MERCER SIMPSON
from Enclosures and Disclosures
A Cricketer’s Autobiography
Seeing the ball late
of necessity a back-foot player
tied to the crease, accumulating singles
by cuts and glances, such deflections
often accidental snicks off the edge,
his skills were limited. Once out, that’s it,
no getting back and trying once again.
Cricket’s a paradigm for life,
the sudden ending to the innings,
dismissal unexpected. It’s all too soon
and not enough’s been done,
the scoring chances missed.
Bad light will soon stop play.
The sun is going down
in rainy night-clouds
behind the locked pavilion.
Honest to God
Dear God
I hope I’ve got
your correct address:
with so much mail
going astray these days
I wouldn’t want this letter
to get lost in the post.
I hope you don’t mind me
leaving the writing of it rather late
but I felt I had to write to thank you
for letting me stay in your house
for so long. I know
I haven’t been the easiest of guests,
stealing your son’s bread
and helping myself to his wine.
Please forgive your wayward visitor
straying into the intellectual thickets
of unbelief, of spurious questionings,
trespasser from faith’s footpaths
exploring country lanes I thought
were beckoning me to Eden
which I should have known to be
forbidden territory.
Now that my time is nearly over
I insist on having the last word
which must be gratitude:
gratitude for the miracle of your world
that I, who might have died at birth,
was spared to live in;
for which I offer you my thanks
which can never be enough
for the gift of life.
So please forgive me if I seem
impertinent in asking if I may
come back and visit you again some time?
JUDI BENSON
from THE THIN PLACES
Aftermaths
If we could just find the missing letters of the alphabet
Ken Smith, June 2003
1.
Months I’ve spent re-arranging all alphabets,
wondering what you meant, and then what.
Weeks I’ve chased gromits of dust,
weeding out old pronouns, doing basic maths.
2-1 = 1, though feels closer to 0 much of the time.
We-you = I. Our reduces to mine.
The us is only me and you is always singular.
The future is as it always was,
unknown, but for the certainty now,
that we won’t be together.
If I keep on subtracting, soon one shoe will do, half a mirror,
half a mind, the other half of the conversation gone.
2.
and so the blackbird’s song goes on,
as things seem to, even without you.
April again, Ash Wednesday, an airplane lazy circling
for landing through afternoon’s yellow-pink sky.
Door slam.
What can I tell you. The light in the refridgerator
goes out without you.
Your side of the bed, such a hole I fill it,
newspapers, letters, scribblings like these.
The world’s killing itself still.
Everything runs out, though we haven’t yet.
Rain. Two weeks solid and still the resevoirs are half empty.
Not flushing the loo hasn’t helped all that much.
Tearing my biodegradeable self into pieces,
hasn’t helped either.
The mice are still, if not absent. Gone next door.
Whisperings through the Russian vine, do you have, we do...
The Bleeding Heart’s blooming again
from the nothing winter made of me.
And the sea, I hasten to add, is still sea-ing.
I, still adjusting my breathing to its tides, in and out.
Wish you were here, goes without saying,
and the saying goes without reaching you, or not.
Twilight still is the betwixing hour for me,
light on its way to dark,
my face and thoughts
sinking into shadows.
3.
For once I’ve got the plot,
number 201-9. Harry Goldberg’s number 10.
You’re number 8. Manor Park,
woodland on its way to becoming more so.
The story ends as all do,
with death. The End.
I’m just not sure when or how
I’ll get there, or what kind of tree to have planted.
Yours is Hawthorn.
I wonder what Wild Mountain Ash is like.
And in so wondering, the story continues.
WENDY FRENCH
from SPLINTERING THE DARK
The Therapist Talks Back
Talking to you is like screwing down a coffin lid
or carrying water in cupped hands
across the desert. I’ve never known you not to cheat
but face to face you never tell a lie, and this
is like carrying water in cupped hands.
That’s how hard it was to try and reach you
but face to face you never tell a lie.
You just hid the tablets till we were out of sight.
That’s how hard it was to try and reach you.
If you’d survived the weekend it would have been all right.
You just hid the tablets till we were out of sight.
In the ambulance you’d asked if you were going to die.
If you’d survived the weekend it would have been all right.
A nurse telephoned to say that she’d been with you when you died.
In the ambulance you’d asked if you were going to die.
In our last session you’d seemed to want to live.
A nurse telephoned to say that she’d been with you when you died.
Across the desert I’ve never known you not to cheat.
In our last session you’d seemed to want to live.
Talking to you is like screwing down a coffin lid.
Sunflowers
yes many and beautiful things
(Sappho, Fragment 24)
It is three o’clock on Thursday seventh of August
a sultry heat that dusts the streets with litter –
an unrelenting dryness in the air. I pass a flower-seller
sitting on the step, sunflowers from Israel
fold down into a steel bucket
and then I pause at Van Gogh’s sunflowers
newly painted on the outside wall.
Entering the gallery, long corridors protect us
with paintings from unlived centuries
and I find a map to read the way to sunflowers
which dominate and bloom. Outside, I will buy
the sunflowers on offer rather than a postcard
for by morning when they’ve drooped and died
pollen stains will remain ground into my hearth.
