Bear came to do my garden today
It had got into rather a mess,
Sticky Jenny and dandelions,
Rotten roots and garlic shoots
Got poor Bear betwixed;
Hot and sweating, really fretting
Bear began to cry,
Why was it that I thought gardening
From painting let me hide.
But off he went along the fence
Pulling out the weeds
Found some bulbs that did not smell
Dug  them up, as fast, as well
Now they're  back in a different spot
Three short stems in an empty plot;
Made me laugh just to see
How silly that Woolly Bear can be.


Love Mary
Thank you to Ian my Gardener

Two eyes appeared from under a broadrimmed hat.
They looked around with astonishment.

In a schoolroom, far off in the distance, a boy was
Busy making a wooden bowl.
The teacher unaccustomed to such slowness
Requested a completion date.
“I am not slow thought the boy, just working
Away until I get it right.”
He met the teacher’s gaze with an expression
Of opacity and a sense of bewilderment.

On another day, at a later date, this same boy
Was found in his metalwork class applying
Cylinders of gases to his small creation, quietly,
Hoping for a connection before he was blown
To smithereans. Two blue eyes concentrated as
The jets of flames hissed into space.
Too long the gases flowed.
The master rose, the boy shook and his eyes
Widened.

In a playground, sometime earlier,
A small boy could be seen playing without a coat.
Gossiping women spoke of this unnatural act,
This exception to the fold. The boy stared back
Hearing their words with his eyes.

Decades later when his hair had turned from
Brown to grey but his eyes were still blue
And wide apart, he painted a little ***
Sitting on a pale surface, gazing into nothingness.
This painting took him a long time.
He had to get it right, the tones , the lines,
The connections.

After he finished ‘Little ***’, he sat down
And stared into the two blue blobs set wide
Apart on its surface and he thought, “this is
Me, the boy, the man, the painter, of wide
Apart, unnameable moments.”

The Beginning.

Love Mary ***

we need in life:
love from a few
respect from all

Living in Sweden, as I do, I’ve often noticed that some idioms seem to capture an essence, are more powerful in Swedish than in my own tongue English and vice versa. Therefore, I’ve begun to take the liberty of borrowing the occasional Swedish idiom for use in my poetry.

I  Grund Och Botten (är vi lika)*
A Swedish idiom meaning At The Bottom Of Things (we are alike)

At the bottom of things: basically,
First and foremost and primarily
We are alike.
Our temperament, our gifts, our faults
May differ, and they do.
But you,
You are the same as me.
I is always you is we!
We are a race: a human race.
But should we race, erase the commonality
That binds us all? Of course not!
We are one in essence, which we got
At birth, perhaps before;
Sympathy, empathy, the virtues, vices;
All the aims a blend of spices
From self-sacrifice to merchandise;
Imprecise, but there at bottom
From the ******* to the sputum.
All your systems are but symptoms.
At their end a blend of like-ness and uniqueness,
And one race.

I Grund Och Botten 5.31.2018 Swedish Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes you have no reason to stay,
and realize that's a perfect argument to go.
And that taking an entirely new way,
is the sore but single method to grow.

If you're washed-on abeyance's bight,
and you feel decision's heavy heft:
To choose the left where nothing's right,
or go to the right where nothing's left.

Remember it matters not where you proceed,
or which mountain you want to ascend.
It does not matter whether you succeed,
it is the journey that matters in the end.

After years of marriage,
We are now gnarled ,symbolic old trees,
It's fruits ripened and matured,
In fine tune with each other.
While I nap he watches his sports channel,
Then he  dozes and I watch my favourite programmes.
We share the same bowl of soup,
I don't mind if he slurps,
He does not mind if I spill some.
We have fun in the kitchen,
He helps me to cut the veggies and do the dishes,
If I admonish him for not doing them properly,
He gives me a toothless smile.
People would think we are fighting,
But its natural for us to speak loudly,
We are hard at hearing.
He loves cake,
He is my best cake mixer,
They come out soft and fluffy.
He drives,
I am his guide,
Stop, go slow, turn right ,so on.
Sometimes my friends and I meet to have coffee,
He goes out to meet his cronies in the park.
He enjoys to tease me or put me down,
I just shrug him off,
"Away with you old man"
I tend to nag a bit,
He does not mind.
At end of the day after a toothless kiss,
He holds my hands tightly,
Looks at me lovingly and says,
"We have made it so far love."