How long does a river flow to the sea?
How high are the clouds in the sky?
How deep is the valley between you and me?
How many times can you lie?
You are a river that flows deep and fast
You are the sea and the land
I am the woman who still comes in last
I am the well-bitten hand.
How to survive when you can’t breathe the air?
Or live in the world unmolested?
How do you speak up? How do you dare?
When love is eternally tested.
If I was a tiger, then you’d be the gun
If I was a candle, then you’d be the wish
I honestly feel as if I am all done
Like I came to dinner, and I was the dish.
You were tender to me then.
As we walked the muddied and mottled path.
We can walk it now,
Only slower and less silly.
You were careful of me then.
Gazing at the vast gouge, now filled with water
With lumbering ducks racing low across the lake
And a pair of swans, enraptured of each other.
You were happy with me then, less unyielding.
We laughed at the beauty,
Felt the joy of it.
Dipped a hand in the clear sweet pool.
I was a nicer person then.
It was all so easy on the well-worn path
That took us round the lake.
And never once did we try to love.
There are places I can go, without trying,
They present themselves to me.
The perilous journey on a ship
With masts, and sails that curve into the wind,
As it navigates an iceberg sea.
Or the familiar white house I know so well
With lavish grounds, and swimming pools full of sunshine.
In one dream I was in a room,
Only to find myself in it, years later.
The sink was in a corner, and the windows
Opened with a pole. I turned and saw it,
It was there.
My soul recognises before my eyes have grown accustomed.
So that when I met you, I knew,
Before a word had passed between us.
The cynics mine for proof of truth,
Before they can accept it.
Cloud reality with clever words,
But remembered dreams are not of that order,
They are more real
The less
They are explored.
Genes, genomes, DNA in a lovely spiral,
And inside a soul stands proud,
Creates meaning as, like the prongs of a tuning fork,
I quiver into existence,
Excite the air around me at
My own frequency.
I try to bring you closer
To my wavelength, by scratching
Symbols on a page, a piece of bark, a cave wall,
I put a foot through the ice on the top of a puddle
Just to show you that I’m here.
All of my security is found
in the predictable ticking of the planet
As it spins reliably upon its axis and measures out the hours,
My soul responds with a sigh of recognition
To the same indicators
That chug around and pull into the station
Every year, more or less on time.
So don’t give me a balmy Christmas day,
Or a cold shower in July,
I have watched these days go by
And my heart pumped with the waning of the moon
And soared in my veins as the rays of a hot noon sun
Fall, and bake me into the ground.
Give me life, death, renewal,
Give me spring’s early wakeup call, or winter’s death.
Give me gold in autumn, give me responsive, bitter, living,
In all its fashions.
But never give me snow in Easter,
I will not have it.
Mr Feis has a kid at home, where he’s dad,
But he was at school then, when
He was with his other children.
He put his body between those children and a gun,
The last thing he could do,
To do his job.
The last thing he would ever do.
He stepped forward, arms outstretched,
Because sometimes the heart acts,
Before the head has time to think.
In his home there is now, a vacancy,
In another place,
There will be a welcome cry.
Oh Gretna Green, exalted place, young love’s impetuous mistake,
Optimistic souls unite, above an anvil troth they plight,
Bagpipes loll with limbs outspread until their breath returns,
On motorway, the sun ascends, a far horizon burns,
The birds sing out, hope rises new, as glimmers of the day peep through,
Light crept above the concrete mall, wool shop, whisky shop and all.
Through golden sunrise jumped a ray,
That flash brought Jack to earth, on summer’s longest day.
Officials who logged on first thing, learned of a legal glitch,
All weddings made in Gretna had one important hitch,
Each certificate of marriage, each wedding was destroyed,
Was cancelled out, abolished, repealed and null and void.
Cumbria News cries out all day, to those that Gretna wed,
‘Technically, legally, you are not now, have never been,’ they said.
Ask yourself what you would do if put in this dilemma,
Would you marry them again, keep the same old fella?
Would husbands start again, propose, and go through the whole thing?
Would they have to book a room, a meal and buy a ring?
Gretna Green was sanctified by antiquated rules,
But now the Gretna bureaucrats were made to look like fools.
Women thought, ‘I see that I’ve been single all my life,
A mother yes, a cook, a maid, but not it seems, a wife.’
Husbands scratched their heads, they paused and listened to the news,
Weren’t married now, had never been, felt anxious and confused.
The news rolled like a clap of thunder,
‘All set free in one big blunder.’
Jack’s sabotage was done, he watched the summer haze,
He had to hitch a sunbeam ride, to grasp the dying rays,
And wait in space for his next chance, next June the 21st,
Might make another joke go far too far, might do his worst.
A good day’s work for Jack the yearly, Jack the naughty, Jack the nearly.
Some were glad and some were sad, but Jack was quite elated,
He melted back into the sun, became a flame, and waited.
Had we but world enough and time,
This quasi-courtship would be fine,
You’d break my heart with cruel words,
And hang around with other birds.
Nocturnal visits to my flat,
Your sudden loving, would be all that
I’d think about all day at work,
Then you’d turn round and be a berk.
I’d flatter you and praise your looks,
Then spurn you, like they do in books.
And none of this would really matter,
Just a game, the craik, the patter
We’d laugh, we’d cry, we’d fight, get better,
Then send each other “Dear John” letters.
Years would go by, and we’d mature
And trust, as soul mates, love so pure.
But dearest one, we have not time
To pussy foot, to think up rhyme,
The truth, the facts, the real brass tacks
Is that I cannot keep on waiting,
In this eternal grown up dating.
You really should have understood,
Your long foray in singlehood
Was over, finished long ago,
It’s only now I’ve let you know.
The marriage day is all arranged,
And you’ll find nothing’s really changed,
So while you’re tall and young and svelte,
Just do as you’re bloody well telt..
Suck down the nectar Let the sweetness register, hold it to your lips Like a dying man in the desert, Press a petal against your skin, Marvel at the silk soft summer strength of it. The pollen will stain your hands and make you sneeze, But that is what it does – it has a job to do. Remove the black shrivelled scorched pod firmly. It is full of tiny seeds – like eggs waiting to be born, Remove them, roughly. They are the threat. They must replace the snaking stem Clinging to the sun-blushed wall and the swaying pastel colours of the flowers. They are next year’s news.
Mungrisdale Writers 