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Memories and Messages

Memories and messages
Another day
Another journey
Hills grey and laden
With mist.
The swallows flight
In the lane
Ahead of me
Brought you
Our friendship.
Into my thoughts
And the memory
Of our last talk
At the farm
Before you died
You were eighty
And the cancer
That had bitten
Hard into you
Had won its battle
I remember
You’d just disclosed
That you were abused
As a child
You knew
I was speaking
At a meeting
With those
Who care
For the young
The damaged
And abandoned
So I asked
What message
You’d want me to give
Work out of your
Heart with love
Not from your head alone
I asked whether
We are able
To teach
How to show
Compassion
You do it all the time
Apart from to yourself
Be kind to you
Don’t give it all away
Keep some behind
I’m constantly
Surprised
At the kindness
Of the body
To release
Small memories
In ways
That ease the pain
Of loss and the hardness
Of leavings.
Your message
Remains.
RAC
Another Journey

Another journey
The chiselled letters
On stone
1851
Standing on
The iron bridge
The river
Below
Flushed with rain
And stained
With earth
Washed away
By the rising
Waters spate
Leaves
Of Beach trees
Glistening green
Shimmering
With each
Breath
Of wind
I observe
The day.
RAC
If I had to live anywhere else

If I had to live anywhere else
I’d like to live by a rivers side
to watch the water flow
clear in spring and yellow
amber wine in summer
then brown in Autumn
with the waters full in spate.
And I could wash away the regrets
and worries, and that feeling
that I’ve failed you badly
If I had to live somewhere else
I’d want to live by the sea
overlooking a wide estuary
and walk along the gathering shore
to look underneath wrack
and peer into clear pools
that tides wash clean.
And maybe the sea
could wash away the sorrow
the regret for all the pain.
If I had to live anywhere else
I’d want to live where the air
in the summer stays cool and clean
so maybe a clearing in a forest
with stands of great trees
and a spring of clear water
that I could drink and slake
my thirst for the calm
of a quietening soul
and feel the certainty of you.
RAC
When The King Measured His Bathwater by Sheila Jacob
Britain was at war with Germany and all I knew about the Home Front came from history books at school. Weren’t you afraid of being bombed? I asked my Mum. No, she shrugged, we just kept going, wen…
Source: When The King Measured His Bathwater by Sheila Jacob
Ghosts of love

Ghosts of love
If there is not love
What is there
A vacuum
The emptiness
Of words
Something spectral
Of what used to be.
RAC.
There is this night time
There is this night time
Once
I’d stay awake
For three nights
without sleep
easier to evade
avoid
waking
hearing
that noise
slamming metal
and the crying
screaming
now
but then
now.
Never
Goes away.
RAC
Hearing

Imaginary

Imaginary
I read her posts
Sometimes
I examine
The images
The work
The texture
Of the glistening
Hue
The delicacy
Of words
A story
Stories
And muse
Over that first
Morning coffee
Of the journey
Of all the journeys
Imagine
Glaze.
RAC
Watching them fly in
Watching them fly in
I never agreed with it
Lack of emotion
I wrote something
After 9/11
Watching them fly in
Arriving in distress
Not knowing
What they’d been leaving
She had a brother
Working in the tower
A place that I’d known
A place that I’d been
She didn’t know
If he was living
The phone call
Came and she smiled
He was alive.
Long ago
I walked home
And heard
Felt
The explosion
My classmates
Fathers, brothers
Uncles, men
Had been lost
We use that word
Lost too loosely.
Killed.
Too emotional.
What have we become?
Stone pillars
Wooden Indians
Vacant
People who live
Vicariously
Just by television
I’ve lived in a time
That isn’t literally
Real or unreal.
I write
About emotions
The connections
People things times and places
Real.