As you disappear through the winter trees,

I see you come and go like a sine curve wrapped

around the axes

of tall trunks

and flat earth.

I want to call,”Come back”

but my mouth won’t open.

My lips are dry without you.

I’m flooded with loss already,

though I can still glimpse you now and then.

Sun,so low and silver,

looks like the moon.,

my desolate heart its inscape.

my hands its freezing soil.

Staring as darkness falls,

Nothing left now

This is all I can do today..!

Sometimes a woman wishes she did be a man
so she might lie drowsing in bed
while the dishes pile up
and lay unwashed
the laundry basket overflows
the cat eats the meat for dinner
and the mice dance on the table just for fun

I guess there’s some reason why women can’t rest.
A wolf might appear and snatch a child
A man might lose his temper
smack the baby,kick the cat
Cos a man gets angry waiting
don’t believe his woman’s sick..
Think she’s manipulative when she cries in pain.
And kicks her when she’s dead.
Plenty more women,like buses,
another one will soon be along.

But do you really envy a man
when they have to fight and kill
Earn a living in a coal mine,doing night shift for 20 years.?
It’s not what God intended.but it seems it’s here to stay.
I don’t know if I’ll even live for one more day..

They think that they own us

My sympathetic
Nervous system is on hold.
I shall sleep now.

Sometimes I feel fired
The parasympathetic
Can’t switch itself off.

A good cup of tea
Can restore British people.
Drink one now with me

Then take to your bed.
Fall asleep or go daydream!
Soon you feel better.

Rest is neglected.
Better to do nothing or
Stare at a big tree. .

Flowers delight me.
Anemones are the best.
Such colour and joy.

Give up fight or flight.
Just write a funny poem.
You will enjoy tha

Clock on the mantelpiece beats like my heart

More regular.not affected by emotion,vision,thought.

Cats stand proudly in their grey stone bodies

As if at the entrance to some other world.

The heating comes on with a bump,

and suddenly darkness has come to earth.

Clock,clock forever beating,

Will my heart outstay you?

will you tick for someone else?

Though strong in silver case

you feel nothing

give me another heart instead

to share my feelings.

Let another heart beat alongside mine,

and we’ll be tuned in unison,

sing our song of love,

or heartbreak.Human,made of flesh

We will drop like leaves

still the infernal clock beats steadily

controlled by,not love

but radio waves.Imagine now

these waves multi-layered across the earth

carrying shopping lists,time,date.

whilst we go on living ,

hearts fluttering  like a cloud of butterflies,

see they go now

climbing away

into the soft tenderness of your hands

#

The good things my mother taught me

are too numerous to list

here or even on a large hoarding

I could rent for a week by the train station.

She gave me my blue eyes and my love of stories

and tolerated the fact that, I like my father,would learn

for the sake of it and not with a view to earning money.

She praised my sense of color though not my three year research scholarship

to place of higher learniing

would rather I curled my hair and smiled at boys.

But my destiny was determined by the fact that I never could

master that Singer sewing machine she had

so I had to learn Theoretical Physics to make up for it.

And here I am now,thinking of her home made bread

her showing me how to read music

and the names of the keys on the piano.

I know I was a big disappointment in not marrying into money

or becoming a saint or virgin and martyr,well martyr anyway

She always believed me to be a virgin, even after marriage;

and it’s true I was a virgin with regard to common sense

getting on in society and all related issues.

Some ordinary female knowledge never penetrated me

so I’d sit in the rain wondering what tolerance was

or how Pascal got to lie in bed so much,and whether I could too

because I got creative ideas in bed—

not what you may be thinking of—–

She always changed the sheets and washed our clothes however poor

we were…

And made us dresses from scraps of fabric

That’s how we learned geometry,with the trapeze dress……

Numbers we learned from the stars and excitement from playing with boys

in a disused brickfield.

Strange what makes us who we are,but

the biggest contribution comes from mothers

and just to please her I hope as well as all my academic success

one day I’ll make myself a dress out of some rare print

embodying simultaneously both male and female design and shape

And she’ll look down and say,

She always had her head in the clouds,in a book,in the smoke

patterns from Dad’s cigarettes, in a dream and a whirl

but she did have a good sense of color.

Yeah,she is my daughter

Yeah,once I imagined I must be adopted but

Yeah.I’m her daughter.

She’s my mother.

Yer she’s gone.