54. Dr Gachet's Blue Eyes: A Non-Poem for Sharon

Dr GACHET'S BLUE EYES*: A NON-POEM FOR SHARON
[c. 4am, Ward 73, Auckland Hospital, Tuesday 30th October 2012]

Sharon
I have things to say to you
things that need said
but I have come to distrust words
especially words masquerading in the self-proclaiming cleverness of crafty love poems
full of grand promises and magic visions of forever loving lives.

Paying verbal public tributes to departing colleagues
staff at celebratory functions
brides and bridesmaids
the dear departed of family or friends
these are things I have been reluctant to do
fearful that life and lives be trivialised
by the artifice of grandIiose expressions and oratorical gymnastics.

Life is hard for us now
behind our brave faces for public consumption
we cry together
and we cry apart
and only our love sustains us
love that doesn't need poems
nice to cherish as they may be
but is woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

I see your love in your Dr Gachet eyes
as they swing between pain and laughter
in your creation and care of our new home
in meatloaves, fruitcakes and Sunday morning pancakes
I see it in your tears of frustration and exhaustion
in the selfless caring
and I feel it in touching hands, stroking fingers and hugs of compassion and comfort.

I offer you my non-poem in love and gratitude.


* Dr Paul Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the final months of Van Gogh's life. Van Gogh wrote of his depiction of Dr Gachet as 'sad but gentle, yet clear and intelligent.' Critics have highlighted 'the tired, pale features and transparent blue eyes that reflect the compassion and melancholy of the man.' We saw Dr Gachet in the Musee d'Orsay.

53. Adrift on Poetry

The Birth of Juno, 22nd February 2011

Deep Fish
Cats' Comforts
Waikato Breakfast

Nous Sommes du Soleil

Black Holes
Summer Evening,January 1985
Greece 1998

Reflections

A Birthday Dragon

“She Fumed… He Froze”

The Tennis Racquet
Sophie's Fan

Adrift, Golden Bay
A Waiting Day
Gestures from the Heart
When I am done and gone

DEEP FISH

Deep fish
Live deep deep down
And you can only catch them
By chance
Or by knowing where to fish
The point at which
To break the ice
Or cast the line.

It’s cold deep down
And dark too
But safe from predators
And their fishing hooks
Yet just now and then
I am tempted up
To smell the fear
And breathe the air
Where the sunlight is.



CATS’ COMFORTS

Were we those people too
The people of our past
Were those the things we did
The clothes we wore
The jokes we laughed at
The dreams we dreamed

Were we the rush-hour crowd
The business-suited
City-polluted commuters
Standing clear of the doors
Deafened by the shrill whistle
For the departing suburban train.

Did we give up all that
For the quiet life
For a view of the stars at night
For the smell of the sea
The wind in the face
Cats’ comforts.



WAIKATO BREAKFAST

The cleansing dawn
Derides despair
Food is optimism
I feel a song of
Cornflakes and peaches
Double egg bacon and tomatoes
Toast and honey
Coffee with cream
And sunlight emerging
From the Waikato mist



NOUS SOMMES DU SOLEIL

As I step into the sun
I feel as fragile as a newborn child
I cross the road with care
Yet beneath the screening trees
Still I know
The quiet despair
The unshed tear.



BLACK HOLES

I’ve seen the barren lands
The lands beyond hope
Searched the black holes within
And found
No colourful kaleidoscope
Only a flat and dreary plain
Of wasted years
Of pointless pain
And the merrygoround again.



SUMMER EVENING, JANUARY 1985

In slippers and walk shorts

my brother-in-law

picking his teeth

gazes emptily out the kitchen window

waiting on waiting

the clock ticks toward eight

the parsley sauce hardens

the element set to ‘low’

dinner long since ready

to serve a wayward wife

from the corner of the lounge

Barmaid Bette glows in silent conversation

her Lancashire Christmas revelry

incongruous in this summer heat

the ginger of the four cats

licks languorously at its Jellymeat

momentarily I stand aside

from How to Save Your Life’s little aphorisms

 - Jealousy is all the fun you think they had –

to contemplate a stopped life

and catch

the still frustration of another’s world



GREECE 1998

Athenians that were gods

sons and daughters of Apollo and Aphrodite

now sullenly

from two thousand years of conquest

to be made taxi drivers and surly desk clerks

reluctant votaries of the great god tourism



REFLECTIONS

At Christmas we rummage through the family photos

Tunnelling back to laugh at images of ourselves in earlier times

(“Mum, how could you make me wear that dress?”)

