The loud purring
Of a sensitive soul
Rumbles across my lap
A gentleman-mouser
Whose claws are rarely
Sheathed in my flesh
Save for those few
Accidental motions.
He pauses in his
Hypnotic kneading
Of careful paws
Twitches a whisker
Opens a lazy eye
We are content
Devoted Familiar and
Current Provider of ear-scratches
Precious moments spent together
Do not last as long
As they once did
Those rare islands
Of near-silence
I try to spend
Writing.
Such a distraction
Is sadly unacceptable
In company
My failure to stroke
Soft furry egos
While fingers
Play over lettered keys
And coffee cools
At a careless elbow
Lead to gentle taps
Polite, then more insistent
I frown and mutter
Trying to shake loose
Some old ideas
From new forehead creases
Transmit them to my dusty screen
Before the next
Set of demands is issued
By the charming pout
Of the other House Tyrant
Whose three-year-reign
Continues to sway
The working lives
Of all her subjects.
It is not enough.
I cannot please all
Of my many masters
Not this day.
As gentle snores fade to yawns
I sift through the tired
Dog-eared card catalogue
Housed temporarily for safekeeping
Within my rapidly emptying skull
Brain cycling faster
The vocalisation
Begins in earnest
Close behind my ear
“Miaouw!”
He is starting to insist
“Pssst! Shush!”
It is a futile gesture
To try to silence
An old friend
The search continues
There are paws on my shoulder
Tapping, prodding
A hint of sharpness
A gentle shove
Hot breath on my neck
Can I find a verbal noun,
Subclause, or synonym
To convey my sense
Of panic at the first stirrings
Of any sleeping creature
Under four feet
But still a giant?
Too late.
“Mummy!”
I hiss my discomfort
At the sudden perforation
Of my thigh.
Time’s up once again.
Childhood
Rediscovering myself
I am looking for the joy that sang in the world
When I wore out my hand-me-down shoes
Saving my fare and walking home
Through Portuguese neighbourhoods
Listening for conversations
Whose words tasted foreign on my tongue
I can almost remember
Watching the sky grow dark with cloud
Anticipating lightening playing
Across high Victorian windows
As voices droned at the edge of hearing
From my seat on the mat
I am sure it may be found somewhere
This sense of wonder, just out of sight
Perhaps around the next corner
If I can hold to optimism
Grit my teeth in a rictus grin
And let tired bones carry me onward
I may see myself reflected in memory
Surely I am stood there waiting
Perched on a doorstep, just out of sight
Down a dusk-dusted alley
Outside the daily grind-you-down
Of this commuter-belt world we inhabit
Where yesterday’s news is recycled, repurposed,
Shrunk to fit the typeface and house style
Even opinions can be retrofitted
For safety’s sake, toned down to win arguments
Bland, dulled to match our senses
Sleepwalking through middle age
While violence echoes around the chambers
Of our video games, our online escape
The falsehood in which we lurk, concealing our true faces
With old images, carefully posed
Retouched for personal vanity and public use
Long before fine lines trailed roadmaps across our skin
Meaningless arguments abound across the Twittersphere
While the atmosphere of the living room
Takes second place and we sit, heads in our screens
Commuting our sentence, communing with contemporaries
To the whine of an air conditioning unit
And the slow, but certain death of adulthood
Who are these selfie-prone, entitled shadows?
I bite down on their tales
Squaring the circle, trend-bucking
In this year’s Melancholy
Today I will be wearing blue once again
Practising mindlessness, in search of me
We three kings
What can I give you
But words from my lips
A breath for your lungs
The breadth of my hips
To feed you and clothe you
And shelter you there
Our hope for the future
Small star that we share
In misunderstandings
All foster more strife
Too coy for the joy
Of a conflict-free life
No formal pronouncements
Of greatness to be
We limit announcements
To those we can see
In feeble concealment
Until you are grown
We’d raise you for strength
A mind of your own
And watching your progress
Will whisper as one
The charms that may comfort
Your sorrows to come
With hands in my pockets
Concealing all pain
I’d walk through the desert
To find you again
Giraffe
What kind of world
Will you inhabit
Once we are gone?
Will it be one
Of your own choosing?
New landscapes built
To youthful specifications,
A virtual world, or
Precarious solidity shaped
From the concentration
Of old-fashioned
Children’s toys – perhaps even
Those blue-and-red-stained
Wooden blocks
Of my infancy?
Will our groaning,
Grown-up legacy
Of piecemeal policies,
Poor housing, health,
And knee-jerk reactions
To old threats,
Half-remembered
Leave you with
Too little freedom
And too much responsibility?
However our teachings
Soak into your bones
It will be your turn
To roll the dice
And seek advancement
Or oblivion.
I hope we leave you
Prepared
And with sufficient
Tools to survive
What is
And what is yet
To come.
Winnipeg
Cry me a red, red river
A river of dust and bones
Of hearts that bleed and shiver
From broken and bruising homes
Blow me a kiss of willow
To echo a mourner’s moan
The ache of an empty pillow
Another child’s fate unknown
Cry me a red, red river
To fold me within its bed
And comfort the cares that slither
Through thoughts of unending dread
Bring me a message, finding
Too late what you had to face
My anger a knot, a binding
A coiling of thoughts that race
Cry me a red, red river
Reflecting a distant star
A chorus of souls, a quiver
That calls to me from afar
Paint me a cold moon rising
Surrounded by frozen waste
Still warmed by a hatred, blinding
For victims that leave no space
Cry me a red, red river
From words that no longer mean
An end to the dreams that linger
Its path a forgotten scream
Soothe me to sleep through Winter
To wake in the roar of Spring
With gifts that are carved to splinter
Where birds cannot bear to sing
Cry me a red, red river
And lay there upon this shore
The past where I long to wither
And hold you again, once more
This was written for the Red River Women.
