Reflective Poems

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As a dabbler in creative writing, my blog is serving as a place to share my efforts and resurrect the creative flow.  Thanks for your company...

Sacramental living

You might have no truck with belief in God

You can still have faith in higher ideals

You might reject the communion chalice

You can still revere all life as sacramental

You might refuse to bow the knee in prayer

You can still transcend self to bless and be blessed

You might ridicule thanking God for mercies

You can still be grateful for life’s abundance

You might find teachings of holy books dated

You can still know compassion and just living

You might logically dismiss God as creator

You can still intuitively wonder at the universe

You might applaud Dawkins debunking religion

You can still consider human beings need belief.

 

In memoriam - my grandmother

You knew me only from the carnage

my last act wrought in my young daughter,

carving feelings of rejection deep within her.

You recognized me in the biblical curse:

passing down my sin through generations,

imbibed by you at your mother’s knee.

You research in retirement your Celtic roots -

ninety years after numb despair sleep-walked

me under the coal black waves of Cardiff docks.

You grieve when you receive death certificates;

read reports in old library newspapers;

weep over my babies’ deaths - a time before antibiotics.

You discover my hard-working, coal trimmer father,

my dear sisters – all succumbed to TB in my arms,

overstretched to breaking with child after child.

You testify to the family I was strong not weak,

emerging from the horrors of the first world war,

surrounded by plagues and problems of that age.

Only at the end, helplessly watching another baby son

die in agony, only after that, did darkness descend,

blanketing my mind from unbearable pain.

Rescuers, at the inquest, witnessed my last words,

‘Let me go, please let me go!’ before foam filled my mouth.

I lasted a few more unconscious hours in a hospital bed.

Consoled to learn the truth, you now know at the end

I wasn’t alone sinking under the sea’s drag - my hand was held.

I was anointed with the forgiving oil of unction by my priest.

Franciscan in the Mall

Hanging around the shopping centre hub,

huddle a group of undernourished kids,

smoking and drinking cheap booze.

Dressed in identical sweatshop clothes,

they kick their trainers against the concrete.

Suddenly animated, their boredom is relieved.

Striding past in Jesus sandals,

a Franciscan monk steels his gaze ahead,

juts his jaw against their jeers.

Clad in a simple brown cassock -

white rope hung around his waist,

knotted for poverty, chastity and obedience -

he silently refutes all the mall peddles.

His poverty, unlike theirs, is a choice.

Empty House

How quickly you disappear

in afternoon siestas into dreams.

With childlike trust and innocence,

your unconscious body slackens

allowing observation in your absence.

When you are away, I unlock your vacated home,

bring in mail and check all is well.

You leave everything in order, doors shut,

all the everyday smells of your living

stale in the spiritless air left in your wake.

These little deaths rehearse for the finale:

when your face no longer animates,

when your eyes no longer twinkle,

when your mouth no longer declares,

‘Ah ha!’ with delight at an insight;

when your muscles no longer flex

to undertake jobs you so enjoy 

ticking off  a list at the day’s end

with a sense of accomplishment -

that willpower won over decrepitude.

Benedictine Retreat

Alone in a stone convent chapel -

apart from an old cowled sister

bowed in prayer, or asleep, or both.

Exhaustion and compassion fatigue

gently slough off like an outgrown skin.

Doubts and questions quelled, third eye open,

an overwhelming love floods my entire being.

The sister straightens her arthritic body,

stands, strokes the crucifix around her neck,

genuflects and shuffles out to do her chores.

Visit out of the blue

Soothingly, her hand stroked my hair.

Within that gesture, compassion, regret,

understanding of all I’d endured as her daughter -

emotional pain passed down the generations.

My mother, freed now from life’s confinement,

reached out, in a way not done before, to comfort.

If only I hadn’t been so frightened, repelled.  

If only I hadn’t leapt upright in my bed -

shocked awake from drifting consciousness.

If only I’d remained receptive, accepting,

kept open the portal between dimensions -

what else might have happened? Proof at last?

But I was versed in grief’s manifestations -

hallucinatory tricks of the senses and mind.

Told myself I was exhausted with death’s duties.

If my conscious brain had not banished her,

would she have lingered longer that night?

Would our reconciliation have been complete?

Walking with Sisyphus

Once more, my reluctant feet tread rock-strewn paths,

worn deep in the flanks of my wild moorland hill,

reclining lion landmark – almost a mountain.

Silver ribbon of sea lights the western horizon.

Keen salt winds dance cumulus clouds across the plain,

whirling them close around the cairn-marked summit.

Yorkshire’s three peaks mark out the eastern horizon -

old rivals overlooking these gentler hillsides, 

wooded fells, round knolls and doles, of  Lancashire.

Curlew and lapwing plaintively call warnings up here.

Spiralling skylark anxiously twitters - diving

diversions away from precarious ground nests.

This high ground, this panoramic perspective, 

can only be reached by rolling my inner boulders

step by step, day by day, up this ancient hillside.

In the past, children with a profound level of physical and learning disabilities could be placed on a ward in what was then called a sub-normality hospital. The beginning of the poem contains some painful images but ends on an uplifting note.

I lived for 6 months in the grounds of a home where the children were transferred when their local hospital ward was closed. I was privileged to work in that field for a number of years. It was at a time when the occasional doctors still referred to the children as 'vegetables' or 'horribly handicapped'.

