The Midwest’s a big place and we was little fish but a deputy’s a big man in a small town and they called me The Deputy’s Wife
Nobody ever called me Anna-Mae before Where is my husband? Can I go downtown this afternoon? When did I eat? I’m still here and I’m not stupid. The nurses are kind
My mother called me Dizzybelle She told me there’s a boy out there, he’ll take your heart She held me close as long as she could My Dizzybelle, she’d say, you are the prettiest thing You watch out for them boys down by the creek This county’s full of no goods
Mother was glad I married a sheriff’s man He and I had girl-children and they called me Mama When they was cheeky and thirteen they called me Mama-darlin‘ Every livelong day I held them close, protected them from creek boys and boys on bridges and boys in beat-up cars Boys with golden promises in their mouths
Nobody ever called me Anna-Mae before Where is my husband? Can I go downtown this afternoon? When did I eat? I’m still here and I’m not stupid. The nurses are kind
If they could take a look inside my head they’d see a dozen hats trimmed with flowers for the church parade and my daughters’ sweet small hands at prayer and my husband’s shirts, ironed smooth as water in the creek and endless love
Nobody ever called me Anna-Mae before Where is my husband? Can I go downtown this afternoon? When did I eat? I’m still here and I’m not stupid. The nurses are kind
My husband called me honey, sometimes honey-child and we was married young, you know I’ve been wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend A deputy’s a big man in a town and I married the deputy
Nobody ever called me Anna-Mae before Where is my husband? Can I go downtown this afternoon? When did I eat? I’m still here and I’m not stupid. The nurses are kind
In autumn I hunch and hesitate like an un-nectared bee What will I do when winter comes and it all turns dark and my once lusty part-time love withers to a bunch of sticks scented with decay?
I’ll find a piece of silk, stitch it and hang it at my window A lined blind of fragile, turquoise gauze covering to the sill A kind of substitute for stained-glass wings and high-summer crawlers, armoured like jewelled knights
I’ll borrow a sheepskin and share it with my sofa, light candles, burn logs, succumb to Christmas I’ll ignore whatever creeps in from my cooling compost to skate and skitter in the warmth of my roof space
I’ll forget my love is sleeping under the slate grey sky There’ll be comfort and Shiraz inside my pagan nest But soon enough, a push to rebirth will begin to repaint the hard plain and I’ll do what I do every year –
slipper-tread outside at icy six a.m. to stroke the camellia’s firm and frosted leaves until they drip, drip, drip in cool perfection, like a pretty thing, for sale in a garden centre
This is another poem written and displayed at the exhibition to commemorate the closure of the Bordon Barracks, in Hampshire, England. I have since set it to music and it has been arranged as a duet by my partner in The Ariel Band, Pete Stephens.
With my long hair loose I wore Jenny’s khaki shoes and that brooch you found in a puddle by the Ouse My threads were khaki too but my ribbons powder blue I got wed in my working dress the day I married you
We were married in a place where the wild hares race We made our vows at an altar of grey hay Honey-makers sang on the way to their hives Pollen-stained confetti blessed our lives and our bridesmaids were a cuckoo and a jay
Our vows were sealed in a soft-scented field Corn husks hymned to the yellowing day A warbler called from the sparkling brook silky rhythmic notes with a big band hook and a scarecrow caught my bouquet
With my long hair loose I wore Jenny’s khaki shoes and that brooch you found in a puddle by the Ouse My gown was nearly new–I was back at work by two I went to work in my wedding dress the day I married you
Inspired by the news that garden centres are dumbing down plant names
Please do not dumb down my acer grisum It is not just a common garden dame And expert tutors prudent, trained each horticulture student to call each plant its correct Latin name
So, take care to prune the hamamelis mollis Show respect for all magnolia cambellii Give thanks for thick and glorious hedera helixa and ensure tagetes patula does not die
Papaver’s still our emblem, in its Latin and glorious it blooms and issues seed Parodia formosa? Safe, but don’t come closer This lonely species might well make you bleed
Which brings us to the sultry one called vanda Get her name right when you sit her on your sill And though naysayers say, no more flores on the way With a bit of care, I think you’ll find she will
And don’t even think about messing with my vaccinium myrtillus
Next I know, I come back from Big Ben’s Burger Bar and Chuck’s up to his eyes on the computer and our little Mylie’s taken the opportunity to drag the highchair all the way downstairs and out onto the street. At least she didn’t throw nothing out the window this time. Last month she took her cot to pieces, and the headboard with the teddy bear on it hit a traffic cop. The cop got away with a bruise.
She’s a prodigy, I told him, with a natural sense of what makes eye-catching street art.
Dedicated to the closure of the barracks in Bordon, Hampshire, England 2015, this poem was displayed in the Bordon Reflections Exhibition in July 2015
Opened as a soldiers’ club the building contained a large concert hall with stage and dressing room and a sprung dance floor. It also contained a supper room and bar, a sergeants’ room, a general room, a tea room, a billiard room and seven baths. Later a new ballroom was added and the old theatre became the cinema. A fire of unknown cause completely destroyed the Empire Club in 1987. Plans were originally made to rebuild it as an arts centre using the insurance money but this never materialised and the remains of the building disappeared under the Pinewood Village housing estate.
