Six Sonnets
The apron is
crisp white starch, snowy cap
On dark curls. Bright purple belt shows her rank
Skirt below the knee, black shoes that tap, tap
the lino. Who'd guess that the sluice room stank?
The smile is ready, and with a steady
sterile hand she changes bed-sore dressings.
Gentleness, remembers names, checks a thready
pulse. Automaton, dispensing blessings.
Old Mrs Jones went yesterday. It seems
a shame she missed her hundredth by two months.
Outside the window a pale moonlight gleams
on silvered trees and white winged owl that hunts
Nobody's aware that it's the absent soul
of the white capped nurse who plays her scarring role.
**********
The landscape
of my soul is frost and ice
with glaciers of frozen tears where shards
slow-fall into salt seas. Lightening strikes twice
here; hard-writ the bitter record; my Hansard's
in cold blood. Fickle spring has fled the cold.
God, were I in the sun again to thaw,
to grow, to blossom and fruit - though I'm old.
I have a heart that beats young as before.
Is there yet summer in some hidden spot
where scents of harvest carry on the breeze?
A love-physician's fingers might unknot
The frosted briars of my heart and tease
this pain out. Hate heats this long winter, soul.
like some heart rot it slow consumes the whole
**********
The care
assistants come at five to eight
and gather in the office to be told
their morning tasks and the declining state
of those whose fate it is to get too old.
They discuss their boyfriends across the bath
while Mrs this or that is washed and dressed
at speed , since all is judged by that, the wrath
reserved for those whose slow, kind, care has blessed
some frail soul. Fast runs the conveyor belt
of bodies to the toilet, meals and bed
and none might question how it truly felt
to be packaged up as if already dead.
One day they will, as time brings it to be;
They will be old, and valueless like me.
**********
Confound
this inner emptiness that starts
with dawn each day. This hidden chill's too much
for fireside heat to reach. Sub zero parts
need something more. Why, nothing seems to touch
this cold tinder into flame. No work fest,
no banquet, no red wine begins to thaw
and flood this hollowness with rising zest.
This outer warmth shrouds permafrost at core.
But - now your melody is playing June;
turns my midwinter to a summer?s day;
ice shatters with the beating of the tune;
ice-diamonds crumble and just melt away.
The tune is love ? the warmth the welcome smile
You shine? I of your sun merely the dial
**********
Move softly,
here my changed love sleeps.
See how his deep lined face is calmer now.
This sickness steals our hopes; just keeps
shadows for tomorrow. God knows how
it remade our future dream. Best let it rot.
He has the same blue eyes; the name's still his,
but within his frame another's come, it?s not
him; days are out of tune, such pain that it is
hard to find spirit food. Slow loss of function
creeps toward an end which we know and yet
find bereft of meaning and divine unction.
We live for now. Blessed, sometimes we forget;
warm each other between the winding sheets.
Move softly here; my changed love sleeps.
**********
Here is my meditation tree,
the base
is hollow and with soft pine-needles filled.
This is my refuge, where my spirit's stilled;
here all the slurry-city's worry chase
is swilled away; the lakes, this peaceful place ?
while the owl sleeps the hunting falcon?s killed
to feed its young ? mankind is yet more skilled
in vicious ways to waste the human race.
The lakes below are tossed, a passing storm
berates the trees and surfs the maelstrom lakes.
And yet beneath, a stillness is the norm
and from my rested spirit joy awakes ?
I am at peace with nature's reddened claw
and here my inner hurts begin to thaw.