Bus Stop Princess

Dear Reader,

I was driving slowly down the Cowley Road in Oxford when I saw this unobtrusive person at a bus stop.  I looked at her and she looked at me and then she smiled. And that smile quite transformed her. The woman I saw was no longer Cinderella, but a princess, and a beautiful woman. 
Hence this poem.

She waited, unnoticed, invisible.
Her fluffy green jersey egg-stained,
uninteresting trousers and sensible shoes
inviting no attention.
She was a brown paper parcel,
loosely string-tied.

But she smiled at me
with such sweetness,
such a smile of goodness,
I saw her sensible shoes
become sparkling slippers,
her shabby clothes
turn into a ball dress
fashioned from sunlight,
stitched up with love.

Not then a story-book princess
but a real princess
glimpsed at a bus stop.

             *

My musings this week are on:      Oscar Wilde, Dorset and Schadenfreude.

Oscar Wilde once said: "other people's happiness is a trifle dull" so I will be brief in telling you that our holiday in Dorset this week was delightful in every way.
The sun shone for us, the sky was clear and bright blue, and the small hotel nestling in the Dorset hills was perfect.  However, it is well known,  that people would rather hear about your misfortunes than your good times. How, on your holiday,  it rained every day, the view from your hotel bedroom was over the dust bins, and that you and your partner were hardly speaking by the end of the break. So I was wondering this week what it is in us that gives us more satisfaction learning of others misadventures than learning of their pleasures?  It is called schadenfreude, if that helps.

Very best wishes,  Patricia

The House

Dear Reader,

I wonder if you have ever had a strange, rather sad feeling when you entered a house, or a building of some sort, or even on a country walk. Something you see or feel brings back memories and you are not sure why. But I think they must be something to do with childhood, something perhaps that upset you or touched you but that you didn't dwell on at the time. And in this particular place the feelings return.  I felt like this when I went to lunch with a neighbour in the small market town I live in.
This is the poem I wrote when I went home.

The House

Was it the sound of Chopin
filling the street air,
escaping from a large keyhole
in the weathered front door,
or the first glimpse of pale
stone flooring and a rocking horse
in the hall corner, or was it the
Easter lilies rising tall out of
white enamel jugs, and books
everywhere, everywhere?

Was it the ancient dog
in front of a small log fire,
protected by a staunch Victorian fireguard,
or the scrubbed table and gentian-blue
hyacinths peeking out of a copper bowl,
Rockingham pottery plates
each one different,
or the sculpture of an unknown woman
young, rounded smooth,
placed lovingly on a window shelf
catching a flicker of the January sun?

Or was it the smell of beef stew,
a nursery smell dredged from childhood,
or the sight of home-grown pears
floating in sugared juice?
Or was it the feeling of safety,
warmth and love
everywhere, everywhere,
that overwhelmed me?

                    *

A muse this week....

I have been thinking of stamina, The Queen, and myself.  The Queen has now been on the throne for sixty three years and, in her photographs, I think she looks marvellous.  And she is 89.  But what astounds me is her incredible constitution.  She never seems to have a cold or get ill like the rest of us, and I often think of her on that boat, going down the river Thames last year, standing in the cold and wet for four hours without so much as a cardigan round her shoulders. And then all those engagements she has to perform: astonishing.  So I conclude she must be made of quite different stuff, a better material,  to me,  who gets tired shopping,  going for a short walk in the afternoon, and cooking the supper. 
And I am only 75.

Very best wishes, Patricia

A Curse

Dear Reader,

I am always very distressed when I read about the bones of an ancient person buried with its special treasures, being disturbed, being violated, and then taken away somewhere to be dissected.  This I feel is an affront, something we simply should not do.  These bones are sacred and embody the spirit and soul of a human being, albeit they are no longer sentient.  They wished to be buried and to then to rest in peace, and rightly so.  But their peace has been stolen.

A Curse

on those who plunder the earth,
and violate sacred places....

A curse on those who disturb
and steal gently-bandaged skulls,
legs, arms, and finger-bones,
jewels: perhaps a pearl bracelet,
a coral ring, hair pins, or a mosaic plate,
set out lovingly with food
for the long journey home.
Who have lain there, at peace,
for many thousand years,
the sand, the desert winds, the rains,
nature's bed.

A curse on those whose
laughter and excitement
fills the air, stealing these remains,
transporting them to people
in white coats,
who dissect their dignity,
stick labels on them,
give them to museums
to enlighten an ice-cream-licking public.

                     *

Musing this week.....

Whilst  wondering which poem to choose this week, and choosing "A Curse",  I thought about Richard III and the finding of his bones in Leicester City in August 2012.  He was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and was subsequently taken by the Grey Friars, to their friary church, and buried there.      Hundreds of years later Leicester Car Park was built over his bones and busy important people, knowing of his whereabouts, dug him up.   So poor Richard III no longer rests in peace, but I don't suppose Leicester City council feels any guilt, or anyone else for that matter.


These words are on Shakespeare's gravestone:


"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blese be the man that spares thes stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."






Very best wishes, Patricia

Love Unlocked

Dear Reader,

I started writing this blog ten weeks ago on the advice of one of my granddaughters, Emma, who thought people reading it might enjoy the poems.   As I said in my introduction to this blog I  do know that lots of people would rather scrub the dishes than read a poem, but there are a few out there who do enjoy the odd one.  So I have tried to interest those few people who have looked and enjoyed them.  BUT and this is a big BUT I have had no comments from anyone about the work. Either good or bad or even indifferent. And this makes a difference as to whether I continue.  Writing a comment is NOT difficult.  Press on "comment", tick "anonymous", write your thoughts and press publish.  That's it.  Please do this as it is very important to me and I would be most grateful if you did.