What remains of the Empire is under the houses, beneath the foundations, its last embers grown stone cold so long ago The earth and dust hold endless stories, buried deep, like grandma’s memories we wish we’d asked about when there was still time Under the houses in Pinewood Village Bette Davis smoked a cigarette Veronica Lake peeped through her silky hair Gene Autry saddled up his horse Charlie Chaplin got the girl The Beatles had a hard day’s night Our Gracie stole the nation’s heart–again and Bogart navigated Hepburn around The African Queen Below the houses and above the ground myriad memories lie in perpetuity and we’re reminded without doubt the future is the present, then the past but the punters, being people, never change Just ask Shakespeare about that Technology dominates us now but people, they still fall in love, get happy, angry, hungry, care for their children, buy stuff, sell stuff then they fade like Bette and Bogart and the rest, Like all the punters at The Empire after the last note of the last song after the anthem and the credits as someone somewhere somehow dimmed the lights
Good morning, Friday Fictioneers, (right now it’s ten a.m. in Hampshire, England), such a pleasure to be back and posting again – having completed what I call a solid first draft of my book, working title “If You Want To Know A Secret”. I am now attempting a disciplined edit of two chapters a day – I am just two chapters in so far. There is still plenty of work to do but I love it, and the way it is means I can get on to Friday Fictioneers today. So thank you, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for still being there and doing your great work. Last evening I watched a TV documentary about three girls who were kidnapped from their mother in Wales, and taken to Yemen, twenty-plus years ago. Their ordeal, and that of their mother, inspired this story.
I know I saw my sister. Vernon told me I imagined her, of course. But he and I were on the street, the little winding part with the candy store, and when I looked up at the window, my sister was there and I read our code. “I’m playing Beyond the Sea,” she mouthed. “Charles Trenet version.” She never went for Bobby Darin so chose Charles Trenet as our “Love you” message. Vernon held my arm tight. Said the windows weren’t really there. The whole place was fake. But that moment was real. Everything else is just a bad dream.
All down the stairs you held my hand, you balanced me, you helped me land and on the ground you were still there, still smiling and as my two left feet went south I heard the words come out my mouth, just spilling out, like not scared of the feeling
Wait – stop – don’t – think – I don’t want another drink I just want to be alone with you I thought the songs had all been sung and love was only for the young Now I’m thinking I don’t think that’s true
When you turned around that night I saw what I think they call the light Some stars are made for wishing, some for keeping Ole blue eyes and old blue jeans, come to life from in my dreams This heart of mine was not quite dead, just sleeping
You saw me as I climbed the stairs, you took my hand, I said my prayers. For once someone was there to stop me falling, and through the rain and through the pain I put my heart in drive again For so long now my soul had just been stalling.
Wait – stop – don’t – think – I don’t want another drink I just want to be alone with you I thought the songs had all been sung and love was only for the young But now I’ve realised that’s just not true
Don’t care what’s underneath my feet if you’ll be here to make this sweet, Not caught in thought the songs had all been sung I thought that love was history, for other people, but not me I thought that love was only for the young
Wait – stop – don’t – think – I don’t want another drink I looked at you and then I saw the sign I thought the songs, the stars, the fun, had all been said, had all been done But a lucky star just found me, just in time
Playing catch up on my mission to post 52 poems this year, here is The Way They Were, which was published in the Chichester Festival open mic collection “All That Jazz”, in 2015
Mother’s mantra: don’t come home pregnant
Mothers were like that then
Mine was a perfect sketch on a dress pattern sleeve,
cinched waist, smartly starched, Simplicity and Vogue
Each afternoon she took the bus from Oatlands Drive
to Sainsbury’s, for haslet, sweet dip fancies and loose tea
When I did come home expecting
she became a message on a greetings card The best grandmother in the world
Blurry black and white picture of my parents Peggy and “Chips” at Pagham, West Sussex in Summer 1947. The head full of curls, in the lower left corner, is me. The marriage between my intelligent, anxious mother and my free-spirited playful father, was never going to work but many years later, long after their final separation, he said “Never had a shirt needing a button when I was with your mother”. I like to think it was his way of saying he loved her. I recall their marriage in my book “Other People’s Stories”. While I was writing the book, I felt I got to know my late father, understood him better and forgave him for not being the ideal husband for my mother. She used to tell me she’d have liked to be a vicar’s wife. I think she would have made a very good one, since the job is pretty steady and a vicar tends to do as his boss demands.
I am posting The Way They Were on the anniversary of my parents’ marriage ceremony, seventy-nine years ago. I still have the certificate, which is littered with crossings out and corrections by the Registrar, which has always made me see it as symbolic.
Sugar on the Bee 