Mother’s Day Book Spine Poem

This years Mother’s Day Book Spine Poem – for the motherless child and the childless mother.(for some reason I can’t get the photo to print. I’ll try it as a stand alone entry.)

Heartbroken Open
Layers of Silence
Latitudes of Melt

 

Tricia 2013 

Son and Sky

Son and Sky

 

Laughter back in her life

Interesting projects

Meaning and purpose abound

And yet

Three sleepless nights this week

It would appear her body

Is aware

The black stallion of Mother’s Day

Is galloping toward her 

Hooves pounding the tempo

Requiem for a Dead Child

Fourteen years since

Her so sad son

Laid down the intolerable burden

His life had become

Her childless mother lesions

Ache

With familial longing

As she sits in the dark

Waiting for dawn

Slowly it comes

Swathes of colour

Join together

‘Till the sky is a breathtaking blaze

Her atheistic heart

Longs for a moment

To see her artist son’s hand

Painting this gift of morning skies

But what was

Can never be again

The yin of grief settles

Beside the yang of love

It is enough for today

 

Tricia 5/2013

 

 

Christmas in Tricia Town

 

Christmas in Tricia Town

 

I began to think 

This year it would be easier

My grief is a gentler thing

I’ve lived the lessons of loss

Maybe I’m ready to rejoin the joy 

I experienced the almost forgotten pull

Of the ‘before’ Christmases 

Wandering around a big shopping centre

Singing loudly along with Christmas songs

That many loathed

But I delighted in

Selecting gifts for those I love

Even though the two most important people in my life

No longer have need of gifts

Nor the food I lovingly prepared for them

There’ll be no one sneaking the pork crackling

As soon as my back is turned

The tears began to trickle

As I realised

There’ll be no pork with crunchy crackling in my home

No dried apricot and sage stuffed turkey

No roast potatoes soft on the inside

Crisp and crunchy on the outside

My shopping centre wandering days are done

Many days I don’t make it up the driveway to the letter box

Some days my body struggles to toss a simple salad

It’s time to accept

My christmas cooking days are done

As I slowly come to terms

With my increasing limitations

I’m learning death doesn’t own grief

It appears loss has more lessons for me

When it gets too tough 

I wander via the keyboard of my iPad

And browse the snippets on YouTube

Today it’s the outrageous Eric Idle 

Who brings a little joy to my world

With his wonderful song 

Fuck Christmas

If you want to hear the song

That made this sad woman smile

Just wander over to You Tube

But if the title offends you

Maybe Christmas in Tricia Town 

Isn’t for you.

 

Tricia 12/12

 

 

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=BqfZUX5svCg

 

My Life in Freefall

 

My Life in Freefall

 

I’ll never witness The Northern Lights

Thanks to the wonder of the internet

I’m able to see amazing photos

I’d like to say that’s enough for me

But it isn’t

 

I’ll never hold my husband in my arms again

We knew a love that few experience

I have so many precious memories

I’d like to say that’s enough for me

But it isn’t

 

I’ll never hear again the words  

Oh I do love you ma 

For 26 years my son loved me unconditionally

I’d like to say that’s enough for me 

But it isn’t

 

I’ll never hold a grandchild  in my arms

Smell the newborn scent that emanates from the fontanelle

I have precious great nieces and nephews

I’d like to say that’s enough for me

But it isn’t

 

I’ll never run again or slowly sink into a bath

Chronic illness a thieving bitch I know well

In my reverie I still dance naked in the ocean

I’d like to say that’s enough for me

But it isn’t

 

I’ve the loving selfless assistance of extended family and friends

Combined with psychological and medical support

Without help I’d struggle to live alone in my home

I’d like to say this loving assistance and support is everything to me 

And it is

 

Tricia 11/12

 

Freefall is a style of writing taught by Barbara Turner Vessalago.  It’s a method of writing without censoring, following each thread and allowing it to take you to places you might otherwise never venture. 

 

This poem,  My Life In Freefall, is not about rapid decline, rather it’s an exercise in downward movement,  allowing words to fall freely onto the page and take me to a place of acknowledgement, depth, understanding and gratitude.

Words and Wounds

Words and Wounds

Words are my constant companions
My friends and confidants
But
There are days I loathe the words
Brave, courageous, determined
Not all days
Just the really difficult days
Stoic is a stand out on the loathe list
A tiny pebble
Hiding in my shoe
Rolling and rubbing
Until eventually
The skin blisters and breaks
Then there’s the word
Closure
I want to write this blight in large black letters
On a huge white sheet of paper
Cut out each letter
Tear the letters into tiny pieces
Put them into a rusty old jam tin
And set fire to them
When the black ash of closure has cooled
I want to take the tin to the top of a mountain
Shake out the ash
Allowing the winds to swirl and dissipate
This monstrous mantra forevermore
Because with death
There is no closure
We can relearn our lives
In the wake of absence
Savour our memories
Even learn to laugh again
But the illusion of closure
Is a pain inducing panacea
An exhausting trek along a road to nowhere
Forty years ago today
My son was born
Thirteen years ago he died
Most days I live in peace
With his absent presence
But today the pain is as raw
As the day we discovered his body
I know from experience
Tomorrow will be a better day
Today will be a mixture of longing and laughter
Crumpling and climbing up again
As the kaleidoscope of memory rotates
There will be no closure
And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Tricia 18/9/2012

Fifty

 

