My brother is five years old again. ‘Do you want to go on an adventure?’ I ask him. I have money in a plastic envelope, bags of sweets, our thick coats. He looks out of the window and says, ‘But things are going to get worse.’ He’s right. The moon shivers across the dark sea as we look out at the lines of rising surf, our hands pressed to the glass. When the storm comes I feel it pound against the chalet’s thin wooden walls, through the veil of my dream.
a little boy stares
at his fists full of sand
sails on the horizon
He is 44 this year and has children by three different women: a daughter of eighteen who has lived in the States for the past ten years, a boy of eleven whose mother disappeared with him when he was only a few months old, and Morgan, his baby son with Manuela. The invitation to their wedding arrived this week. 'This time,' I say to myself, 'things will work out.'
warm wind
a man lifts his hands
from the handlebars
My sister and I taught him how to play cards in a caravan on a rainy afternoon in Devon. His hands were so little he struggled to hold them all and when he dropped one, and crawled under the table to fetch it, we spiked the remaining ones, giving him the four Jacks that would easily win him the game. His eyes widened and a grin spread across his face as he picked up one card at a time. When he finally realised we’d set him up, he looked at us and said, ‘You scrumptious girls.’
crowded promenade
a little boy jumps
the long shadows
Dover Beach and My Back Yard
British Haiku Society Haibun Anthology 2007
Little Brother
Fast Train
When the 17.22 heads out of Victoria and begins to pick up speed I start thinking about seatbelts, or the absence of seatbelts, and how in an emergency I might be thrown onto the woman opposite, cracking my head against hers, or puncturing my face on a corner of her open hardback book. But then I notice her breasts which are packed beneath a bib of pink frills, her tiered paisley skirt rumpling in waves over plump knees, her curly hair the colour of hazelnuts, her milky skin, which takes me back to her breasts which are pendulous, generous. And I’ve forgotten about seatbelts, as I shift my knees to one side to get a view of her feet, the shoes she’s wearing which I know will make all the difference to whether she’ll scream and push me away as I fall, or cradle my face away from her book, those wonderful breasts receiving me like a tumbled duvet.
not knowing
how to hold her
my mother at eighty
Frogpond 2007, Vol XXX, No 3, and
dust of summers (Red Moon Press 2008)
For Summer
bathtime
for once she wants
to keep her socks on
bedtime
suddenly she's learned
how to hop
Planet 2007
Blow
the silence of rain
through double-glazing
the tick of a clock
‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he says with his back to me.
He was looking out of the bay window when I got out of the car and waved and I thought he hadn’t seen me. ‘Dad, I thought about calling you back,’ I say, ‘but it was late when I got in and I didn’t want to wake you.’
He parts the net curtain as if something in the street has caught his attention.
‘Look, I’m sorry. If I’d known it was such a big thing I would have called.’
He turns round at this. ‘A big thing? I’m not “a big thing”…’ and his voice breaks.
When did my dad get so old? He walks in small tight steps, wears two cardigans to keep warm. He calls me if his newspaper is late.
I walk over to him and put my arm around his shoulders. ‘Dad, c’mon,’ I say, ‘you know I love you. You know that.’ He trembles like a child caught in the rain.
When I was little he always had a hankie for me. He’d press the smooth cotton to my nose and say, ‘Blow’. I search in my bag and hand him what he needs for now.
dad’s slippers
shuffle along the path
windfalls
Blue Tattoo November 2007
What’s Unsaid
two people kissing
through the café window
the glitter of rain
That’s what she told me when she came home.
It was already dark. Everyone had left except for the old man. She turned the ‘Closed’ sign to face the street, wiped down all the other tables, emptied ashtrays, refilled ketchup bottles, and straightened the plastic menus. She went out back for the steel pail and mop and washed the floor. The old man had his back to her. Five to six.
‘Have you finished, love?’ she said.
She walked over to him. ‘I’ve got to lock up now.’
‘Five minutes,’ he said without looking at her.
She leant against the counter and watched the traffic lights change on the High Street.
At six, as usual, the old man got up from his table.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.
The bell on the door clattered.
She slurried the mop around where he’d been sitting. She picked up his mug and left it in the sink. She dropped the crumpled sugar packets in her overall pocket because she’d already taken out the rubbish.
And that’s when she saw them. After she’d turned out the main lights, just as she was opening the door.
a black umbrella
blows inside out — too late
to say sorry
Blue Tattoo November 2007
Child’s Play
How about drawing? We could go and see the sheep? Riding your bike around the farmyard? I pick up some red and green juggling balls that have been gathering dust on the windowsill and manage a dozen or so throws before one thuds to the wooden floor. His face lights up. He drags over an empty cardboard box, stands in it, and asks me to throw the balls at him. To see if I can hit his nose.
three now
he thinks I should wear
the blue skirt, not jeans
Stylus October 2007
Fish-girl
‘Julia was staying with her grandmother in Antibes and could hear the sea through her open bedroom window,’ I begin as we head towards the seafront, her hand small and warm inside mine. ‘So even though it was a windy evening, she decided to go for a walk.’ We pass brightly lit cafés; take a shortcut to the ramparts through a small park of palm trees, the sea so close now I can feel the spray on my face. ‘At the old town walls, she stopped to watch the surf crashing against the rocks below and that’s when she saw...’
‘I know, let me!’ my granddaughter interrupts, and the story is hers now: mermaids and black rocks, a girl dragged under the wild frothing sea. ‘Your turn,’ she says as we take a cobbled street into the town, away from the sea-wind.
I could let the girl drown, the mermaid’s cold arms wrapped around her tight as weed, her breath racing away to the surface of the sea, and pass back this story of danger and treachery. But not yet. She can breathe under water, will wake up the next morning with a necklace of pink seashells, proof that the unbelievable sometimes happens.
full moon
surprised by seagulls
flying between stars
French Literary Review Autumn 2007
