Felled

Here, in the neighbourhood of loss,

we see the things that are not there:

a father playing with his son;

a mother singing lullabies;

the happiness of knowing what your name is

and everywhere you look, our living trees.

Song to My Father

What is the sound of yesterday? you asked.

I did not know. Perhaps it was a ballad

sung to your mother. Music, passed from her

to you, then passed, unseen, from you to me.

We were the silences between the notes;

the rests which every melody requires.

We sang in different keys and out of time,

chromatic notes which made a harmony

for songs we never shared. Our requiem

to loss. The sound of yesterday, unheard.

N

I do not say,

‘Today, I will write a poem

about a flute,

or wallpaper,

or the letter Q,’

although, I now realise,

this is exactly what I have just said.

Yesterday, as I wrote –

not about a flute,

or wallpaper,

or the letter Q –

I noticed that a clumsy capital N

of mine

looked identical

to the clumsy capital N

of my father’s;

the clumsy capital N

which started the second half

of his illegibly scrawled signature

on his marriage certificate.

The awkwardness of my handwriting

is a tedious thing.

That my e is indistinguishable from a c,

or an undotted i,

is the least of its problems.

My pencil jerks across the page

with two left feet,

failing to keep pace

with whatever thought is currently being let loose,

and often,

while this is happening:

blunders, blunders, everywhere.

There is not a single letter

which hasn’t concussed itself

as it’s fallen out of my pencil;

each minor head trauma

making the letter look

not quite itself,

as it balances ridiculously

on the line.

My disregard

for legibility

is not a constant thing:

some of my redrafts

are as legible and consistent

as any handwriting fusspot

could hope to see.

Oh, yes, I can write neatly

when the words are already there,

and I can see from my father’s notebook,

that this was the same for him,

another little clue about how we may be connected.

And so I dwell

on why the signature on his marriage certificate

was so hastily scratched, so illegible,

so like mine when I am elsewhere,

while my hand is in the room,

holding the pencil.

Never Finished (i)

The latest poetry idea:

to write some poems which are all

deliberately unfinished, ending,

perhaps, halfway through the first word,

the second line, the seventh stanza,

the final word, the

Broken Fridge Poem

The poem hurled itself at my feet,

pleading to be written.

It was a poem a about a broken fridge.

‘Broken Fridge Poem,’ I say,

‘what makes you think 

I have the time to write you?’

You have the time to stare at clouds;

to sit and read;

to do nothing.

‘Staring at clouds is a vital part of being a poet,’

I say. ‘Sitting and reading? Doing nothing?

Some things are harder than they look.’

Broken Fridge Poem looks at me.

If you don’t write me down,

it will be as if I never was.

Broken Fridge Poem tells me his life story.

‘Life stories are not poems,’ I tell him,

after he’s finished. ‘They are novels.’

But Broken Fridge Poem

is no longer at my feet,

giving me too much detail.

He sits there on the page,

a cacophony of handwriting.

Contrast

Sitting in the garden,

having just started

a poem about my father

and the clouds moved aside

to make way for the sun.

Coincidence again,

or synchronicity,

but there it was,

and with it, my shadow cast

on to the bright white pages

of a new notebook;

the contrast of dark and light.

And there you are,

in my long-troubled mind,

the light on your face,

and all of your mystery,

and all of our sadness,

dimmed.