All the waiting rooms become one
when they bring you home
to the rooms where you waited…
Loving your daughter,
hugging your sons,
smiling at babies
and sorting the world out with Auntie.
Resting your tired head on my shoulder
and holding your tissue,
we listen to children,
to TV, to bombs in Gaza,
to smiles and news from family
who bring armfuls of Love
from widespread lifetime journeys.
Your tiny hand keeps me close on our journey,
while shape-shifter steroids
bid you check if I’m comfortable
beside you. I am.
Your sweet head bows in thoughts
which lie too deep for tears…
Your sons, sensing, bending towards
your Blessing.
Leigh Cook
9. 11. 2023
How to be a Poet (to remind myself)
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill – more of each
than you have – inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgement.
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditional air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensional life.
Stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Wendell Berry
In the Moment
I’d make myself submissive
to the weather.
As an old tree,
without retrospect of winter,
blossoming, grateful for summers
hatched from thrushes’ eggs
in the speckled thickets.
Obedient to darkness,
be innocent of my dying.
Leigh Cook
The Listener
Ancestor
of the night
awakening to darkness,
grasslands and farms.
Tree and crevice dweller,
gazing from church steeples,
nesting in barns and hollow spaces.
Submarine flyer,
air surfer to the fence post,
the hunting-by-sound perch,
to listen…to listen.
Head always still and
ears that can hear
the heartbeat of a mouse
– even under snow.
The stoop to eat prey whole,
regurgitator, pellet producer.
Pale plumage
and eyes dark as Black Holes
set in a snow-white face,
this Ghost Owl with
feathered edges
that flap and glide
in silence.
Field forager, woodside wanderer,
with eerie screech
turning into the dawn.
Ancestor,
retreating into a new day.
Leigh Cook
16/06/2023
Sitting By The Fire
Eleven pm and the Man from Cork
says ‘Hello, how are you?’
Northern lights last night, watching
over, shining through
all the years,
all the tears,
all the fears…
And the Man from Cork,
sitting by the fire,
warms me.
Eileen Walke
February 2023
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind –
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
C.P. Cavafy
Bridges
That ‘ lay down your life
for another’
works in many ways.
Just as bridges lay
down a safe path
across tough places,
some people lay themselves
down over tough spaces.
Apprehending, listening.
responding, giving time,
writing, sharing, hugging.
I have felt your presence
in the early hours,
in the shade of trees,
in the midst of tears,
in the cloud cover,
in the shadows
and in sunsets
and moonlight.
You know who you are –
my earth angels
and my favourite music.
Love
To escape from thoughts of love,
I put on my fur-cloak,
And ran out from the lamp-lit silent house
On a tiny footpath
The bright moon peeps;
And the withered twigs on the snow-clad earth
Across and across, everywhere scrawl ‘Love’.
Ping-Hsin, 1943
Plainsong
We have choir stalls in our garden
with jasmine curvilinear traceries and
wooden trusses for reliable support
when force is placed on them to keep
the roof of the sky in place.
The vault of eucalyptus is midday shade
and moonlit glisten with its
discontinuous ridge rib and one central
support to the natural intricacies in
cloisters of hawthorn.
Priceless treasures drift above and below
the ground; wisteria, honeysuckle, clematis,
ashes, bulbs, seeds, leaves, ladybirds, bees, insects,
hoverflies, bumbles, butterflies and Ria’s sleeping imp.
Soon the buddleia spires and stinging nettle
will welcome Red Admirals to your Rose Window:
to Blue Moon, The Pilgrim, The Generous Gardener,
Simply the Best, The Fighting Temeraire,
Compassion, Dark Secret, Dublin Bay,
Paul’s Scarlet, Harlequin, Super Fairy and Dogrose.
No palm leaves, but strewn-blown rose petals
tread a carpet to gate or swing,
like the child in The Selfish Giant’s garden,
or like aisle to altar in this
Cathedral of a Garden, where blackbirds live.
The Minsteryard is store for wheelbarrow, sheds,
tools, pots, seedlings, hosepipe, stones and fountain,
where next door’s frog can visit.
Stepping Out of Grief with Raj
Some things have ceased
to come along with me …
the Waiting Room
the Ventilation tubes
the Infusion lines
the Finger clip
the ICU machines
the Alarms
the Catheter bag
the Plastic aprons
the Lifting and Turning
the Mouth cleansing
the Pain in your Eyes
and in your Friends’ Faces.
But Kindness walks with me.
Sweet Nurses and the Sad
Consultant who couldn’t
meet my face to tell me and
the Wise Nurse who whispered
‘She’s watchng you.’
Holly-gathering in snow
we sank to our knees
and blew on our nails.
Fixing the swing and
rocking a cuppa.
Listening to choughs as
we smelled peat bogs burn.
Sunrise from your window,
Evening calls on your drive home
and your little hand in
seed trays or stringing night-time
lights amidst Sweet Peas and
Morning Glories, in blue pots.
Muj on the bench
in the sun
and You on the bench
in the sun.
Door open, kettle on,
laptop on, washing on.
Tickets for gigs,
Embroidery threads,
Reading glasses and books,
Camera and paintings.
Duvet cover and carpet lover
Secondhand rose and loving Carer.
Fatherless Child of mine
in Sweden jacket and red shoes
dancing the night away
in the hills.
Brown-eyed girl, I have never felt
so comforted, just stepping out
from Raja’s room.
Into his view, into our hills and
listening to the peace of
a summer’s morning with
schoolchildren’s voices on the air,
while blackberries ripen and
blackbirds and larks sing
above the window Lego box.