A Little Number
Before I was born
Just a twinkle
In the universe
Of possibilities
Reflected in eyes
Both bluest grey
And olive green
Did you know me?
Or was the I of me
And mine all one to you?
My seedling promised,
But unplanned
Was a meeting of
Hearts and minds
Foretold in song
To bardic strains
Or merely Cast
Upon the plain and
Simple lines
That sprang and pranced
This two-fold dance
Of fire and ice
Your foreign couplings
Kept apart
By Mother Earth
Who did not dream
Of feelings torn
From the widening
Womb-like walls
And shallow shores
Of an underground
Kingdom
Nuts and Colonels
Carried away
With crowns of pine,
From slender hopes
To careful, caring
Tender traps in
Wadded cotton
Whose snoring sheets
Wedded Pluto’s
Darker dreams to
Persephone’s Oblivion
Before there was me
Last one standing
When they came by
For a cupful of sugar
Took my old man
And waltzed over the hill
I was still standing
Polishing silver
Gonna be standing
Forever, until…
Next time a caller
I’d hoped would be smaller
Tripped on her doorstep
Got carried away
I was still standing
To see to a Mother
Gonna keep standing
Another long day
One time you told me
That things never mattered
Half the amount I
Pretended to say
I was still standing
Alone with no lover
Not understanding
Which words made you stay
Then they came by
With a warrant for searching
Hoping to find
What I’d hidden away
I was still standing
In need of your comfort
No one to hear me
And nothing to say
Turn from the shadows
If you fear to follow
All those who greet us
And pass on their way
I am still standing
Myself and no other
One day I’ll falter
But never today
For Harry Rabinowitz
My grandfather died last week at the age of 100. Unfortunately, thanks to the French law requiring cremation within six days of death, and to generally poor timing, I, along with several other members of the family can’t get to the funeral. Only a member of my family could manage to die in the middle of a European football tournament, my cousin’s GCSE exams, immediately prior to the collective insanity of our EU Referendum, and find his funeral being scheduled abroad at the whim of a disinterested foreign bureaucrat, on the day of a national transport strike. (To explain my mild cynicism, another member of my family was once genuinely late for their own funeral when the hearse got lost… some days my more theatrical relations do seem to be living in a situation comedy.)
As I cannot be there in person tomorrow for Harry at his final send off, I wanted to write something expressing what it meant to me, growing up, to have this person in my life.
“Not everyone can be bothered to charm a child. For someone who loved an audience, Harry was, rare in a musical obsessive, also someone who knew when to be quiet.
I have fond memories of long walks in the woods with a battered basket, hunting for edible mushrooms, my sister getting her wellies stuck in a bog and needing to be rescued, then watching in fascination as he insisted he cook and eat what we had picked. Other adults wringing their hands, forbidding us from partaking, convinced he would suffer the consequences of his own stubborn refusal of natural caution.
I remember piggybacks and very serious games of pooh sticks using the stream at Hope End. I remember visiting Mr Pumblechook, looking for sweets in hollow trees, and I remember my earliest form of musical education, when Harry used to ask me to help him find all the Cs on his piano.
A lot of people knew him as a serious, charming, professional musician. I knew him as the charming joker who taught a shy, seven year old girl to clap polyrhythms and tend bar, and who preferred his favourite music, clothing and even footwear to be loud.
He surrounded himself with laughter, and enjoyed wine, women, and orchestral music wherever such delights were to be had.
Little doubt that he will start organising some sort of a gig surrounded by friends, old and new. Woe betide the third desk violins if they miss the F sharp in the third bar of the second movement. The maestro’s grimace will not balk at halos.”
Harry’s obituaries can be found on the BBC, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, the Classic FM, and the London Symphony Orchestra websites.
Harry’s Desert Island Discs episode can be found on BBC iPlayer Radio here.
Leadership Training
Welcome dear, to the asylum
Where the grown-ups are not in control
Mummy’s out chasing a rainbow
Daddy is home but not whole
So what do we do with our brother
Who needs to be petted and fed?
Just sisters supporting each other
When parents don’t get out of bed
If you grab a hold by one ankle
Then I’ll take the other and try
To tease out the worst of the tangle
Then soap, rinse and powder him dry
I’m sorry your tummy is grumbly
There isn’t the money for S’mores
I’ll find what I can if you’re hungry
And we’ll have a picnic indoors
I guess we’re not going out playing
While youngest’s a hole in her shoe
I’ve mended the bits that were fraying
But darning the rubber won’t do
Besides which it’s no longer summer
And coats are too short in the sleeve
So even the common’s a bummer
With chilblains it’s better to leave
The exercise video’s starting
We’ll all sit together to stretch
Now reach for your toes if you’re hurting
And think of the rich and the wretch
If we can just keep it together
As family’s good for the soul
There’s almost no storm we can’t weather
To pursue an impossible goal
So try not to pick up your plimsolls
Don’t want anybody to know
If they catch a glimpse of the cardboard
When walking along in the snow
Then mummy and daddy are over
They’d ship us all out to a home
And though there’d be food there forever
We’re better off here on our own
Dead Flowers
Though I am fond of
An eponymous song by the Rolling Stones
I have a lifelong dislike of dead flowers
Their brittle stems a stiff reminder
That everything we look upon
Is doomed