To retell our pasts

Each with our different memories, stories, perceptions

Of the past as we think it was or would like it to have been

And, as we turn the weathered leaves of old albums,

Watch ourselves grow, age, mature (would it were so!)

We reflect on who we were, who we are, and who we will become.



A BIRTHDAY DRAGON

Did you know that some dragons

Both of the watery and metallic kind

Like to live on glass bubbles

Indeed they thrive on them

Such dragons are the very preciousest

Of all the dragon species

For they have the world below them

At their fingertips

Like all dragons

They can be fiery and ferocious

Their spikes both sharp and brittle

But treated lovingly

These delicate fragile creatures

Are a source of fun and joy

Of passion and romance

Full of intimate mysteries

So here is a birthday dragon

Crafted with all the love and care

Of the glassmaker’s art

Fashioned in fiery flames

It rides serene

On its blue bubble

And here my dragon queen

Is a birthday wish

Crafted with all the love and care

Of the wordsmith’s art

That on our beautiful bubble

Our dragon fires

May warm our hearts

For many birthdays more.



“She Fumed… He Froze”

In the dawning hour they called to me

These children of yours

Spoke to me of the landscapes of love

Of consuming fires and frozen wastes

And I wept with them.

[Overnight in Rotorua after the opening of the Gill Gatfield exhibition Moving Mountains, 13^th April 2002]



THE TENNIS RACQUET

You were a stranger to my early years, and

As I walked with Mum and Liz to greet the bus

Your return from war-torn Africa long delayed 

I presumed you’d be a black man with frizzy hair.*

I carried your tennis racquet proudly home

Although it was almost as big as I

Peered in shy silence at this sickly man

Hot poultices slapped to back and chest

Nursed lovingly in my mother’s bed.**

Was it a tennis racquet moulded us

Confined intimacy to sports and games

Masking a crevasse we could not span?

Yet I’ve carried you close throughout my life

Minted my character through opposition

My image the obverse to your stamp.***

A good man my Dad, saintly in many ways

But stumbling fatherhood his bequest to me

And a battered racquet in a wooden press.

*I was a month short of three years old when I first saw my father in May 1943. My mother, big sister Elizabeth and I walked down from Mount Stuart, our rented cottage in Glen Devon, to the Yetts of Muckhart to meet him off the bus from Glasgow. In those childhood days of confident empire we played with golliwogs and collected labels from Robinson’s Marmalade to exchange for badges of that company’s golliwog mascot. Throughout her life my English grandmother spoke scathingly of ‘the blacks’. In my teens, I boldly, if despairingly, tried to correct her. “Not blacks,” I would say, “Negroes, granny, they’re Negroes.” By the sixties, Negro was no longer the politically correct nomenclature and ‘Black is Beautiful’ blossomed. Now Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean hold sway, though rumour has it that black is due for a rerun.

**My father contracted cerebral malaria in the Sudan, a British colony invaded by axis forces, and eventually made his way back to Scotland via South Africa. Weaning him from his quinine dependency precipitated a massive resurgence of malaria with rigors and 105-degree temperatures. Many times a day my mother, a trained nurse, would boil up a grey mess of clay, spread it onto squares of cloth, and rush into the bedroom to slap it on my father’s back and chest before it cooled. I presume it was to draw out the sweating from his fever. After a few weeks Elizabeth and I were packed off to my grandparents in Edinburgh while he recovered.

***The ancient stamp or die used to impress an image on the face of a coin was called a ‘charakter’ and analogies between coin, character and appearance are long-standing: e.g. ‘two-faced’. See Lynch, Deidre, 1998, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

SOPHIE’S FAN

What brought us together across the dramas of our lives

Remains random and mysterious

Lost in the mist of past journeyings.

Now, as companions in age,

Though our frailties make us tetchy,

We must cherish each other the more

Set aside tantrums over trivia, childish irritabilities,

That drain our emotions, exhaust our spirits,

For in such displays we hurt only ourselves

And if one is sick we are both the losers.

So cast off the anger and bitterness

They can but consume us both,

Forgo competitive striving against relatives, friends,

Set the children free to manage their own destinies.

As we face together, with equal composure,

Life’s sweet seductions and bitter grimaces

Even the gods will envy our ageless harmony.

