~ Life Cycle ~* ~ Squatters ~ ~ Small Change (a ghazal)~ ~ Kings Mill (a sestina)~ ~ Unfurling a Lovers' Map (first draft) ~ ~ Anniversary Poem ~ ~ Sweethearts ~ ~An Unexpectedly Positive Result from the Nightmare of Misogyny~ ~ Sonnet for a Mermaid ~ ~ What it is ~ ~ My Prairie Home Companion ~ * new content
Life Cycle
Life Cycle i Ironically, his bed fills the living room. I’m boiling pasta when the air alters, somehow. Dad’s battered chest has stayed down. ii Our children are home. Spreading their tired old wings our hearts beat once, twice, leave earth; all tempests banished. Life glitters in the late sun. iii She is tiny now; the cruel torque of ancient bones twists her face earthwards. Mum’s mind folds too - hey presto! and the lady vanishes. iv Before waking, sleep. Before sleep, drift from the shore. Before drifting, smile; let some small pleasure recalled lift you in the swell of dreams. v Once, I planned to kill (Murder is a crime, I know.) My logic was plain; ‘If a tree falls unnoticed...’ Then I felt the forest’s eyes. vi Seven years of age and the energy of stars. Briefly spent, she bears our future on softest skin; a winestain map of the world. vii Hush hush dying man fading woman, sleeping child. Outside your window rain quenches thirsty soil. Listen, as the seeds unfurl.
©Fraser Grace
Squatters
Squatters Cold strikes hardest through the thickest walls. We steal inside while frozen backs are turned and Winter holds this cottage in its thrall. And this, before the coldest blanket falls; before the full-on ‘Christmas scene’ is earned cold strikes harshly through the thickest walls. A puzzle; surely thicker walls must call for smaller fires? The hearth, ablaze, confirms; Winter holds this cottage in its thrall. What happened here? What crimes are not recalled? Whose icy acts condemn young hearts to learn that cold strikes hardest through the thickest walls? For months no sunlight warmed this stone - and all Earth’s magma’s trapped; it cannot purge or burn - so Winter holds this cottage in its thrall. A kiss - young blood runs hot and free; we crawl into our pirate bed and there affirm while cold strikes hardest through the thickest walls still Winter holds no lovecot in its thrall. ©Fraser Grace
Small Change
(or a Middle Class Parent Loses Sleep )
Small Change or A Middle Class Parent is Deprived of Sleep Kids say – ‘Everything’s broke in this mis’rable life.’ Kids ask – ‘Can cash be a cure for a mis’rable life?’ Does cash raise the head, lift the heart? Yes it does! No worries, no doubt, makes a pref’rable life. Cash could’ve bought joys my parents deserved. Those Saints lived like drones! – that’s a terrible life. But wealth’s not the thing; I have known those ‘without’ who live an enviable life. ‘The streets are burning’, kids say, ‘Don’t you hear? Big Changer dreamed us an INCREDIBLE LIFE!’ Kids, listen. There’s nothing comes/goes cheap till it’s hatched; Don’t trust quick-buck-bullshit political life. Wake up, buckle down; nothing’s new and besides, Small change plus hard work makes a beautiful life! My children stare back, ‘That was then, Old Timer, Small change now buys you – what? An untouchable life?’ O kids, I say. Quiet now, your Parent is tired. I wrestle all night with my enviable, taxable, questionable life.
© Fraser Grace
Kings Mill
Kings Mill Today I wandered down to the river to convince myself the river was rippling still. It’s Spring: I wanted to hear birds, the breeze, everything sing - to know how it feels when my heart finds its rest. I’m desperate to hear someone – anyone – laughing. I want to know if the willow always weeps. What a bastard! Standing by while another soul weeps? - even a tree!’ I don’t want anyone crying me a river, I certainly don’t have much reason for laughing but still, I thought I might come here, take a chance, join the rest, and failing that, given silence, I’d sing. No one is here. The birds have decided, dutifully, to sing. The willow, predictably, weeps. There is no bench here for anyone to rest anything – except that seat through a gate marked ‘Private, No Entry’. Still, I have stood, and stood, and stared at the river - The water twinkles back at me, laughing. Perhaps it’s a chortle, a gurgle, more than laughing - a fantasy to hear water attempting to sing! I lie down in the grass, keep very still saying, ‘Only an egotist weeps in the face of a river.’ I try very hard to locate my heart’s rest. She took from my life all its war, all my unrest, absorbed all my blather, replaced it with laughing, then wandered away, drifted off, down the river. She had seemed so present. Oak-like. In the mornings she’d sing! I should have known - even an oak, wounded, weeps. What’s left is growing silent – Yes, I do feel that; and sullen, and still. Maybe one day she’ll find me lying here still grass reclaiming my face, ivy the rest - I lie well enough. I’m not one who weeps; expunged from my soul, the need to keep laughing, the listening for someone, downstairs, to sing. The need for these wandering walks by the river… My laughing; I bequeath that to anyone who’s heard me sing, or who weeps. The rest I leave to the wandering river. My watery goddess. My love. I am still.
