That July and My Husband and Other Men

                                                                          

 Dear Reader,

I have put on two poems today because one is very short.  Short but to the point.  Geoffrey and I were staying in Marrakesh, North Africa on holiday.  We had a small room and bathroom in the grounds of the hotel which were cleaned by an African woman who spoke no English.  However she and I became friends and I was always delighted to see her when she came in the morning.  We just spoke in sign language and laughed a lot.  I think she came from the Berber tribe that lived in the mountains behind the hotel and went back there in the evening.  But the point of this tale is that Geoffrey couldn't understand how I became friends with someone who couldn't speak the same language as me.  Easily, I told him, it is the way we smile, use our hands, hold our bodies, cross our arms and so on.  We hugged when I left, and I was sorry to say goodbye.

 

                                                                           Marrakesh

                                                                                   *

My sweet peas are coming out now but not in profusion.  I remember as a child visiting a friend's house and seeing in amazement rows upon rows of beautiful sweet peas, smelling delicious.  How do I get mine to come out as I remember in my youth?

                                                                                    *

From S.T. Coleridge  July 25th 1800 in Westmorland

'We drank tea to-night before I left Grasmere, on the island in that lovely lake; our kettle swung over the fire, hanging from the branch of a fir-tree, and I lay and saw the woods, and the mountains, and lake all trembling, and as it were idealized through the subtle smoke, which rose up from the clear, red embers of the fir-apples which we had collected:  afterwards we made a glorious bonfire on the margin, by some elder-bushes, whose twigs heaved and sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke, and the image of the bonfire, and of us that danced round it, ruddy, laughing faces in the twilight; the image of this in a lake, smooth as that sea to whose waves the Son of God had said Peace!

                                                                                    *

That July

we planned to walk
along the river bank,
play bridge,
stay overnight in
a superior hotel,
eat in a white dining room,
exchange gossip, news,
make jokes.

But someone-other
planned other-wise.
No river walks, or talks,
or jokes.
A fatal illness struck,
marked "no reprieve",
with no allowance
for two days under a sunny sky,
our special summer treat,

that July.

                                                                                *

My Husband and Other Men

My husband is from heaven
well, he is close to God;
but goodness me, even so,
I do find men are odd.

                                                                                  *

With very best wishes, Patricia