ADRIFT, GOLDEN BAY, 20th January 2010

cut adrift, floating free
untethered from time’s untimely schedules and the anchors of duty,
succumb to nature’s tempos,
it’s times and tides, eddies and currents,
it’s vagabond winds and freshening breezes for mind and soul,
bask serene in the moment, the present,
no past, no future
a piece of flotsam washed by the sea of life

store those magic moments, short in time, long in memory,
cherish the hyper-reality of those Golden Bay days
before reberthing your life again

cut adrift, float free



A Waiting Day

It was a waiting day
I sat by the seashore
Keeping watch with a grey heron
Silent sentinel of the black rocks
On the sand a seagull with a limp
Scavenging picnic leftovers
Out at sea Louis Vuitton yachts
Stalled and calm, their listless crews
Waiting for that vagabond wind

It was a waiting day
Sunny and still
I walked barefoot on the beach
Feeling the freedom of the first sands of summer beneath my toes
Paddled along the water’s edge
Socks and cell phone tucked into the shoes hanging round my neck
Waiting for news of you

You came at the twilight
Of a waiting day
Cradled to your mother’s breast
Rocked gently in your father’s arms
Swaddled by family
Joy, love, euphoria and relief
At your safe deliveryAnd a breathless waiting world
Was released to life and laughter

[Birth of James, 10th October 2002]



GESTURES FROM THE HEART

there are times
soul-bleeding times
for simple healing
gestures from the heart

the innocence of a child
the smile of a loved one
unexpected gifts of friendship

Sophie's Fan
shyly given to the Honourable Mr John
a home-made Valentine's card
"Just so you know you're appreciated in this life"
a piece of pumice from Lake Taupo's shore

"When Taupo and Tauhara are no more then let my love die"



two rocks

one, wrapped in tissue,

a piece of rose quartz
sprinkled with gold and silver stars
a keepsake for the years
and a message inscribed:
Rose Quartz
gentle and soothing
good for fears
aches and pains
and healing broken hearts
(Failing that, it is a pretty slab of rock to stick on your desk)

the other
brought from the Mackinnon Pass
a track beyond my capability
reminder of what might have been
in old friendships rekindled



When I am done and gone

1.

Marooned in lazy-boy corner
Stirring from drifting memories of days gone by
I see you on the deck potting out a lemon tree

and

Time-travelled to another world
I catch a snapshot of your life
As it will be when I am gone.


2.

I care not to age like this
Frail and tremulous
But a shadow of the man I was
My body a burden to myself
Myself a burden to my love
Though bravely borne it seems
As she puts her life on pause
To resurrect when I am gone.

Top Ten Posts to Date

 

I last posted a top ten blogs at the beginning of February at which time, after four months of posts, there had been a thousand plus pageviews. Now, four months later, there have been over two thousand five hundred pageviews so it seems timely to post the top ten posts for the eight months to date.

 (1)   19.  In London, In Love (Dec 27th, 2011)

 (2)   33.  Of Primary Schools, Pets and Pauper Lunatics (Feb 14th 2012)

 (3)   31. Trips to National Women's Hospital, Piha and Auckland's West Coast
         (Feb 6th 2012)

 (4)   29. "Holly Pandora's Big Day Out" (Jan 30th 2012)

 (5)   22.  The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion (1) (Jan 4th 2012)

 (6)   21.  "Why Me?" The History and Mystery of My Bronchiectasis (Dec 30th 2011)

 (7)   40.  The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion (2) (March 15th 2012)

 (8)     4.  My Other Online World (Nov 4th 2011)

 (9)=   3.  Inspiration and Sources (Nov 1st 2011)
         35.  Of Pain, Piles and Prostate Surgery (Feb 22nd 2012)
         47.  Rupert Brooke and Taatamata (June 15th 2012)

52. "Letter to Rachel".

[This is the last of four blogs about Narrative Therapy: for the background to this letter see 25. "Rachel's Massage"; 44. "Rachel's Counselling"; and 49. "Shedding Mr Nice ".]

Dear Rachel,

How are you? I hope this finds you well and happily settled to your new life in Opotoki. I expect you’ll be surprised to hear from me but I wanted to let you know how things are and to thank you again for all your help last year. And, on the odd chance that you will be in Auckland next month, to invite you to a party. Not as my counsellor but as a friend.

As you can see from the enclosed manuscript, I have been writing. I hold you entirely responsible! Whatever the mix of magic potions and therapies you exposed me to, they seem to be working. I think I must be your star pupil. (Still competitive as ever!) The writing and story telling in particular has helped me put the fragments of my life into some semblance of order. Perhaps, cross your fingers, even to keep them there. I’m amazed you managed to cajole me to do anything so creative, just as I’m amazed that you were able to help me confront my chaotic inner life.

