A Valediction The Mind cupboard

 Dear Reader,

A seagull named Steven who lives in Wyke Regis, Dorset, has been banned from a convenience store for stealing packets of crisps over a six year spree.   Posters have been put up urging customers to "close the door' behind them in a bid to stop Steven.  This didn't work, he tapped the door with his beak, opening it.

The manager of the store, one Stuart Harmer, said the crafty seagull had made off with about 30 packets of crisps in the past two months alone.  According to Mr. Harmer Steven is particularly fond of BBQ beef flavoured crisps.   

Once he is outside the shop on Portland Road he uses his beak to open the packet and then eats the crisps in the street alongside his feathered friends.  Mr Harmer said in a desperate move to stop the thief, the team put on a selection of spicy flavoured crisps but Steven ignored them and still managed to find his favourite flavour.

Seagulls seem to be a constant source of conversation and thought for those living by the sea or visiting it.  Either people hate them, or love them, find them irritating, love their cry or loathe it, and some find them frightening.  I always think of seagulls as romantic, winging their way upwards towards the sun with their very distinctive cry.  So I think I am on the side of Steven and wish him luck with his pillaging.

                                                                                  *

From Francis Kilvert   July 29th 1871 in Radnorshire

'Torrents of lashing and streaming rain all the morning, a thunderstorms without thunder braking into a beautiful sunny afternoon.   I went to Hay to pay some bills.  On the crest of the hill above Hay i met a tall woman smoking a clay pipe and driving a black donkey.'

From Dorothy Wordsworth   July 31st   1802 in London

'We mounted the Dover Coach at Charing Cross.   It was a beautiful morning.   The city, St. Paul's, with the river and a multitude of boats, made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge.  The houses were not over hung by their cloud of smoke, and they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a fierce light, that there was even something like the purity of one of nature's own grand spectacles.'

                                                                              *

A Valediction

 

To innocence

to childhood

to youth

to skipping about

to making daisy chains

to looking in the mirror

seeing someone pretty

to wearing gypsy clothes

feeling exotic in them

to flirting and being flirted with

to kissing someone new

drowning in that indescribable

feeling of lust and love

to smoking king size cigarettes

to being passionate about something

daydreaming about a bright future

to changing the world

making poverty unknown

the poor rich.

 

But knowing now the truth

about old age being shite

hello to fudge and ice cold gins,

small pleasures and quieter things.

 

                                                                                              *

 

With best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

 

Always requested

 

The Mind Cupboard

 

 

 My mind cupboard overflows

with unwanted debris.

It needs a spring clean.

 

I will brush away the cobwebs

of cheerless thoughts.

Scrub out the stains of childhood.

 

I will replace the brass hooks

corroded with salt tears,

empty all the screams

hoarded through the years.

 

I will replace the accumulated ashes

from the worn shelf-paper,

with virgin tissue.

 

I will chase and catch the wasps,

relieve them of their stings.

I will refill this cupboard

with love, and learnt, brighter things.

 

 

 

Invocation to Iona

 

Dear Reader, 

Iona is a holy isle and has been described as the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland.  St. Columba and twelve companions came here for Ireland in AD 563, and the monastery they founded was one of the most important and influential in the British Isles.  St. Columba came there to live the monastic life.

Legend states that there are forty Scottish kings including Kenneth 1, Kin of Dai Riata founder of Medieval Scotland buried here, as is his son Constantine, who died in battle, beheaded by the Vikings.

Certain miracles have happened on Iona and this apparently is one of them.  Eight years after a battle the king died on Iona with Adomnan praying at this bedside.  Legend has it that Adomnan prayed all night for the king who miraculously rose from the dead the next morning.

St. Columba is buried on Iona. 

Vikings attacked the abbey in 795, 802, and 806.   They stole treasures, burned down the monastery and massacred the monks.

 I feel that my own experience on the Isle of Iona was a kind of miracle.  Something certainly happened to me there and I wrote the following poem.  If I wasn't so old I would certainly like to return as I think it is for me a sacred place like no other.

                                                                                    *      

From Francis Kilvert    July 22nd  1873 in Wiltshire

'To-day the heat was excessive and as I sat reading under the lime I pitied the poor haymakers toiling in the burning Common where it seemed to be raining fire.'

From Richard Jefferies  July 22nd 1884 in Sussex

'Hot sun, little crackling sounds among the wheat, increasing as the wind blew.'

                                                                                      *

Invocation to Iona

 

“Iona, sacred island, mother,

I honour you,

who cradle the bones

of Scottish kings,

Who birthed coloured gemstones

to enchant bleached beaches,

who shelter puffins on your rocks.

 

I wrap myself in your history,

and knot the garment with

machair rope-grass.

In the Port of Coracle

your southern bay,

I hear the wind-blown cormorants cry

and draw a breath.

I see Columba’s footsteps

in the sand, and weep.

Tears overflow,

I am spirit-engulfed.

 

“I ask you, Iona,

is this then, or now,

what is, or what has been?

Does the rolling salt sea-mist

cover the uncounted time between?”

 

                                                                                        *

With very best wishes, Patricia

P.S.   This is, folks, the favourite poem that I have ever written.  Beats: The Mind Cupboard!

 

 

Times A Changing

 Dear reader,

 I thought of today's poem, when I was talking to my very old and dear school friend Polly, on the telephone last week.  Years ago we used to have such amusing calls often two or three times a week.  We talked of everything.  And we laughed a lot.  As teenagers we discussed boys and their merits or otherwise and of course fashion.  What were we wearing and was it 'cool'.  My mother was not helpful in this regard as her own clothes were very conventional and dull. She would only buy me what she thought was proper for my age.   As a result I borrowed things from Polly, her mother was a little more amenable than mine.