This poem is based on a real experience - it has painful images at first but is uplifting by the end:
 

Crossing the threshold

Trapped in twisted bodies,

some with heads too large, too small,

some jerking with fits, limbs contracted,

the children gnawed their bleeding wrists.

They dribbled onto bibs, wet clothes,

banged bruised heads on walls,

screamed and screeched frustration,

repetitively rocked with boredom.

Doctors had advised their parents

send these accidents of nature away

to where care will be given by experts.

Try for another baby - get on with your lives.

Attitudes changed, the institution closed.

The children were moved to a homely place

where doors were opened to local people

to get involved, raise funds and lessen stigma.

First encounters could reduce to helpless repulsion

anyone stepping for the first time into the home.

As each child became known, embarrassment reduced,

ways found to communicate across the barriers.

Laura loved air blown on her upturned face.

Luke calmed when gently massaged to music.

Tim giggled when tickled by his visiting sister.

Sarah smiled as mobiles tinkled in the wind.

One morning, I entered their sitting room,

spring sunlight filtering through the blinds.

The twelve children, fed and dressed, lay unusually

quiet in their circle of padded specialist chairs.

A deep stillness pooled in their centre,

like a gathered Quaker meeting.

I crossed the threshold and felt blessed.

These were old souls - this was holy ground.

This little snippet is again a real historical experience when I ran a support and activity group for siblings of children with disabilities:

Sibling Support Group

‘I know, I know’ he cried

 leaping out of his chair 

‘Let’s all pretend we’re blind!’ 

Hands clapped across his eyes

he stumbled round the room.

A pied piper, he danced

with the other children 

all with blanked out eyes.

Laughter petering out

they returned to their seats.

He looked thoughtful and said

‘Now I know how my sister feels.’


In the 1960s, I was a volunteer at Friern Barnet 'Lunatic Asylum' and Louis was one of the long-term inmates I visited weekly for several years.  His face and tears have come to my mind after all these years...this tells our story.  Sorry if it makes you cry.

The Chronic Patient and the Volunteer

Louis was serving life on the chronics’ ward. 

His ill-fitting clothes and straggly grey hair,

his yellow leathery skin and defeated gait

stigmatised him as an inmate of the asylum.

His young volunteer, a breath of fresh air, 

visited every Sunday afternoon, come rain or shine.

Conversation was always one-sided - his embarrassed

responses rough grunts and quick sideways glances. 

After their card games ritual, she’d lead him outside.

Shuffling a few steps behind, he’d scour the streets,

seeking dog ends to suck through tightly pursed lips -

immune to the stares and wide berth people gave him.

Resting on seats in the hospital grounds, he’d relax,

unaware his home, bounded by high walls, would be sold.

Evicted by luxury flats, he’d one day be transferred

into the uncertain arms of the caring community. 

Long before this, her last day, she broke the news.

She stretched a tentative hand towards him.

She was sorry, she couldn’t come any more.

She was going away to train as a social worker.

He held her eyes for the first and last time, 

silent tears streaming down his haggard face. 

This poem is in remembrance of a dear friend, ‘Granny G’, Elsie Greenwood, a retired pianist and welfare visitor. My flat was in the same house as her one roomed flat in Manchester in the 1970s.  She gave me a small jug of forget-me-nots as I was writing this. I had spent the previous evening in her bedsit, where she had been confined because of disability for many years.

When she dreamed of herself, it was as her younger self, able to move freely. Her joys included her friends, family, bonsai, books, music, visiting cats who grew fat on her treats of fish, feeding the birds and nature.

Forget-me-not 

The room is tidied for another day.

Last light lingers, gentle to take its leave.    

Dimmed are the calendar country gardens.

Eyes must strain to see sepia faces 

displayed in polished frames on oak dressers.

Drawers packed full of a life time’s memories.

Jewellery, hat-pins, coins and pearl buttons. 

Wartime recipes, love letters, programmes.

Photographs, those forget-me-nots of life.

Sheet music, played in concerts and classes.

Her breakfast cup is down-turned,
surrendered, accepted into the saucer bowl.

Every night she heaves her body to draw

red velvet curtains, switch on the light.

Tonight, her eyelids droop, she cannot move.

She steps into dreams of a young woman

laughing, dancing in a field of flowers,

waving a friendly welcome, beckoning.

And she descends into night's deepest sleep,

sighing a last, last breath into the room.

Snowdrops


Seeking signs of Spring        

   my pilgrim shoes bruise

     a silent path through morning grass.

White soft bells bow heads

  early messengers

    tolling out winter’s ravages.

Their trusting journey

  towards light and air

    and courage to crack hardened earth

strengthens my weakened

  resolve and I walk on

    into the unknown future.

To a  Novice Nun

You enter the dark forest

through a tunnel of trees

You tread a pine-needled path

into the centre.

Stillness slowly softens

memories of old pain

reveals a way forward

in this unchartered place.

Your spirit like the blackbird

Sings and moves through the thorn

beautiful for its freedom

in this enclosed region.

  

           

Night Vision

Wide awake in the early hours, I reach out
for my glasses folded on the bedside table.
Reflecting in the lamplight, with my books and pills,
they are transformed – resembling a still life painting.

A sudden memory emerges of my mother.
Gold-rimmed glasses circle her panic-stricken eyes.
Her tired tobacco-tarred lungs wheeze, struggling to breathe.
Her fight over, her glasses are handed to me.

One day, my own glasses, which focus my vision
on distant blue hills, road signs and friendly faces,
will be passed on to family to dispose of.
It could be today, tomorrow or years away.