
How can I tell you
I am sorry that I have to
Go.

My love nestles your neck
Your forehead my table
Under each ear our lives
I am sorry
How can I tell you
Goodbye.

Love  Mary ***
For my darling husband of 48 years , my Roger
Love His Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
Hugo you are an enigma
I see photos of you and your sister
On my iPad as I rest,
Pictures in my head.
Life seems to be fun
With your siblings
And your mum
Going out to the beach
Into the waves
Darting, leaps,
Another day it's climbing trees
With your Ruby at your heels.
In the woods where it is dark
You imagine many parts,
Costumes drapped across your chest
Delphi in a bright blue dress
Piggy - backs are all the rage
Laughs and giggles all the day,
Holidays are your best
Time to play and time to rest.
Like your grandad you do look
Clever with your reading books.
I see your picture on my wall
A young boy unspoiled;
Wish you many happy hours
And adventures to inspire.

Love Grandma ***
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Everytime I try a little harder I know it is you
A voice deep and melodious
Who whistled many tunes
A man born in poverty
A father who was strapped
A bedroom where you slept
Always back to back
You whom I always trusted
Who gave my mother love
Brought me up a good person
To value truth and love
I never made it to the Gods
And sat in the stalls
But the hay was humble
You gave me it all.

Thank you my dear Dad, Eric William Henry Ayton-Robinson.
Love your daughter Mary x
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
Your heart is as soft as a bird's feather, downy
From birth
As gentle as the passing of a skirt
As it moves against skin
As kind as the wisest of people
When their heart is risen
Above all things
Son you are all these things
And I love you .

Mum xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
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
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
Let me go back to the then
While what is still fresh
And this year's Spring bulbs
Hold so much of trust.

For now there will not be
Celebration in a vase
Where stalks float in water
And a ribbon is tied.

Of a card carefully arranged
And a kind thought bought
Never again will this be
True of you or me.

Love Mary x
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
Sorry for the inconvenience
Forgive the trouble
Tried all sorts
To do my best
Watch me flickering
As I say goodbye
You were the best lights
I could ever buy.

Love Mum ***
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2020
I can’t, simply can not.
Stretch out the time anymore
The rod is broken
An avalanche has fallen
On this sleepy town.

And so shall it be
Until the world
Gets better
Then we shall see.
Go safely my friends
For you are loved.

Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
The beginning begs to be noticed
Uttering simple syllable phrases
But you know those touches flow
Into the silent parts of me like you
And our ownernership is so new
The over folding of a pair of wings.

Love Mary  x
Love Mary, Grandma xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Jul 2018
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
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
I come from sunlight,
      The sweeping of leaves,
      South London streets,
      Lurburnum seeds;
      Hot semolina,
      A spoonful of jam,
      Hands full of gooseberries,
      That's who I am.

      I come from rose petals,
      The sound of the fairs,
      The smell of candyfloss
      Mist in the air;
      I come from warmth,
      My parents hands,
      Outings to parks,
      Both small and grand.

     I come from knowledge,
     True and false,
     From nursery rhymes,
     And stories and pictures of God;
     I come from gentleness,
     A quiet afternoon,
     From visions of loveliness,
     Sewn on a spool.

    I come from two worlds,
    With different ways,
    A threaded pearl necklace,
    And sensible soles
    A mother and father,
    I think I knew,
    I came and I wandered,
    I looked at the view.

       By Mary **
Poem inspired by the Slam poets on BBC
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Said as simply as any words
Means so much that is unheard
Tells a story in one line
The nature of which is undefined.

Hidden meanings, secrets kept
Hopes and dreams around you slept
Youngest daughter plan your day
So that love is here to stay.

Meet each Sunday in a special way
Be not lonely in anyway
Fill the time with gentle hours
Your value is in your power.


Love Mum **
For Elizabeth on Sundays xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Sep 2019
What does one forget with years
Is it the exactitude of ordered days?
The way slippers slowly wear out
And don’t get replaced until xmas.

I rarely comb my hair before midday
Or open the packages at the door box
The future goes under the bed to sleep
The past a comforting scarf red striped.

Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Mar 2018
Sunflowers have no reason
To feel sad
Their petals fall off
Leaving seeds for next year.

For us it is different
Our endings filled with tears
Our hearts break the silence
Our love was it all.

I'd rather been a sunflower
Its seeds fed to the birds
Its flowers giving magnificence
To one and all.


Love Mary ***
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2019
The hurt came
Unknown to me
But I felt it
You gave it to me.

Love Mary xxxx
Mary Gay Kearns Apr 2018
If I could have you back.
We would sit together
On that black vinyl settee
With the orange cushions
And stretched zips ,split.
With the light going down
Over the horizon
Across the fields
To the bay
And the small lampshade
Bringing comfort
Lit up the corner
Near the table
Where we had our teacups
And a bicuit tin,
Half empty.
We would talk
Later into the night
You in one armchair
And I near the table
Returning always
To put the world to rights;
It was better in the old days
When neighbours lent
A pint of milk
And you knew the man
Who sold broken biscuits
And there weren't so many cars
Two in most front gardens now.
Then you would be near asleep
And I ready to go too
But we continued
Talking on and off
Till by three o'clock
We had to stop.
If I could have you back.

Love to my dearest dad Eric William Henry Ayton -Robinson
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
We would sit together
On that black vinyl settee
With the orange cushions
And stretched zips ,split.
With the light going down
Over the horizon
Across the fields
To the bay
And the small lampshade
Bringing comfort
Lit up the corner
Near the table
Where we had our teacups
And a bicuit tin,
Half empty.
We would talk
Later into the night
You in one armchair
And I near the table
Returning always
To put the world to rights;
It was better in the old days
When neighbours lent
A pint of milk
And you knew the man
Who sold broken biscuits
And there weren't so many cars
Two in most front gardens now.
Then you would be near asleep
And I ready to go too
But we continued
Talking on and off
Till by three o'clock
We had to stop.
If I could have you back.

Love to my dearest dad Eric William Henry Ayton -Robinson
Mary Gay Kearns Jan 2018
If only I stayed with my dolls
I would not be where I can't see,
They always gave me comfort
Sitting looking at me.

I remember all their faces,
Had personalities too,
Some robust and cheeky,
Others floppy and rather unwell.

At night on my bed they would sit,
Or cuddled up close in a shawl,
Blue eyes, Rosebud and Belinda,
And  a wee little baby black girl.

If only I'd stayed with my dolls,
Nothing bad would have
Befallen me,
I'd still live in imagination,
A Wonderfully, gifted world.

Love Mary **
Mary Gay Kearns Dec 2018
If you close your eyes
You will remember how
We wrapped together
In the cold dark night.

How we walked the park
As the leaves fell down
How we spun around
You never let me down.

My one and only Ro.

Love Mary xxxo
Mary Gay Kearns Feb 2018
Mum I never a got a chance to say goodbye
I felt you wouldn't want me there
Standing by your side
I knew you would know
The end was in sight
And as never ready for heaven
It would not be right.

Dying is not a picture house
Or time  for voice transmitters
So I sat by a vase of flowers
And thought of you for ever.

And in the many years
That have past since your death
Have put you on Facebook
The place you'd love the best.

I hope I was right.

Love Mary **
Mary Gay Kearns Jun 2018
I just buy things
It takes space up in my mind
From meteorites
To flying kites
Chewy bites
Lemonade slice
Book on poets
How to sew it.
Marzipan friends
It never ends
I just buy things.
Why?

Love Mary x

Love Mary x
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