Darling Susan Penhaligon (a delightful Cancerian; I sooo attract crabs these days...) has honoured us with two more poems, both utterly lovely. I especially adore The Cremation (St Ives). One of my all-time TV drama series favourites is her Bouquet of Barbed Wire from the '70s, and many will fondly recall her in A Fine Romance that ran in the '80s. I really do think an enterprising publisher should collect Susan's poems and put them out. If you wish to show your appreciation, leave a comment below. Don't be cheap and just go back to the fucking social media.
With Apologies to Jenny Joseph
Now I'm seventy I shall not wear purple,
I have no need for satin slippers,
my red hat will sit snug on my highlighted hair
and I shall only sometimes wear it.
I will giggle much, much more.
I shall love all young people and
pass my wisdom as voodoo,
it is they who will press alarm bells.
I shall not hoard pens and beer mats or regrets
and I will sit down frequently,
not brandy stoked or pavement squatted,
but comfy and content with a lit stove.
I will not eat three pounds of sausages
or wear terrible shirts but grow peppers
in a pot on my windowsill
and if I spit it will only be to polish them.
I shall choose the moment to say fuck
with exquisite precision.
But Jenny Joseph you are right,
I will pick flowers in the rain
2019
The cremation (St Ives)
I am down near the weathered rocks again,
by surf, the smell of surf, the ceaseless, black
souled cry of gulls and my mother,
my mother, in the sea filled house of memories.
She has gone,
swept in a pod caressed with flowers.
We played 'That's entertainment'
I saw her dancing, her arms waving like a swimmer
making sure she was watched.
I walk the cobbled streets without her,
a map stapled to my childhood,
each crease has been explored,
each fold examined,
and there is the sloping beach as I remembered,
the smell of Blue Grass perfumed her bag
propped up against a basket full of pasties
with a check rug, rough against our baby skin.
The harbour beach for tea,
we were raised with sand in our stomachs.
The sea, the sea, my mother and the sea,
I am formed by its stones and lashing waves
as moody as my mother and her painful love.
I am not easily here.
I know the tides are forever,
but she is not.
2 comments:
The second poem especially speaks to me. My mother is still alive, and active and beautiful, and fiercely self-reliant, but she is tiring and for some while I have been preparing myself...and I remember those picnic blankets in the poem....and those pasties.
I relate to it as that point one may come to, that one's mother has come to, when you see her as one of those Russian Baboushka dolls. You see an old woman, a woman, a girl...and a small girl. My mother, like this poet seems to have had, had a remote, difficult but not meaningless relationship with her mother.
She appreciated her mother, and her gifts and talents, while not necessarily liking her. But I like mine. I don't only love her. You can love someone without liking them. But I like her. I 'get' her and she 'gets' me. She's my dearest friend.
On a different note, I definitely agree re espousing the fuck word, enunciated with great clarity, and deployed like the f bomb it properly deserves to be.
Thank you poppet. I do think Cremation is an excellent poem. And thank you for sharing your thought.
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