With my income lower now
I am on a pension I live
without a car and either
walk or catch the bus.
I take my shopping bag or
trundler and notice things
I never saw from my car.
So many ride on mobility
scooters. I stand aside
for them. strollers full of
child and shopping fill up
half the footpath. Walking
frames with older folk are
easier to pass for the person
in the frame is still on foot
– like me.
Yet walking frames can
still surprise. One day a
walking frame approached
in rather jerky fashion.
A tiny dog bounced on a lead
tied to a handle of the walker
containing an elderly lady.
I thought it seemed quite
perilous – maybe she
just wanted action !
Previously posted June 2016.
Month: December 2020
At The Movies
My gold pensioner card
on a weekday morning
bought a discount ticket
at the boutique cinema
to an interesting movie
with a plot and storyline.
Alas ! A hulking pensioner
in the row behind held forth
in a constant booming mutter.
“Oh ! Really !” I yelled and
stomped down to an empty seat
in another row. Phew !
The booming mutter stopped.
One Friday night I went
to a Batman movie in the
central cinemas with many
young people coming after work.
They ate their popcorn, drank
their coke and quietly watched
the movie. So I heard and
saw it all though the car
chases made me seasick.
On a Saturday morning
at the boutique cinema
my friend and I bought discount
tickets to see “The Stone Of Scone”.
A pompous grey haired woman
ensconced herself beside me,
droned on at her companion
in a boring booming mutter.
“Excuse me !” I said, “I paid
to hear the movie ! I don’t
want to listen to you. !”
She sniffed at me disdainfully
but thankfully shut up !
Previously posted June 2016.
Struck By Lightning
The flourishing tree
with giant boughs
diverging into smaller branches
dividing into tiny twigs
wore a thick blanket
of shining foliage
rustling in the wind
in glistening waves
in the sunlight.
On a thundery day
storm clouds blackened
the lowering sky
whose lightning streaked
down to earth brutally
wrenching off a huge bough
casting it to the ground.
Three deaths in one family
within eleven weeks
farewelled two aunts and
the son of one, all
mourning the other son
passed on not long before.
Her husband already long gone
the mother barely survived
her last child before
her heart gave up.
The rest of that family
like the rest of that tree
now strove to regain
their balance, to stand up
straight after the loss
of a mighty family bough.
Previously posted Jun 2016.
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 me and three veges.
In time one of us
moved away then helped the
next one to move away
then both helped t he 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.
Previously posted May 2016.
Days Of Posting
After all the upheaval of this year I am now starting a new phase of additional upheaval.
For the time being I am therefore reducing my posts from three per week to two per week. I do hope to keep up with the posts of the blogs that I follow as I find our communications invaluable.
From now on I will be posting on Wednesdays and Saturdays, in the evenings, New Zealand time.
Thank you to all who follow this blog for all your feedback and support.
His Father’s Son
The boy was small, slightly built,
poorly co-ordinated, lacking speed.
His father loudly bemoaned
his dreams when the boy was
crushed beneath schoolboy
rugby scrums, left 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 stamina in 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.
The boy turned it down.
Father was bewildered.
Previously posted May 2016.
Cremation
The brick wall towers over
the low curtained aperture.
The silent congregation watches
his coffin slide along 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,
neve 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 each 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 have 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 ?
Previously posted May 2016.
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.
Previously posted May 2016.
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 8am 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 far from the woman
in the hospital bed.
“You know nothing !” he roared.
“I miss her, she was my wife !
You were only 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.
Previously posted May 2016.
And So She’s Gone
And so she’s gone
freed from a world
where she never found
the safe place she craved
but stayed in her secure box
not daring to walk through
its wide open door.
Kept home by her father
except to attend school
his long final illness
forced her out to work
in an alien culture
a strange new world.
Marriage after his death
brought her to a culture
of home, husband, children.
Her husband, proud of supporting
his family kept her at home
with her woman’s work
in a street with few
young families nearby.
Cautious tentative steps
into women’s afternoon meetings
never filled the gulf inside her.
Her children went out to work,
lived with other young room mates
produced partners and children,
but never filled her
inner chasm of loneliness.
Now her ashes are scattered
over the flowered patchwork
of the city park.
She is released.
Previously posted May 2016.
lifecameos 