There isn't much story to write about the short poem I wrote on the subject of love.  Goodness me
enough has been written on this subject by Shakespeare, to The Beatles, and thousands more.  So to think of something original was not going to happen, but I did my best and here it is.

Love Unlocked

What can I say about love
that has not been said?

I have little to add except
my sweetheart proffered
a unique key
to the door of possibilities,
through loving me.

             *

A musing this week,

There has been so much sorrow, suffering and grief to engulf us this week that  I thought I would share with you Francis Kilvert's diary entry for September 6th, 1875, to try to make us feel happier for a minute or two.

'The morning suddenly became glorious and we saw what had happened in the night.  All night long millions of gossamer spiders had been spinning and the whole country was covered.....The gossamer webs gleamed and twinkled into crimson and gold and green like the most exquisite shot-silk dress in the finest texture of gauzy silver wire.  I never saw anything like it or anything so exquisite.........'

Very best wishes, Patricia

Not One of Us

Dear Reader,

I went to several boarding schools from the age of eight and never felt happy in any of them although I think some people really enjoyed their boarding schools.  The type of person who was confident and good at sport, came from a secure home and loving parents did seem to settle well and liked being there.
I was not one such person.  Hopeless at sport and rather shy, bespectacled and plump I found each term terrifying and simply to be endured.  One of these schools I was sent to was a convent in Paris which made Dothboys Hall seem quite civilized, french only spoken and I didn't speak french.  And nuns are not quite what they seem.

Not One of Us

Asmall figure at school in
a hot, strange land.  The
children left her alone,
she didn't speak their language
or know their games or rules.
She was not one of them.

Winter now and an English
boarding school, where the rules
were known, but not to her.
She was clumsy, wore spectacles,
couldn't tie her tie, dropped the netball.
couldn't master dance steps gracefully
to the music of "Greensleeves",
was not an asset, wouldn't do.
She was not one of them.

She simply asked,
why do the safely-grounded
hear the beat of a terrified heart
and seek to silence it? Is the beat
too loud, something not understood,
something to frighten?
Are things better when the group
destroys the alien in its midst?

She never knew,
she was not one of them.

            *
A short musing this week...

I had my grand daughter to stay this week.  She is fifteen years old.  A very pretty and sophisticated young girl and strangely wise and completely delightful.  So I was thinking, whilst washing up the dishes last night, how very very different girls are today from sixty years ago when I was fifteen.. In those days I devoured books of a romantic nature and really believed and dreamed that one day a prince, such as Cinderella found, would whisk me away to love and marriage and happiness ever after.   That was my age of innocence but when does the age of innocence leave us today?  Rather, I think, sooner than it used to.

Best wishes, Patricia

Miracle

Dear Reader,

I remember being astonished when I heard of the amazing journey the swallow took when it left us in September, to literally fly round the world and home again.  This small bird is only the size of your hand but, enormously bravely, I think, sets off to fly thousands of miles around the Cape of Africa, over the Pyrenees and the Sahara Desert and returns here to England, and its original nest, in the spring.

Miracle

Rich in England's spring,
cowparsley entrancing
in dog-rosed hedge,
the fecund earth lush green,
a baby swallow
hatches in a Suffolk barn,
to the cries of gulls
flying over mudflats,
over sea-lavender.

This small bird grows
embracing our summer warmth,
swooping on insects caught
above rolling grasslands.
It dips and tumbles gracefully,
trouble-free.

But what instinct tells of winter's cold?
This bird, hand sized, will
fly over icy Pyrenees,
thirst through the parched Sahara,
soar and glide on trade winds,
south to The Cape of Africa
drawn, inexplicably, to the heat
of the southern sun.

In early spring does
this swallow's courageous heart
grow restless, homesick for
a Suffolk barn?
Is it a miracle that some force
of nature returns this minute bird
to its birth-nest by the English sea?
Who knows, but it seems so to me.

                      *

Musing for this week.....

This week there is another story of a bird, although why I keep paying attention to stories about birds is a bit of a mystery to me.  So this bird is called Chris and he is a cuckoo.  He was tagged and tracked so that the British Trust for Ornithology could see where he went on his 10,000 mile journey, before he returned here in the summer.  But he has gone missing, has disappeard altogether.  No one has seen him since August 8th, and everyone is very concerned.  For myself I expect he was fed up with being tagged, got loose and flew away to freedom.

 Best wishes, Patricia

Silent, Their Men Stand By

Dear Reader,




My husband, Geoffrey, and I were staying in Marrakech, Morocco, on holiday a few summers ago.  We had a bedroom and bathroom in a small house in the hotel grounds which was cleaned by two women from the district.  They spoke absolutely no english and I speak absolutely no moroccan
but we made ourselves understood with laughter and signs and, as we left, a hug or two.  On return to England I wrote the following poem.




Silent, Their Men Stand By

as universal woman talks
with women
who are not friends,
or neighbours,
or women they know or love,
just women.

Their bonding thread
is laughter, touch, glance, cry,
instant understanding.

While silent, mystified, their men stand by.

                         *

A musing this week.

I really do not like August weather,  this last week has been terrible.  Either I am fetching another cardigan because it has become so cold, or I am taking off the said cardigan and feeling much too hot, and it is all the fault, I think, of the humidity.  Jane Austen said whilst staying in Kent in 1796 : "What dreadful hot weather we have! - It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance".  So I have been in a "state of inelegance" all this last week, don't like it, and much look forward to September.

Best wishes, Patricia