Why am I always looking backwards
when from around that bend
I can already smell salt in the air
and hear the screech of gull
and feel the scorch of sand on foot
and cold rush of sea strike from toe to nape.
I could be savouring that
But instead here I stand
my face to the road already travelled
consumed by the wrong turns taken
the ensuing damage done,
the time lost, the regret,
when I could at least be teetering
on the whim of something new.
Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved
Millcove Gallery are running their annual poetry competition. Details in link below. Writing poems based on paintings is a great way of playing with the imagination. So whether you enter the competition or not use the paintings as poetry prompts and enjoy. There's a lovely range of situations/settings suggested by the paintings in the selection so you are sure to find something to stimulate your creative genius...go for it...
Although I am totally consumed by the inconvenience of broken bones
it is Summer here, and I can look out and see the drone bee, usually female,
fill her saddlebags with pollen and her honey stomach with nectar
from the Purple Toadflax that has colonised the garden,
and admire her ten hour day shift, her fortnight or two life span
spent replenishing the hive, and notice the Oriental Poppy,
its crepe paper blooms that swirl and fall, layer upon glorious layer,
its scarlet skirts splayed and scattered to the breeze,
and see the yellow tongue of the white throated Lily
trumpet forth, recede and give way to the next performer,
the Oxeye Daisy stirring in the wings,limbering up for its big debut-
And maybe in this way I can learn a thing or two...
I think this may be the first poem I ever wrote. I was brought up in a council estate in Northern Ireland in the fifties/sixties. There were no playground facilities so we roamed, unchaperoned and there was a great freedom to that. The bars referred to separated the footpath from the road and were a popular spot to hang out and hang off, preferably upside down...But the religious divide was ever present. Council estates were segregated zones for the most part. Ours dubbed The White City being the oldest estate had a mixture of creeds unlike the Ponderosa where Aunt Annie lived in a Catholic enclave. It got its name from the ranch in Bonanza a long running western soap from the fifties and sixties. But we all walked a very thin line and long before violence broke out we could smell gunsmoke on the horizon.The silence we lived in was one of fear.
Rumours
Tumbling
over the bars
Backwards-forwards
Sidetricks-scandals
Knickers in
the air
Nobody
watching.
Tennis on
the footpath
No nets-no
lines
Few
rules-just balls
Always
landing in
Mrs Quinn’s
garden.
The delight
of foraging
Through
Toner’s back-yard.
Rumours
extending
Like a
ripple from the rear
of adults
alerted.
And rumours
of The Boys
Braving the
Tricolour
Shouts of
freedom
Heading for
Coalisland
Followed by
silence.
Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved
A new craft group has been set up in my local area and Jo, one of the group, makes quilts. Stunning pieces of work that brought me back to my father's skill with needle and thread. He came from a line of stone masons and had very clever hands...
QUILT MAKER
My father
could cut fabric with either hand
taking
cognisance of grain, warp, weft and diagonal.
I remember newspaper
triangular patterns,
his
tailor’s chalk left white crosses in its wake.
He figured
dimensions in his head, but cut
with
precision - no strip or machine quilting then
when we
cranked the handle that thrummed out blocks
each with
its own story to tell.
He finger-pressed
frocks and cast-offs that conjured up
memories -
sharp and ephemeral the way scents do -
pin-stitched
and back-stitched, summers pinioned.
He knew
that if pulled along the diagonal
the fabric would
stretch
as memories
do now across the bed.
I have managed to break a wrist and two bones in the foot. All right side, my dominant one. Tripped over the dog...poor Molly. So not feeling creative am editing and re-blogging some of my poems from way back. This one relates to growing up in sixties Ireland.
Garden looks good this time of year so some pics.
Pink
Gingham
We were daughters
of Eve
sacred
vessels
arbiters of
men’s fate-
we were to
keep our hemlines low and our lips pursed tight.
Girls were
expelled for attending dance halls-
the Spanish
inquisition could have learnt a thing or two
from the
Mercy nuns-
and then
the Sex Education-
How far
should you let him go? Was a kiss sex? Or a hug?
A button
undone? A bodice too low?-
On Radio
Caroline the Bee Gees, The Stones and The Beatles-
Women were
burning bras all over
and we were
forbidden to dance.
The arrival
of the summer uniform
pink
gingham that lasted one term
then back
to the pinafore box pleats -
pink
gingham was deemed an enticement to sin
and there
were Homes for girls like that….
Copyright Cathy Leonard 2023
We tell ourselves it's the multitasking
the reason why we forget the task in hand
distracted and waylaid as we are
by a butterfly in full tilt, the scent of a memory,
the blue cap of a blue tit, anything
that edges between the thought and ensuing action
And when we have to scroll mentally through the alphabet,
sometimes even twice, to recall a name
we tell ourselves that it's just
that the range of our acquaintances
has expanded exponentially
in recent decades
And this morning when I recalled and recounted
every detail of your dog's behaviour,
idiosyncrasies and demise
and couldn't remember your name
while you stood there waiting
for the introduction to my companion
I just hope you put it down to bad manners...
Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved
