Poems

By a client

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A SAFE PLACE TO GO

I live in a wooden bed

It is my raft on the choppy sea of the rest of my life

I try to keep it dry and clear and cheerful

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I repel all boarders

And reject the flotsam and jetsam which floats by

The important ritual which keeps it sacred

Is to make it every time I leave it

To wallow and thrash about in that churning water around me.

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A couple of poems that I've written as part of my work:

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After Digging

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Going down the narrow steps

in the half light into that

wonderland of tools and

broken toys and discarded

rubbish that was his treasure,

my father going down into

the cellar, making things.

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The blacksmith of that tiny

Welsh village, small forge

tight space, yet so many

tools and bits of metal

that I didn’t recognise,

my uncle Tommy

off to his smithy, creating,

making things.

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And me, words, pens, paper,

the vast intricacies of my

computer, creating, discovering,

organising, going down into

myself, finding, uncovering

making things.

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On the Occasion of your Marriage, 2 June 1956:  Albert Silvanus Gibbons

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I was presented to you, to mark the start of your time

Together, man and wife, parents, grandparents,

Moving my hands I encircle your allotted span, you

Reliable, solid, dependable, always remembering

To wind, to set, day by day, winter to summer, summer to wintertime;

I remember your touch, never changing, always old

Never young, never fun, yet warm, caring; concerned,

To change my heart when it finally wore out, electrical

Instead of mechanical, battery not spring, silent instead of chime.

Your seasons turned, change of friends, job, house

But together, you were always together, until she was

Stroked by pain. You couldn’t mend her broken mind,

Instead you took control, day by day, winter and summer,

She sat and watched, as you

Wore out your time, no one to wind you up, change your batteries, mend you;

When the time came, instead, lying there amidst the restless machines

You whispered, “let me go”, so you never came home

To change that winter to summertime, and nor can she, as she

Stares at my hands, slowly marking her lonely days,

Waiting.

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(This has been published in Writing Routes, Bolton, Field and Thompson, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011)

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