“You Are Love”

For Thelma


You are love.
Soft white puddle set with rubies.
Precious, darling, dusted love.
Fast and fleeting
living breeze;
Ever searching
Ever seeking,
Living joy complete.

You are love,
Within a tiny body
Set to pass all years too soon
Fragile as the softest tune,
Sharp and lovely
Little blossom.
Temporary as the snowflake
Everlasting as the moon.

Ah! to be a Cat
and not have to worry about
money; a loan unpaid
and nonsense like that.
A sleek cat who trips the fence fantastic
by the oboe's trill;
a Jazz Cat
jumping

down
down
down

into the Kingdom of Garden.
A chic Cat,
cool and penniless
and chasing birds
to win my fame.
A neat Cat,
impeccable.
But to be a Cat would be
to have no music
no words
no tea
and no you...
unless you were a Cat too.

I wrote this on the bus to Belfast this morning. It's my attempt at improving on the two villanelles I'd written earlier, in which I chose my rhyme scheme and repeating lines, then built a poem around it. It's not perfect, but I feel it's a hell of a lot better. It's biographical in nature and won't take a genius to figure out! As for my other two villanelles, I love the central themes to them, so I'd love to rewrite them in future.

Even though you're far away

Even though you're far away
with distance set to last a while
I fall for you again each day.

And every day you mend the pain
In phone calls, photos, glimpse your smile
your laugh; the things you say.

I love your heart, your soul, the way
you resonate across the miles.
I love your laugh; the things you say.

Between us, even though there's rain
and months of parting at a time,
I fall for you again each day.

Before us, even though there's pain
it's due to pass; it won't defy
I hear your laugh, the things you say.

Those months will pass, those years won't stay
like winter when spring finds its time;
I'll have your laugh, the things you say.
I fall for you again each day.

Week's work converge on
this shining moment
Smell of fresh newspaper
my name in print.
Flip through the pages and
see my words etched
Pride of my working-week
tales letter-sketched.

See the town sleep.
Clothed in the perfect Sunday silence
choked by vines of
busy centres
it once dwarfed.

Silent but for the two crucial hours
each day
morning and evening
when it is thoroughfare to streams
of gleaming cars:
"We'd drive through,
never stop there."

See the trees grow.
For movement here is so scarce
you can almost see them
twitching quivering
stretching to a vast blue sky.

Silent but for the whispering winds
all day
through branches breathing
Earth reclaiming
streets and alleyways,
"Come back to me,
O' Willow Town."

Boy. Fifteen and trembling
under the cold white light
of the courts
and the cold dark stares
of those accusing,
wish he wasn't there.
Unnamed for legal reasons
cast nameless into cells
for what he hardly did
- followed others into hell.
There goes
the future jobs
security
all to impress the yobs.
Consigned to a condemning state
sent down in youth
weeps at his fate.

You never seemed to leave that chair.
I didn't think in all your years
your legs had failed; you were
the immovable monolith;
King of our Clan
but not impartial to
a smothering hug
or a talkative child on your knee.
Those faces made me shriek with glee.

You were the light, the life and soul
of all occasions,
of any occasion.
That thick dark wig
immortalised in photographs, that
touched the heads of all of us,
as you touched the hearts of all of us.
And your lemonade, 7up
you let no-one have but me.

Eleven years on
your beloved takes that chair
and feels your glow
though you're not there;

She cannot hope to
fill the space
of all your years
though you're not here.

We have the photos and the talk,
we have the earth where you once walked,
before your passing and your pain,
we had you once but not again.