Reveries of Frances

Reveries of Frances.

Her flight is two hours late.

It’s pushing midnight.

O, how I wish I had the stamina of Frances,

perched on the balcony of her high rise

in the peppercorn tree hooting for her love.

She’d be at it all hours of the night.

By morning she’d be gone

but back again the next night.

She was welcome as a full moon, the stars.

I know love is as good a reason to hoot

as any other.

Christ, she had great lungs.

Shone a torch up there once

but she retreated to a backroom up there

in the peppercorn tree.

Spring after Spring she’d come

then one Spring, the year of the bush-fires,

she stopped.

The peppercorn tree seems empty now

like a fridge with no food in it.

*pic courtesy of wiki commons

The One No One Wanted

The One No One Wanted.

It was the one no one wanted

The last one on the shelf

The one no one wanted, I didn’t

Much want it myself.

But there were no others

So I had little choice

The one that all had shunned

I purchased myself.

And Oh it fitted the bill

To the nth degree

So the one no one wanted

Was the right one for me.

*pic pinterest

I Hope They Pay the Ferryman

I hope they pay the ferryman.

I hope they pay him good.

For all his journeyings. all his toing and froings,

miles notched, hours accrued.

over the last four days.

He is resting now.

ferry in dry dock.

It is a busy time of the year. but what do you do?

You do anything for yr kids.

I hope they pay the ferryman.

And they will. Ten fold.

With love and affection.

Where’s My Bear

Where’s My Bear?

I’m not myself today.

I wasn’t myself yesterday either.

Where are you? she says. Where’s my Bear?

I’m still here, I say.

No, you look like him but you’re not Bear. Go away.

So I do.

Back to my little cubby house in the ‘burbs.

I think of her. I miss her. The good times we had.

Perhaps I have been a little sloppy, solipsistic.

I send her a card. Anyone can send a text.

She texts back. I call.

Come over, Bear. I miss you.

I buy her a bouquet of long stemmed oriental lilies.

We cuddle. We kiss. Like bears.

We have found each other.

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Anita + Heydon: Hard Love

Anita + Heydon: Hard Love. For Don, Tnkerr and others

Are they still together , I wonder ,

after all these years ?

Had they cemented their love

after the concrete hardened ?

Are they still living there

in # 510 ?

Is she still the boss ?

[ her name did go first ]

Did she walk all over him

like people do to their names?

Did their love fade ?

Will it outlive the concrete ?

Are they inside now

holding hands on the sofa

[ like their conjoined names

on the footpath ]

watching tv ?

I’d like to go up to the door

and ask ,

Hey ! do Anita and Heydon live here ?

But I stare at the names instead .

One day their love was fresh

as the newly poured concrete .

I’d like to think it still is.

Fighting Fish

Fighting Fish: an Extended Metaphor Poem

You & me

we’re siamese fighting fish

territorial as hell

in this fishbowl

of love.

You say,

I am taking every inch

of yr space;

I say,

huh, you are crowding me

but most of the time

we get on swimmingly

*pic courtesy of pinterest

Secret

SEcret

I sometimes wonder who he was, that man who called at our place a few years after dad had died and mum had moved into a nursing home.

Did mum have a secret life?

We all need someone or something to keep us afloat.

Too Far

After he had stormed off in his Volvo and got home to a torrent of texts, he responded with a fusillade of his own.  It was like a naval battle at close quarters, with no quarter given. Someone was going down.

He got in the last word. That was unusual, Perhaps he had gone too far. He need not have said some of the things he said. One particular insult was, in retrospect, very cutting.

He texted a partial rebuttal before he hit the sack. No response. He texted again. And again. Perhaps he had gone too far. Had she…? O God no. It didn’t bear thinking about.

He buried his head under the pillow and tried to sleep. Eventually he crashed. But the nightmares ….

He awoke at six in the morning. His mobile lit up. His arm flew across to grab it. It was from her. A volley of vitriol.

He had never felt so happy.

Me & Mrs, Crasthorpe

I am going to bed with Mrs. Crasthorpe.

I have been to bed with her before.

It was a most pleasant experience.

Her husband is dead. She is a free woman now.

She is fit and feisty and when she’s breathed in the briny air of Eastbourne, she loosens up and tells me.

She has generously full lips. blonde hair and grey-blue eyes and is the ripe old age of 59.

Nothing unseemly passes between us, however.

Sadly she is an invention of William Trevor.

That Poem Beth Wrote

I remember the poem Beth wrote

about the 31 cents

she took

from Hillman Bailey 111’s open desk

in primary school

and how she made up for it

over half a lifetime later

by leaving change —31c — at the checkout

for the next person to have who might have had a child

who wanted candy

and I thought , yes!!!

that is what I will do with the $250

a children’s literary magzine owes me

for the reprint of four poems

from the early 2000’s.

i can’t be bothered filling out all the forms

so I told them to donate it to a charity

so it goes back into the universe

where my poems came from anyway