Bearded Tits
Hanging close from the laburnum tree
Is a supermarket for birds tame enough
To flutter close, make their inspection
Of special offers, and if they appeal
Peck at the peanuts or spheres of fat.
A pair of bearded tits have set up home
In the box above our garden table
And as if on string swoop three metres
To and fro, appeasing insatiable appetites,
Much like those of our grandsons.
Spring unloads glories from a thousand
Species, from the wild derided dandelion
And buttercup – glorious weeds indeed –
To the velvet richness of the camellias;
And the bumble bees nuzzle them all.
The robin sits on the gatepost to watch
For treats when a spade or fork is wielded
And fresh earth turned, while a shoplifting
Mouse seizes the opportunity to scuttle
Niftily up the laburnum to snaffle lunch.
All this kerfuffle under the blossoming
Cherry and the pristine green of the Medlar
While the Ash, tall, imperious, unhurried
By the beckoning of Spring, bides its time
To lace its own finery against the blue sky.
What a privilege to sit with our coffees
And soak up April’s ferment, under siege
By miracles that have no need of gods,
Life forms that are ends in themselves;
It’s a gift to self to freeze still and stare.
Shame + Blame = Abjection
Let’s pretend for the sake of argument
That you can’t see, or walk with a limp,
What price a fabricated denouement
That ‘others’ you, brands you a wimp
To be ignored, shunned and shamed?
And as if shaming itself is not enough
Consider another growing possibility:
That you are blamed too! How tough
Is that – to be regarded as a liability
And deemed culpable for a social lapse!
Shame plus blame renders you abject,
Fair game for any passer-by alert
To the opportunity to mock and reject,
Because it’s all your fault, this hurt
That excludes, debars and estranges.
But there are ways to fight injustice,
To deconstruct the charge of abjection;
Think through the politics, just list
The beneficiaries of this objection
To accepting your rights and worth.
You will find that wealth and power
Find succour in your social exclusion,
Pocket the proceeds as others glower
To your face, for they create the illusion
Of your worthlessness with intent.
If the responsibility for impairment
Can be pinned on those affected
They can be cast adrift in a ferment
Of their own making and abandoned:
An indecent cut in public expenditure!
So if blame can be appended to shame,
And the public persuaded that’s fair,
Benefits can be cut, and with a tame
Electorate, and lowered impulse to share,
Capital and power can accumulate.
My Mother
A feminist task is to recover
Women from anonymity,
To resurrect and reintroduce them
To the countless beneficiaries
Of their souls and wills who find
Sustenance in their fading lives
And in their accomplishments.
You will search in vain online
For any mention of my mother.
Born in 1913 to a family
Of middling means she aspired
To be a hairdresser, but this trade
Was denied her by her parents
And she worked as a secretary;
When she married, in wartime,
She quit her office lest it reflect
Badly on her husband,
Who himself had to re-train
As a teacher, having foregone
A promising career in shipping.
So the woman who was to be
My mother was refashioned
As a housewife in uncertain times
Of scarcity and rationing.
Like many women she planned
Meals with caution and anxiety,
Bought patterns to sew dresses.
It was not for want of trying
That I was conceived, a single
Child to make a loving trio.
Those trips to Lyndhurst Road
To shop, each outlet a specialism,
A comic the icing on the cake;
‘Listen with Mother’ on the radio
Just as prescribed.
My mother’s protected time
At East Worthing Women’s Guild
On Thursday evenings –
When my father, fresh from work,
Fed me sugar on bread and butter
Because ‘It’s good for you!’ –
Amateur dramatics in local
Halls, lopsided rows of chairs
And a rude rush for festival seats
For my father and me.
Years – no decades – of austere
Loving, parsimonious rituals,
Punctuated by handfuls of plays,
Induced a cosy conservatism
And a defensive mind-set.
So my mother did as mothers
Should: she put her own life
On a back-burner, sacrificed
Any personal ambition
For the good of the nuclear
Family; and I was the beneficiary.
The work of second-wave
Feminists, part amended,
Part obscured by succeeding
Waves, remains unfinished;
But in the meantime we must
Acknowledge, trace and restore
Those many thousands of women,
Long since buried in the past,
Among which my mother
Was very far from unfortunate.
And when we’ve all awoken
Let’s add herstory to history.
Unexpected Lessons
When thinkers think, writers write
And teachers teach, why it all
Seems perfectly straightforward,
But it isn’t.
It’s not just, as Gadamer insists,
That thinkers, writers and teachers
Affect how we see stuff, and ourselves,
Though that’s true enough.
Words, even propositions, deflect
Our attention even as they purport
To establish things clearly:
They can spark new fires.
Doors to minds must remain ajar
If combustion is to occur
And infant flames fanned
Into heat that warms.
If all doors, and windows too,
Are thrown wide open,
It is incumbent on others to douse
The flames.
Yet as Bowie has shown in music
Receptivity to chaos can spawn
Experiments that, once in a while,
Break down barriers.
I read Debord’s Panegyrics I and II
And baulked at his willy-nilly crashing
Through barriers, seemingly neither
With purpose nor reward.
But what Debord left with me,
Fused with my horizons,
Was a sense that there is nothing
That we have to be or do.
This is not to deny that what we
Do is what we are, or that doing
Has consequences for others,
Just as their actions do for us.
It can profit one to look askance,
To see the world in parentheses,
Even to bounce off nihilisms
And absolutisms.
Like Bowie – and Marianne Faithful,
Have you read her? – dally awhile
With the Beat poets, skip genres,
Keep the flames flickering.