Eccentricity has always appealed

Now at fifty I feel a freedom to be

Happy, sad, playful, joyful

All the things that are authentically me

I love teddy bears and yes I talk to them

They don’t answer me, which is just as well

There’s a line between eccentricity and neurosis

I’ve occasionally crossed it I’m not ashamed to tell

Over fifty years I have grown in wisdom

I don’t think I’ll be crossing that line again

Because I know myself and I like myself

I no longer feel any need to pretend

I walked down Chapel Street in a purple feather boa

Carrying my darling mate Ted E Bare

Some people smiled, others gave me a wide berth

But quite frankly I don’t care

What others think of me is no longer important

It’s how I see myself that brings me peace

I’m no stranger to sorrow and suffering

I walk side by side with grief

Yet within me lives a childlike joy

An appreciation for the beauty nature displays

By accepting and living each sensation that arises

I survive the sad and relish the joyful days

From this freedom to be who I am

Flows an acceptance for others to be

Authentically living in truth to themselves

We all have the right to be free

As I explore how I feel deep within

I find I love being fifty years old

I am who I am and that’s comfortably

Reubenesque, courageous and bold

Thoughtful, forthright, honest and open

Aware that I still have a lot to learn

I struggle with the concept of limitations

But I’ll get to that in its turn

Yes I’m fifty and slightly eccentric

Trying to contribute my bit to this world we all share

And ‘though fifty doesn’t look like twenty

My cupboard of beauty is far from bare

 

Tricia 12/2000

 

The above poem is almost 12 years old, but I’ve been having a wee debate with a journalist on the Huffington Post about women who play with dolls. This poem was my final retort.

Hands

HANDS

 

She couldn’t stop thinking

About hands

 

At first it was his hands

And her inability to remember

Their look

Texture

 

     The way they felt

     As they tousled her hair

     After he touched his lips

     To the top of her head

 

          The warmth of them

          Cupping her breast

          Thumb teasing nipple

          Gentling her into sensuality

 

               Their comforting circular rhythm

               Easing her into sleep

               On nights her mind

               Roared and raced

 

Conversely she could never forget

How cold and heavy they were

When she lifted them to her lips 

For one last kiss

 

The hands of a clock

Winding down

As the mechanism of her life

Slowed

Once simple tasks

Now as daunting as Everest

 

Her own hands

Gripping the handles 

Of her walking frame

Tenaciously gouging 

Independence

From an uncooperative body

 

Hands of strangers

Tentatively offered

Gratefully accepted

As she struggled

With the minutiae of life

In public places

 

The hands of family and friends

Reaching out

Giving comfort and assistance

Wrapped around the handles of her wheelchair

Pushing her lovingly

Back into the gallery and theatre of life

 

Tricia 03/2012

 

Birds

Birds

 

a small grey bird has begun to visit

he pokes his little beak

over the white timber frame

at the bottom of my sitting room door

most days he stops by

just for a moment

pecks on the glass to get my attention

then waddles across the deck

his delicate birdie feet

clicking softly on the weathered timber         

 

birds bring me comfort – consolation

a few days after the death of my son

I crumpled keening in the garage

I could not find a sketch he had drawn

a small black bird with an orange beak

stood in the doorway watching me

unafraid of my shrieking

as I foraged manically

through the remnants of a life that ended too soon

 

each year on the anniversary of our son’s death

my husband and I would take a bottle of French champagne

to Squeaky Beach on Wilsons Prom

where we had scattered his ashes

we laughed – cried

shared stories of our boy

as we sipped his favourite bubbly

and each year on the almost deserted winter beach

a little black bird with an orange beak

would leave little birdie footprints in the sand

as he wandered between us and the ocean

 

on the morning after my husband’s death

unable to sleep

I stumbled through the sand at Half Moon Bay

searching for solace in the coming of dawn

as black turned to grey I heard birdsong

I looked toward the sound

and saw two black birds

soaring together

dipping and diving as day began

 

the new bird in my life

brings with him peace

a sense that soon

it will be my turn to soar

 

Tricia 04/2011

 

 

The Power of Poetry

The Power of Poetry

 

Wordsworth wrote of many things

Yet Daffodils is the verse that rings

The bells of kindred spirit-ship

Stiches the wound bereavement ripped

I know this man I’ve never met

Centuries apart and yet

His words “the bliss of solitude;”

Touch my deepest darkest mood

Lost lives live - hope is formed

I still have those whose deaths I’ve mourned

His “inward eye” sets sorrow free

Reverie brings them back to me

Two daffodils bloomed in the meadow of life

Mother to one to the other wife

 

Tricia 19/1/2012

 

Journey Beyond Wishing

JOURNEY BEYOND WISHING 

 

Grief

An exhausting experience

Tossed in a churning ocean of why and what if

We grieve for so many things

Life is full of little losses

Then there are the monumental losses

The ones that can never be fully comprehended

These we move through hour by hour

Moment by moment

We travel these uncharted seas

In whatever direction our being leads us

No markers to guide us

At times our inner voice the only means of navigation

Death is a journey beyond wishing

The agony of possibility

Combined with impossibility

The never knowing

How to accept the never knowing

And the sense of loss

The ache within the ache

Longing

The ache that defies description

How to survive the not wanting to survive

Those angry steps that tempt fate

“Come and get me you bastard fate”

At times beyond caring

Seeking only oblivion

Reaching for anything to ease this pain

Wanting darkness

Not light

With light we see what is behind us and before us

Often not ready for the seeing yet somehow understanding

Open eyes and an open heart necessary if we are to move forward

With seeing can come new waves of pain

Facing the truth of what was and what is

Through a fragmented filter

This viewing of things in segments can help one survive

Feeling the pain of what is known

And then the unknown

Those precipitous cliffs of impossibility

The acceptance of questions without answer

One of life’s hardest lessons

Often wanting just five more minutes

So the journey continues                                      

 

Tricia 01/06