Amazon sorted

Here's my letter, published in today's Guardian.

my secret garden

my last flat in Paris had a secret garden
it took me weeks to find the entrance
~it was via "l'ecole de rire"
then I could sit and watch
the strange and fanciful t'ai chi classes
with twirly hands, the garden birds and fish,
and see the crocodile of monks disappear
back through their secret door in the garden shed

Paris!

You're not Emma Bovary
so stop mourning your sojourn
in Paris like some lost
civilisation

you're an engineer
not a princess
pay your own way
you don't need "les frais"

A point of this career
is to be able
to afford to travel
when to want to

Anyway, your Paris was
always found around
a cafe table
with your friends

LMC

Refinding my Italian books

the tidy woman has no such joys as these.
Lost for months my Italian workbooks
five years of exercises, jokes and learning to
lap my tongue around that teasing language - lost!

now today when Brian unearths them
from the depths of a bureau drawer where
I had put them safe and then forgotten
it's like meeting an old lost friend again!

From "Franco ha un vestito blu" and
"Brutta stronza!", to "Non Sono Quà"
it maps as well a magic friendship,
born bizarrely in a storm.

Lessons at the Paris mosque,
in cafés, Tunisia, Sardinia and more
but more, a friend to really talk with
e che mi manca perchè non sono là

Sketch

Working on my laptop,
what's Sketch chasing now?
Aha, my watch makes a moving sunbeam
Light exercise for a young cat

Peonies on my Birthday

George Collis 2 Nov 1925 - 15 May 1979

The peonies flower every year on my birthday

It was always remarked upon

But no-one ever thought to tell me why.
I just thought liking peonies was part of your love

of Japan, like calling our home Sayonara
Teaching me to use chopsticks,
To open Japanese trickboxes and to
Sort of count to five- (ichi, ni, san, frei, go)

Even when I offered to bring you peonies from
My new flat in Westgate, "Oh no" you said
"You can’t cut peonies, they shed their petals."
Even now I remember your smile
But you didn’t think to tell me why
And far too soon you were gone. I tried
To get a peony to grow on your grave
But as you know too well, they’re fussy flowers

Yet still the peonies at my mother's
Bloom on my birthday every year
And in Paris on my birthday I saw the peonies,
Cut flowers in the florist's. The only time
I heard your voice, saying “Buy those peonies
From me for your birthday, they must be special.” And so
They were, they kept a week. I’ve saved the petals
And still no-one thought to tell me.

Finally last birthday (52), my mother saw I didn’t know.
The peonies, passed from a great aunt via my grandfather
To my father, had sulked ever since their transplant
Then the day, the very day that I was born
You flew up to the hospital crying, “The peonies
Have flowered! They’ve finally flowered!” Later you tried
To cut and bring them to us but they shed their petals.
I was so lucky not to be called Peony, considering.

Mum - Cherry Blossom Time

A dance of leaves and fluttered petals 

An aching stubbornness of tangled branches 

And yet a flash of laughter as you 

Turn, still young at eighty-two