All through this lodging there is hardly a clatter

Another perfect image courtesy of the Old Design Shop.

“A quiet night preludes the festivities” nods to the classic “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Books:
In the Ocean: a year of poetry
Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys
Shining in Brightness: Selected Poems, 1999 – 2012

the rooted words. Knead! Knead!

Image courtesy of the Old Design Shop.

The dark encroaches earlier and the temperatures drop. September heralds autumnal change. This time last year I was already battening down by spending more evenings in with the creaking heating, baking and feeling the quiet life.

look – really look

Colias croceus – the Clouded Yellow Butterfly. Image courtesy of Zeynel Cebeci via Wikimedia Commons.

I will be 80 this year
here in my flat
only a mile and a half
from where I was born.
I have tried 
to lead by example, by
plunging my narrow balcony
into the principality of hanging gardens.

Concrete is brutal.
It needs softening.
Plants should have dominion.

We breakfast amidst the crisp verdure
and watch a nesting bird,
fledgling wrens, butterflies 
and such wild visitors.
The flat faces of the 
daisies, pansies and geraniums 
accrue the afternoon and evening sun.
Most years –
A wren nests somewhere
blanketed by the ivy leaves.
Her fledglings zing past 
while we’re eating.
They’ll even call 
on us at table.
In warm summers,
the clouded yellow butterfly 
may join us from abroad.

—
Sometimes some quirky combination of words and images will capture my imagination. This time last year it was a comment in a Gudrun Sjödén catalogue about a Senegalese artist who sculpted birds from flotsam-and-jetsam.

Sunday last, the Guardian Weekend’s column “How does your garden grow?” hooked me. William Howard’s evocative interview about his balcony garden in the Barbican (London) – and the fantastic photograph of him in from of his verdant kingdom – had me enthralled. (Read the interview from the 28th June 2014 Guardian Weekend here.). “This garden,” explains Howard, “is about memories, sharing and reminding people to look – really look.”

Perhaps being a poet is in some respects like being a gardener.

(P.S. One of the most affecting books I read during my young adolescence was Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, in which a scrabble of children try to grow a garden and learn how to look – really look.)
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Books:
In the Ocean: a year of poetry
Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys
Shining in Brightness: Selected Poems, 1999 – 2012

London’s Molten Hour

Bye, bye, people.
I’ll call you later.
Are you going home now?
To all the dusty rented rooms,
nasty pine furniture
with walls on other people’s
flushing toilets, Skype calls
and rhythmic thuds
they try to obscure with
loud beats of an album on repeat.
Another aeroplane. A train.
We reside near transport
under a flight-path.

8/1/14

—
Yesterday’s poem, “Would you ever live in Heather Green?”, introduced the subject matter of London’s rented rooms. According to the dates ascribed in my notes to each poem, the starting drafts for each are separated by nearly a year. With this information in mind, I have tried to assess whether the poetic narrator’s point of view or tone differs between the two vignettes. While “Molten Hour” is endowed the evocative title, it is filled with the invasive noises of close living. “Heather Green” turns to irony by its conclusion, but outlines an attempt at staged domesticity by including home-ware objects and comforting rituals (making tea, lighting candles). Even the references to unnecessary lawn moving and the absent heather posit the presence of both in the reader’s mind.
—
P.S. It is not without resonance that these poems commence this month of intensive posting. I am seeking alternative rented accommodation in London, on a poet’s oilcloth and erratic self-employment (as a copyeditor). If you happen to know of a waterproof garden folly… please send word via Twitter or Facebook.
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Collected poems in book form, available for preview and purchase:
Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys
Shining in Brightness

Would you ever live in Heather Green?

Would you ever live 
	in Heather Green
with a lamp missing a tassle
from its shade?
Lit tealights in the glass holders on
    the rented windowsill
occasionally Assam from
     loose leaves in a pot.
Would that be a life
     to live?
Where there’s no need 
to mow lawns on a Saturday
because you own no lawn 
in Heather Green.
Where there is little heather, too.
But Green there is
in eco-consciousness and Budgens
I imagine 
it must be so.

—
I know someone who moved seventeen times during one calendar year from one rented room to another in London. The opening question, “Would you ever live in Heather Green?” probably derives from an eavesdropped conversation on the bus about a London lodging search. This poem sparked some thoughts about rented room circumstances. Tomorrow’s poem, London’s Molten Hour, will continue the theme.
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill

Preview verse from my two books of poetry by clicking on the titles:

Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys

Shining in Brightness