Paris 13/11/15

Did we all fail to create
A planet of peace, equality and justice?
Or is it an intrinsic property
Of their fanaticism
To drown the rest of us in blood?

We are not innocent.
Thousands, not 127, die in Palestine,
In Iraq and Kurdistan,
Without us changing all our profiles
And draping our monuments in their flags

Their lives count
But as long as we show otherwise,
We contribute to that hate.
We didn't pull the trigger, but
We sure as hell made the gun.

LMC 14/11/15

Hiroshima

Where was he that day, my father?

That summer he was in Japan

Learning the country's beauty

Starting to love forever the Isle 

of Miyajima, with its bright red torii gate

he brought his love home

Called our house Sayonara

Taught me to eat with chopsticks 

And to count in Japanese

Gave me Japanese boxes and carvings

And yet, when I was 9, he showed me

Photos of Hiroshima, afterwards,

Told me of how he was a Marine 

chasing Japanese colonels

For war crimes courts.

What beauty did he see to override 

the cruelty, the bombs, PoW and refugee camps

So that he generated in his daughter

Not the visceral hatred so many brought home, 

but a lifelong admiration of its culture?

Lmc 6 August 2015

6 minutes and 15 seconds

6 minutes and 15 seconds
At first I thought she was in the bathroom or asleep
and so I'd ring again
and in between would worry.
Of course the carers would phone me 
if there was anything seriously wrong, but...

but vascular dementia increases in steps
not necessarily visible to a stranger's eye
my mother's gone from occasional forgetting,
pills, lost glasses and walking stick
to "where do I go next?" 
between the bathroom and the lounge

6 minutes and 15 seconds
As I left the phone ring longer
worrying that now she'd lost the knowledge
of how to answer the phone
the way she did for her mobile 
(she who wore out 3 keypads in playing games)

6 minutes and 15 seconds
that's how long an unanswered phone will ring
before signalling its unavailability 
6 minutes and 15 seconds a time, 
all weekend, as I imagined that 
I'd lost her, lost her voice

Only to find, when the carers checked, 
that some wretch (not Mum, she couldn't reach)
had switched the phone off at the wall
Gwen had mentioned a new carer
with a mania for switching off 
- can she have imagined the cruelty of this?

LMC14Jun2015

Ramblers Retreat

Winter at the Ramblers

Under a sky of clouds layered on clouds

The trees reveal their scraggly twisted  cores

Rain drips from the curlicued eves of Victorian bandstands

And yet the bluetits dive 

around the spiralled feeders

Yellow and purple crocuses push through the soil, daffodils defy the wind

And this wonderful retreat wakes up to spring

LMC Mar15