Giant lemon meringues

 

Today I’d rather be out with you, Mum,

Laughing over giant lemon meringues at the Ramblers’ Retreat

With you and Brian at the St Pancras champagne bar, or dining in some lovely French chateau. 

Instead I bring these crochet flowers to your grave, explain to my Dad

He died far too early for our birthday jaunts. 

LM Collis 22.10 2021

There might be chocolate

 I am still four years old, inside, 

Skipping round the corner in

My yellow Japanese dress, 

Made by my Mum. 

Going to market with my Dad. 

First day at Townsend,  lost, at seven, 

Having left my glasses at home. 

I am still the twelve- year- old,

Amazed in Bruges to get free chocolates 

For speaking French, regardless of mistakes. 

I am still that young engineer 

Ready to travel  the world,

To ride a motorbike, scuba dive and fly a plane. 

Whose train set was the Channel Tunnel. 

I am the woman who’s had the greatest good fortune

To fall for the kindest man in the world. 

A crazy cat woman who’ll have a go

At speaking a dozen languages, because

Always, somewhere, there might be chocolate.

LM Collis 7 Oct 2021 

Thea

 

Space curls round me,

Weighs down my chest on waking,

Not climbing up my shoulder 

Not purring nor licking my ear. 

No sandpapery, almost unbearable rasping. 

Downstairs, Brian asks the air 

if it’s put the kettle on. 

Keeps checking her bowl for lack of food. 

Such emptiness, such a fail-to-greet me

Absence of our Thea, absence of cat. 

LM Collis 23.6.2021

Don’t wear black for my funeral

Don’t wear black for my funeral
Just come as you are
Or wear that Viet dragon tie
You could see from afar

Don’t come sad to my funeral 
I’m glad you’re my friend
It’s for remembering the good times
Not just for the end

Wear bright clothes at my funeral
For the good times we shared
Don’t cry at my funeral
I’ll still know you cared. 

LM Collis 16 June 2021

Written as I was putting clothes away

For Afghanistan

Since the 1830s ‘Disaster in Afghanistan’
We have been losing Afghan wars. 
 Not just some red- uniformed, 
Victorian empire, thinly translated 
To modern day, whose upper lip barely quivers
At yet another campaign in the meaningless sand
Not even the millions of uncounted Afghan casualties,
But whole civilisations pounded from dust to finer dust.
 
A land of mages, poets and sages,
Of Zoroaster’s birth, his fire temples, 
Ancient Bactria, where Alexander the Great
married Roxanne, the local princess.

Land of Rumi of the whirling dervishes

Of tragic poet Rabia Balkhi, who signed 

Her martyrdom in her own life’s blood

On the wind you may hear her songs.

 

Crossroads of the Silk Road,

Xuanzang’s pilgrimage passed through here, 

as he carried Buddhism to China on his back.

Marco Polo called Bactria a splendid city

And, of course,  the British weren’t the first.

The whirlwind that was  Genghis Khan

First razed then occupied the land. 

As did Timur, the Mughal empire, all.

 

The papers today claim Britain has 

‘Wasted 20 years’ on this futile war. 

And yet it is so much more. In Greece, 

In Rome or Canterbury, you can see our history 

As Afghanistan is bombed to dust once more

It is as if those Victorian moustaches were still

Erasing all that culture, all that glory, till only 

The women’s nightmare of the Taliban 

And the proud beaked stance of the Pashtun still remains. 

 

L M Collis 16.4.2021

My first day at school

10 April 1961

Sixty years ago today,

My first day at school and the teacher asked

“Who can write your name?”

Up shot my hand. I can remember my ponytail swinging as I strode to the front. (Though it was already escaping from its ribbon.)

I wrote my name “LYNNE” in chalk on the board. 

The Y was wobbly but it looked alright. 

And the teacher turned and said

“That is WRONG. You don’t write it all in capitals.”

I can still taste the rage, even now. 

“That’s not wrong. My Daddy taught me. My Daddy’s not wrong” I shouted, and stomped back to my seat, between Rob and Susan at the back,

Already, before I was even five, I learned rebellion. 

LM Collis 6.4.21

When we get out of this

 

When we get out of this

I’m going to run and hug you all,

Sit and chat over a glass of wine,

Whisper confidences, hoot with laughter,

Gossip over how we were in lockdown.

 

When we get out of this,

I’ll come to hear your brass band play

Stand in the crowd and shout for Wales

Take countryside walks at the cusp of evening

And along your harbour wall.

 

When we get out of this

We’ll go shopping, visit Carmarthen market,

little Llandeilo woolshops,

Drink elbow to elbow in the Ginhaus

As we celebrate getting through.

 

When we get out of this, I dream

Of a grand adventure for us all,

A wild, sunny holiday, where Rhys

Can make us laugh with story telling

And we can wonder, safely, at the world.

LM Collis 11.03.2021

Brian’s exotic wife

It was one of those late night, rambling conversations we have

Over a bottle of wine, and old music videos

When Brian remembered how some train modelling friend had referred to me as 

“Brian’s exotic wife”. 

It took a long time for me to stop laughing 

And then he told me he’d replied,

“I’m proud of her”. 

Now that brings tears of a different kind. 

Maybe it was when I was working in Paris. 

I was referred to as his French wife once, after all. 

But exotic? “From a distant foreign country”? No. I’m from the Potteries. 

“Attractive or striking because colourful or out of the ordinary”? Who knows.

I don’t suppose they know many women engineers who get to live in Paris. 

And I’ve always liked to be colourful at least. 

But I’ll remember this Friday night for something I’ve always striven for above all. 

To know always Brian is proud of me. 

LMC 27.2.21