A Piece For Sewing Machine

She formed the felt with natural fleeces
in grey, brown and black
light and dark
moulding them into one seamless sheet.

She oversewed it in colours ever changing
in each of the different shapes
mingling narrow slabs with thin triangles,
taking unfamiliar many sided shapes
around new corners to collice
wiht conventional shapes.

The colours are stitched in merging patches
with a sheen in swirling circles:
opulent red – orange – yellow,
rich purple – blue – turquoise.
Strong white is sprinkled with rainbow specks
dark brown scattered with white daubs.

This felted sheet is now
a shifting kaleidoscope of
colours, shapes, lights,
lustrous in the sunshine.

I have decided to post some of my earliest posts again as I had few posts, views, and likes when I first stared out on WordPress. This was posted originallly on 26 November 2015.

Wilful

To rule the world
with a will of iron
is the tabby hunter’s
purpose in life.

She sneaks birds inside,
buries dead birds
in piles of doll’s clothes.
She creeps into the bedroom,
curls up on the five year old’s head
purring loudly until removed.
She slips into the garage
full of power tools and
hazardous substances,
refuses to come out,
and later meows loudly
to be let out. She then rushes
to her bowl for sustenance.

Last school holidays she stopped
coming in, even for meals.
Her black and white friend
drooped and pined for her.
Her family thought she was gone forever
but after nine days she returned,
ravenous but not thirsty.
Locked in another garage ?
with a laundry tub ?
She’s not telling a soul !

Now she meows loudly at her family
when she comes home,
checks little girls in their beds
in the mornings, checks
everyone coming home.

For now she stays out of the garage
as she is told to do.

Cat Flap

The tabby hunter
was most displeased
yesterday afternoon.
Someone locked the cat flap
and went out for quite a while.
When Mummy came home with groceries
and little girls from school,
Tabby meowed at her loud and long
as Mummy stood and stared.
“She’s telling me off !” she said,
then she put away the groceries
while ignoring Tabby’s harangue.
Young Chloe checked the back door,
unlocked the offending flap.
“You shouldn’t bring your birds inside !”
she told the outraged tiger.

Now therein lies the problem
which Tabby does not see.
She brings her birds inside
and takes them round each room
while they scatter poo and bird feathers
until they die of shock.
Then she buries them in the living room
for little girls to find.
Five year old sensibilities
are distressed by lifeless birds.
Mummy doesn’t like cleaning up
bird feathers and poo.

While Tabby carries on hunting
she will always be locked out
when the family are not at home
to reject her hunting trophies.
She’ll be far away from the sunny couch,
from beds covered with teddy bears,
and the luxurious faux fur throw
on Mummy and Daddy’s bed.

Brownie

Nana lives with her
ten year old dog Brownie.

When Chloe and Claire ate
their afternoon tea on the deck
with Brownie’s nose on their plates
Nan shut Brownie in her bedroom.

Chloe sat on the floor in
Nana’s living room reading
“The Gruffalo’s Child”.
Brownie licked her feet.

“EEUUGHH !” shrieked Chloe. “Tell
her to stop licking me !” Brownie
likes licking people and won’t stop.
Nan shut her out in the garden.

Chloe and Nana made special
modelling dough with with flour
and water and salt. Chloe made
stars and flowers and fairies.

She put them on a tray on the bird
table to dry out, ready to paint.
Brownie jumped up high, knocked
them all to the ground, and ate them.

Chloe said she hated Brownie. Nana shut
Brownie outside while they made more
stars and flowers and fairies,and
dried them on the kitchen table.

Brownie likes early morning walks
with Nana in the park
and quiet evenings with her
in the living room.

Antenna

My antenna became active
as I grew up, learning
in home, school, community.
They learned what was
safe and unsafe, what was
familiar and unfamiliar,
where caution was needed
who would help or harm me.

I could never see my antenna
but I soaked up what they told me;
that bosses were allowed to treat
employees as they wished,
that people named as friends
could mock me, drain the
energy out of me,
that family and partners
could rule my life,
that I could not live my life
without a man.

In time I learned that
my antenna understood survival
but not living. Now I learn
each day to live more fully, and
my antenna learn from me.

Diverging

In a close knit knot
from early on we three
born close in age all
played and fought together
out in the back garden.
Inside we stayed silent
when the household head
pronounced his edicts
or attacked us with
slashing machete tongue
at the dinner table as we
ate our meat and three veges.

In time one of us
moved away then helped the
next one to move away
then both helped the last one
to leave a home where we
could never meet what was
required of its inhabitants.

Each forged a new life from
their innermost self and
was unable to relate
to the foreign cultures of
each other’s new pathways.
We could no longer be
that close knit knot.

Moving out of our
jungle of bewilderment
we continue to diverge
ever further apart.

His Father’s Son

The boy was small, slightly built,
poorly co-ordinated, lacking speed.
His father loudly bemoaned his dreams
of a family rugby player
when the boy was crushed beneath
schoolboy rugby scrums,
limping, bruised all over.

At high school the boy found hockey,
playing often, at all school games.
Release at last !
His father, disgusted, attended no matches.
Later the boy ran cross country
with the stamina of his wiry frame.

Once they reached adulthood
father was ready for his children’s company,
to lead his son into his adult world.
He found him a place in his yachting crew.

He was bewildered when
the boy turned it down.

Cremation

The brick wall towers over
the low curtained aperture.
The silent congregation watches
his coffin slide over the
narrow rails, the curtains
draw back to make way
for his exit down to
the crematorium fire below
to burn the outer shell and
energy of the soul he used to be.

Yet it does not extinguish
the fine spun steel web he twisted
around us from our earliest days,
a web of self doubt, uncertainty
never knowing where we stood.
Clinging to each other at first,
we gradually moved apart as we
saw those spun steels for ourselves,
walked away from them.

As we find, untwist, our
own strands of that web,
we allow ourselves to achieve,
to love and be loved,
find joy in life,walking
in our own directions.

Two of us recognised the web
and look for fulfilment each day.
One of us has yet to
acknowledge fully the web,
denies all its power over us.

Will we ever find
a close relationship
with each other again ?

A Still Grey Figure

This still grey figure
ramrod straight, eyes shut,
in the hospital bed
ignores us, leaves us
to talk among ourselves
to talk to official people
complete official forms.

He had always done the talking
at full volume, ruled what
his family said and did,
complained when they did not
do his bidding, his way.
Now his children make
decisions for him.

Does he know what we do
in some incomprehensible way ?
in some different dimension ?
Too late now.
He is powerless
to change what we do.

Another Phone Call

The father rang his daughter
to say the ashes of
his wife, her mother
would be blessed by the vicar
and scattered over the
town rose gardens
at 8 am next Saturday.

He said he missed his wife
deeply even though she had
lain so ill in her hospital
bed for so long.
The daughter said she too
felt her mother’s absence
even though mother’s mind was
often far away from the woman
in the hospital bed.

“You know nothing !” he roared.
“I miss her, she was my wife !
You were just her her daughter !”
The phone slammed down
a hammer blow to a connection
grasped from only one end.

The daughter had thought
in time they might find
the fabled father daughter bond.
Now she knew they
would never connect.

After the mother’s ashes
were scattered the father
was astounded
when the daughter
moved to another town
far away.