Blessings

And this morning sunlight illuminates white cloud like a blank screen. Water rushes down all the lane-side ditches with a feeling of emergency. Daffodils and tulips return to something like upright, and begin to dry. Some of them have been nibbled by slugs or snails, lace-edged petals.

I have this morning received gifts from Amazon. Well, obviously I paid for them but they are still gifts. The latest Bonnie Prince Billy CD, Wolfroy Goes to Town, playing now for the first time, gentle and familiar like a conversation already going on in my mind. And a book recommended by Jean months ago called St. Nadie in Winter by Terrance Keenan. I shall take them both on my travels - going to visit my mother tomorrow.

Today meeting the poets for the first time in a few moons. Nervously taking along a version of my Only Nothing poem to workshop. Awaiting the inevitable question have you been doing any writing? Rehearsing my yes.

Drench

Drenching quenching rain that promises to put everything out
the road a black hiss
damp coats hanging on the backs of chairs

Herbs

I seem to want to write without actually having to write, make something without getting my hands dirty. The poem is in me somewhere, implicit in my thought, perception, experiencing. It's just too crude to have to hack out the words. Or maybe this is fear. Or laziness. What is this pattern of behaviour, this not-doing of things known as laziness? I am always suspicious of the term - its judgement on individual inaction which in every case has a meaning, albeit often an elusive one. Something is not being done, not being faced, or felt. Something not being done, something else is done instead - dreaming maybe, or gazing out of the window. I have a sense there's poetry I am looking for, but I don't want to hunt it down. Maybe if I keep quiet and still it will fly to me and settle on my hand. Or is this pure whimsy, an avoidance of work? Laziness. And round and round we go.

And what is the work that is avoided? Writing isn't always done with the pen or keyboard. Yet without the tools, nothing can be crafted.

I didn't tell the medical herbalist I went to see yesterday that I am a poet. Maybe he could have given me a herb for that. Maybe he did.

Glow

The fire settles to its final glow and L is knitting in the comfy chair. Having hurtled from one thing to another all day, I am finally still. L counting under her breath, I anticipate reading my book in bed (Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child - very good so far). Good news today of the pay rise that accompanies my end of probation in one job, offset by the nonsense in another of being suddenly asked to change the day or the room when/ where I work (can't/ don't want to), and more nonsense in yet a third about accommodating someone else's students in my group due to staff sickness (don't want to - no choice). Let all this fade, sing namah shivay om nama shivay om silently to myself.

Rabbit

Driving home in the half dark, I hit a rabbit. It ran, but not fast enough, I braked but not hard or soon enough. In my rear view mirror I see it fall to the ground as if in slow motion.

Lucy Ward

Saw Lucy Ward at the Trades Club last night. She now has blue hair. She's 21 and has an incredible voice and an amazing face and a stage presence that will take her far. Check her out. You'll be hearing more from her.

Happy Easter

Far from resurrection we've had further disintegration here today, with clanking from beneath the car announcing the collapse of a second coil spring in as many weeks. That'll be another three figure sum to fix. I hate the way car trouble makes me feel - vulnerable, powerless, unsafe... and poor.

But the good news is that when we discovered the suspension was falling apart, we were on our way to the allotment, where we dug over a couple of patches, pulling out dock with mighty roots (I wish they were good to eat), buttercup, dandelion and willow herb with its annoying fleshy roots that snap too easily. And then planted the first row of broad beans of the season. A moment of promise and pleasure. Next the potatoes!

Our Easter ritual is to dig out of a drawer the two little wind-up fluffy chicks my mother gave us years ago, and set them dancing about the table. One of them always falls over and lies helplessly on its side whirring. They never fail to make us laugh, and my mother was pleased this afternoon to hear we still enjoy them, and yes, she remembered them well.

Down

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the blizzard began, and was still raging when we awoke some time after seven. I'd finished my cup of tea in bed, and as I got up, glanced out of the window to see that our pine tree had been brutally felled - its trunk snapped by a combination of the weight of the snow and the high winds. It lay half across the road, and we were unable to move it, but soon some men came round in the snow plough, and were able to drag it off the road and into the space in front of our house. Where it remains. L has begun work on lopping its limbs, saving the larger for the fire and bagging up the smaller ones for the green waste at the tip. There is much more sawing to do in the coming days.

As you can see from this picture we have lost what screening our garden had from the road, the houses opposite, and indeed the sun, when it's hot!

We are struggling to come to terms with this shocking loss.

Nothing

Only nothing, empty rooms, uneventful days
the wrong arms, wrong food, wrong voice.
I lay my head on the vast soft seat
of an armchair, in supplication or despair.

Without her I unravel,
I wander the aching house
as if she could be found
in some box, some cupboard.

Only my bed is still home,
where merciful dark shrouds me,
carries me out of gravity
into dreams of timelessness.

I'll pretend to be me,
eat and drink,
say some words
and wait.

Station

Last night I dreamed I was to meet my mother at a London underground station but I had forgotten which one. Marble Arch? No. I had an old mobile phone with no numbers entered in it and no way to contact her, or my sister who seemed to be part of the plan too. I had been at the optician's and they had very kindly (and without my bidding) ordered me a taxi. It was huge and open-backed more like a sort of horse-drawn cart, and about fifteen people got into it with me. I was agitated as I didn't know where I needed to go. I asked and asked if anyone had a tube map, and eventually someone found one, but (as always in these dreams) it was incomprehensible, showed the wrong thing, the lettering too small to read etc etc.

I woke up and went back to sleep, returning to a sort of continuation of this dream, in which, eventually, I was reunited with my mother, a child burying her face in a towering adult's midriff.

Revving Up

In the claustrophobia of the moment
its windows sealed,
I clench my left fist
rev up my legs cartoon-style
for fight or flight,
but there's no one to hit
and like the animated animal
I'll soon discover I've run
right off the edge of a cliff
into thin air.