We talked of falling in love and its pitfalls and we talked about sex and what was it going to be like?  In those days we really didn't know much about it, magazines and books weren't to be had then or if there were we didn't see them.   Then we got engaged and married and we talked on.   We still laughed and exchanged gossip as one does.  

We talked of holidays and divorce.  We told of romance on beaches and delicious foreign food in faraway. places.  We spoke of our children and how they were faring.  Boasting a little of course about good things and commiserating about the not so good. We talked of politicians not making a fist of things and of those we admired.  (not many of those).  We talked and it was fun.

But last week I realized in our eighties talking to Polly that our conversation was almost entirely about various maladies.  The arthritis, the sciatica, the constipation, all the current things that occupied our minds.  Less laughter and no gossip or romantic tales to be told.   Frivolity filtered away.  

How dull have I become?

                                                                                *

From Samuel Pepys  13th July  1667 in London

'Mighty hot weather, I lying this night, which I have not done, I believe, since a boy, with only a rug and sheet upon me.'

 

From Dorothy Wordsworth  July 15th 1802 in North Riding

'Arrived very hungry at Rievaulx....at an exquisitely neat farmhouse we got some boiled milk and bread; this strengthened us, and I went down to look at the ruins.   Thrushes were singing, cattle feeding among green-grown hillocks about the ruins.  These hillocks were scattered over the grovelets of wild roses and other shrubs, and covered with wild flowers.   I could have stayed in this solemn quiet spot till evening, without a thought of moving, but William was waiting for me, so in a quarter of an hour I went away.'

 Changing talks and times                                                                              *

The two women were best friends

from the beginning,

from school days

they talked and talked.

At first it was about other girls,

then BOYS

lots of conversations about Boys,

 

they talked of

being in love, having sex,

engagements, the wedding,

then marriage, its ups and downs,

having children.

Lots of laughter.

 

In middle years they talked

about lovers,

fashion and friends and fun,

the odd ache and pain just mentioned.

 

They talked of

holidays and sunny places,

adventures under blue skies,

politics were discussed and the

state of the nation.

Lots of laughter.

 

In old age they talked

of doctors, dentists, opticians,

arthritis, sciatica or constipation

now filling the days.     

Gossip, frivolity and romance

filtered away.

And less laughter.

 

                                                                                             *

 

With very best wishes, Patricia

 

Words

                                                                                           Larry

                                                                                           Lychgates
 

Dear Reader,

In the Middle Ages before mortuaries, and at the time when more people died at home, the dead were placed on a bier and taken to the lychgate where they remained, often attended against body snatchers, until the funeral service, when may have been a day later.

Many older churches have a lychgate built over the entrance to the church grounds.  The lychgate marks the division between consecrated and unconsecrated ground, and was the place where the bearers sheltered with the coffin before a burial.

                                                                         *

Larry who was born in 2007 is a British domestic tabby cat who has been Chief Mouser at 10 Downing Street since 2011.  He is cared for by Downing Street staff and is not the personal property of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.   

There is evidence of a cat in residence in the English Government dating back to the reign of Henry V111 when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey placed his cat by his side while acting in his judicial capacity as Lord Chancellor.

Apparently Sir Keir Starmer has got a cat so Larry will have company.  I wonder whether he will enjoy sharing his home.  Well we shall see, as with everything else with our new government.

                                                                            *

From Dorothy Wordsworth  July 2nd  1802 in Westmorland

' A very rainy morning.  there was a gleam of fair weather, and we thought of walking into Easedale. Molly began to prepare the linen for putting out, but it rained worse than ever.'

From William Cowper  July 3rd  1782 in Buckinghamshire

'I shiver with cold on this present third of July......Last Saturday night the cold was so severe that it pinched off many of the young shoots of our peach trees....The very walnuts, which are now no bigger than small hazelnuts, drop to the ground; and the flowers, though they blow, seem to have lost their odours.   I walked with your mother yesterday in the garden, wrapped up in a winter surcoat, and found myself not at all encumbered by it.'

                                                                                *

Words

 

We met at the lychgate,

a small, silent group,

walked past gravestones,

some mossy-old, some well tended,

some overgrown, forlorn, forgotten.

 

Rain poured into the just-dug earth,

then a surprise of sunlight

filtered through the trees.

The casket was lowered

as we murmured about God’s

enfolding love, His safe keeping,

the peace He will give us, leave us.

 

Words, words, words, but 

the inscription on the headstone

were the words that mattered;

bore witness to her existence.

 

To make an end of it

was what we had to do,

taking comfort not from all the spoken words,

but from the written few.

 

                                                                               *

 

With very best wishes, Patricia

 

 

 

The Mind Cupboard

 Dear Reader,

It seems from the figures I can get from round the world that some of you are missing this poem.

So here it is again.

The Mind Cupboard

 

 

My mind cupboard overflows

with unwanted debris.

It needs a spring clean.

 

I will brush away the cobwebs

of cheerless thoughts.

Scrub out the stains of childhood.

 

I will replace the brass hooks

corroded with salt tears,

empty all the screams

hoarded through the years.

 

I will replace the accumulated ashes

from the worn shelf-paper,

with virgin tissue.

 

I will chase and catch the wasps,

relieve them of their stings.

I will refill this cupboard

with love, and learnt, brighter things.

 

                                                                                        *

 

 

I hope this is what you wanted.

With very best wishes, Patricia