Weather
There is solace in the weather
The seasons bring to England,
From the wintry coastal gales
Of the jutted Cornish beeches
To the parched, ochre parsimony
Of their summer playfulness.
Who hasn’t cowered close by
An awning to escape a shower,
Random gift of an infant spring,
Or trodden crispness in frozen
Rutted soils of autumn’s chill;
Sharpened canvases of change.
Not all countries are considerate
With their weathers, preferring
Bold, fast-moving melodramas
To England’s measured, tweaked
And non-alcoholic period pieces,
Designed to calm the spirit.
Take the time in Atlanta when,
Driving on deserted highways –
What did we know of tornado
Warnings? – we only barely
Side-stepped the flipping of cars
Or the neat severing of trees.
Or on the road to New Orleans
When emboldened hailstones
The size of golf balls scarred
The windscreen of the hire car,
Forcing traffic to scurry
To bridges to bid for shelter.
Give me England’s seasons
Of more gentle visitations, of soft
Dews and gems of droplets
On light, pastel-shaded petals,
Of stormy gusts and showers,
Of nature sober, not in its cups.
When I Was A Lad
When I was a lad
I admit at once
That a lot was bad,
Yet reflecting now
There was order
To soothe the brow.
We knew our place
And who we were
And how to trace
Each day’s step
From home to school
And back for prep.
The milkman came
Every morning
And was not to blame
If birds dug holes
In the silver tops
Like hungry moles.
The doctor too
Was available daily,
You’d either queue
Or he’d come to you
No appointments:
Odd but perfectly true!
Street cricket
With the lamppost
As makeshift wicket,
Driveway goals
For soccer in winter,
Two cemented poles.
On roller skates
Clutching the cart,
Trailing in the wake
Of the rag’n bone man,
Till he turned the corner
Like a rattling can.
Visiting the fair
In Homefield Park,
Gazing in pairs
At the boxing booth
Where a punch-drunk
Fighter lost a tooth.
Order gives rise
To predictability,
And it’s no surprise
That a person’s mind
Finds a quiet repose
In a life of this kind.
There was another side
To this battened down
Status quo, when the tide
Lapped so gently by
And we moved on ruts
And remained so shy.
They had us where
They wanted us;
We were half aware
And made no fuss,
Our lives improved
And we missed the bus.
So You’re a Sociologist!
When your project is to study
The society you inhabit
With as much scientific acumen
As you can summon up
It frightens people.
On the face of it this is ridiculous,
But let’s disentangle
The pros and cons
And try to understand
Why otherwise rational
People baulk at what you do
And exchange knowing winks,
Chuckle or simply vanish
Into the undergrowth.
Sociology unsettles people
By holding cherished
Common-sense convictions
To account and, worse,
Exposing the lies that either
They’ve fallen for
Or that afford cover
For interests – material, social,
Psychological – that they
Would prefer stayed hidden.
When you ask what’s going on
And why, those with ‘interests’
Can feel threatened, a state
Of mind which sometimes
Fully, unequivocally deserved.
If the rich and powerful
Are up in arms and have
Insinuated their fears elsewhere,
Then sociology merely grows
In salience;
Like a boomerang
It keeps returning.
People who do not understand
What’s happening around them,
Or why, they’re not stupid,
But they may be under-educated:
Sociology has a capacity
To empower by disseminating
Knowledge of the social
That unlocks reflexivity.
An Average Sort of Day
It’s an average sort of day
And we’re tasked to keep
The squirrels at bay.
They’re digging up shrubs
Just for the sake of it
Despite an absence of grubs.
And then there’s our clock
Sitting on the window-sill
Suffering a sort of block.
It will only tell the time
If it’s resting upside down,
And it’s lost its chime.
I know others’ lives
Have harsher impediments
To tackle and survive.
But here’s the thing,
Problems are as relative
As the troubles they bring.
So bare with our sermons
On this grey and chilly day
As we fight our demons.
Above all remember this,
Tomorrow it may be your turn
For interruptions to bliss.
Maybe the milk will be off
Or you’ll drop a plate
Or develop a nasty cough.
Life is like a rubber ball
To catch and sometimes drop:
It holds you in its thrall!
Love
Poets have defined love in myriad ways,
On a spectrum from an urgent but fleeting
Neurosis, symptom of ‘being in love’ –
All heat and lust in dark and secret places –
Via the romance of settled togetherness,
To the still, calm waters of companionship.
Like an umbrella in a shower it can be said
To cover all these things, and whatever else
Might descend unexpectedly from above,
For love is shield and shelter for all weathers.
Love is a kiss snatched in a secluded place
And the hot, rippled pummelling of sex;
But it is no less the holding of hands
And shared moments reading by the fire.
Strangers love by activism and engagement,
By mundane, everyday acts of kindness,
Carers when they stoop by a wheelchair
To touch the dry, creased arm of an old woman
Who aches for what has long since left her;
Love can be defined love in myriad ways.
If I Was a Palestinian
If I was a Palestinian
I would be fuming,
At least till laid low
By loss and fatigue.
Are not past events –
Truly historic iniquities –
Logged in the brains
Of these colonialists?
What sits in the minds
Of those who settle
In the very homes
Of the families of Gaza?
And why do we merely
Look on from afar as
Children are plucked
From the rubble?
It’s soulless geopolitics,
Tolerating the intolerable
In defence of ‘our’ own
Precious quality of life.
But who is this ‘us’,
The prime beneficiary
Of Palestinian pain?
Let’s break it down.
The ‘we’ comprises
The few with accumulated
Shares in global stock,
With profits to harvest.
This is the tail that wags
‘Our’ dog and condemns
Our Palestinian kin
To perpetual misery.