© Fraser Grace
Unfurling a Lovers’ Map (first draft)
Unfurling A Lovers’ Map (first draft) Blow off the dust. Weigh down the corners. Good god. These marks remind us what was where back when our world coalesced. Look! You can trace our direction of travel, the distance we’ve come. Was there more we could have discovered together or apart? Things uncharted here have become such landmarks. Inked things - people, necessities, ideas - so precisely located are abandoned now, long lost. Love, did we arrive in a beautiful place or a lesser place? Look around; so many features we could never imagine. Here’s a charter then, you Lovers: make a new map even as old lovers always accurate, and never forever. Blow off the dust. Weigh down the corners. Good god.
©Fraser Grace
Anniversary Poem
Anniversary Poem I have tried to imagine a sky without birds, sea without foam, trees with no wind to move them or roots to anchor them. I have tried to see in my mind’s eye fields, without a single hedgerow to show them what they are. I have tried to conjour a map with no new thing marked in it for almost a lifetime. In truth I’ve seen all these things somewhere in the world - why imagine any of them? but it occurred to me today, that one day, too soon, either you will begin a life without me or I must grind out some kind of shadow-life without you. And what map, what sky, what sea, or tree or endless field, can show us how?
© Fraser Grace
Sweethearts
Split open a packet of Lovehearts - sentiments rolled off down the street: Cutie, Be Mine, I Love You - and broken-hearted at my feet My Darling, Rita. Later, in our sweet little love-nest - a few minutes walk from the tube - we lie in our separate confusions and wonder what this love thing is intended to prove. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me My Darling, Rita you're My Angel Ever Yours.
©Fraser Grace
An Unexpectedly Positive Result from the Nightmare of Mysogyny
My wife had a horrible dream about the patriarchy 'You bastards rigged the whole bloody game!!' (it was her subconscious screaming, she said). Now my love lies soft asleep again and the most woke half of us is on this side of the bed.
© Fraser Grace
Sonnet for a Mermaid
They swam out to the long forgotten gate
and through it to the tranquil Sea of Stone.
She whispered, 'Dearest love, don't hesitate'
- the roaring in his ears fell to a moan.
She taught him names for fish and dragonflies
- Ifan and Rachel, Gershwin, Tom, Suzette;
freed turtles trapped in galleons, was wise,
and kind to all the weather fronts they met.
And when she tip-tailed home through dew-damp grass
and lay down on her bed of downy quail
she bade him sing aloud the Sailors' Mass;
'With you', she groaned, 'the Spring Tides never fail'.
And then she left, to sail her silken train
beyond all oceans, deserts, and disdain.
©Fraser Grace
What it is
OR
Poem comparing our love to the knob from an Indian water caddy (which was lost, replaced, found again long after it was useful – and is now always kept in my pocket).
What it is Our love is not a pimple, not a nipple, a mouse’s crown; it’s not a child’s spinning top, a spaceship spinning round; it’s not a nuclear button I’d ever push to bring you down Our love is what it is My love Our love is what it is Our love is not a circus tent for tiny metal clowns it's not a replacement kneecap to help old robots get around it’s not some random trinket from the scrapyard’s lost and found Our love is what it is My love Our love is what it is Our love is not pakora we ate that evening in Jaipur, as we roamed the great Pink City to the room without a door, smelt the brazen tang of spices that spiced your every pore Our love is what it is My love, Our love is what it is So drink a little tea, my love, and smile your knowing smile; Rejoice! This fits the water pot you haggled for with style. Our days may soon prove all poured out, but I promise you, meanwhile Our love is what it is My love Our love is what it is.
© Fraser Grace
My Prairie Home Companion
It was not, I think, love at first sight not even ‘like’. I’ll be frank; your absences stick in my craw. where are the hills in you? I can’t handle your lack of crags. There’s no up-and-down in you and your excesses are excessive – you’re ridiculously open, you show way way too much sky. And where is the spice-smell the skin swatch, the open-all-hours-in-you, the bustling city, industrial roots of you dull is what you are to me, and to others. Or were. Something suitably evolutionary hatched a revolution in me. Who would believe it? I learned to love flat, chose wide over tall I’ve stood on the huge broad pan of you and and felt you winnowing me. Now you are my prairie home companion; I step into the long tough grass of you at the dawn of the day and its love at first light, after all.
© Fraser Grace
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