Rachel, I hope you’re not too busy to read this. I thought you might like to receive feedback on some of the ‘outcomes’ of your professional work. I hope so. You were great at rescuing me from isolation and fragmentation. At encouraging me to see the wholeness of things, larger shapes and pictures, to make connections. I set out on a course of counselling with you in trepidation that I might unravel to the point where I was nothing more, at the core, than a grey mushy blob.

I went by your old place last week. Scarcely recognised it. The hedge has gone, replaced by a freshly painted fence, a smart new gate and a brass letter box. And the house has been completely renovated. Looks smart and trendy and totally characterless. It misses you.

I miss you, Rachel. I was sad you moved away. But it did cut the umbilical cord and set me afloat again. Afloat, not adrift. And not careening around haphazardly. Picking up direction and wind speed. Feeling positive about the future. Ready to party. I do hope you can make it.

Love,
James.

________________________________________________

A CELEBRATION  PARTY

            “To us celebration means something special. There isn’t anything special about getting older. It takes no effort. It just happens.”

            “If you don’t celebrate getting older,” I said, “what do you celebrate?”

            “Getting better,” was the reply. “We celebrate if we are a better, wiser person this year than last. Only you would know, so it is you who tells the others when it is time to have the party.”

-  Marlo Morgan, Mutant Message Down Under (1994)

I think I’m ready for a party, so I hope you can join me in a celebration to warm my renovated house and enjoy the company of friends.

My place from 8.30pm.    
                                                  

RSVP, James          

            After the sharpest showers the sun shines brightest;

            No weather is warmer than after the blackest clouds,

            Nor any love fresher or friendship fonder

            Than after strife and struggle, when Love and Peace have conquered.

            There was never a war in this world, nor wickedness so cruel,

            That Love, if he liked, might not turn to laughter,

            And Peace, through Patience, put an end to its perils.

- William Langland, Piers the Plowman (c.1362)

51. The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion (3)



This is the third and final posting of the poems in The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion. 

The previous two posts are:

                     1. Love and Passion (Blog 22, 4 January 2012)

                     2. Separation and Loss (Blog 40, 15 March 2012)

Reconciliation and Renewal

Nietzsche, Teacher of the Eternal Recurrence

Waiting for Myself

Laughing Lions Must Come!

Little Fingers

Fresh Songs

Pax

In Avoidance of Married Women

Ahipara

Images and Moods

That Word Love

Dreaming Again

Fingers Touch

Regeneration

Somedays

            Why do I love you

           

______________________________________________________________

NIETZSCHE, TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE

everything dies and blossoms again

everything breaks and is joined anew

everything parts and greets afresh

in every now being begins

WAITING FOR MYSELF

so for now

I am the guardian of memories

the night watchman of love

keeping faith with the past

fuelling the fire

to brave the winter’s chill

nourished on ambrosia

and the angelic grimaces of life

past memories before me

enriching not shackling

I wait on myself

and on the return of spring

fruit that is not picked

turns rotten and brown

falls away

breathing the odour of dusty eternities

but the tree will blossom again

to laugh in the summer sun

 

LAUGHING LIONS MUST COME!

I am but the man I am

sometime weary

sometime sad

sometime crooked and misshapen

wicked dwarfs crouching on my tongue

wanting consideration

swallowed up by solitude

but I am that man too

forged in the smithy of life

hammered right and straight

perpendicular in body and soul

broken from the cast of solitude

needing no consideration

ready for the roll of the drums

a warrior fit for the war

biting a brave lip

unshouldering past burdens

done with cries of distress

abandoning inexorable silences

facing forceful questions

I am free to give

my little finger

my whole hand

my heart too

to a welcome guest

tall

resilient

resurrected

fired by tenderness

the strong will of love

makes dim eyes bright

and spirits sportive

the laughing lions are loose

and I can be

the man I am.

 

LITTLE FINGERS

trying the temperature of the water

with little fingers

does not commit

to a Cook Strait swim

but it may encourage

a refreshing and joyful plunge

in a still sunlit cove

 

FRESH SONGS

brushing off dust and debris

and the spiders of despair

breaking through twilight shadows

and storms of negation

I stand naked before the sun

curing my soul with fresh songs

crowded and pressed by happiness

drinking strong wines of wisdom

back on the path that has heart

singing till the seas are silenced

whether you listen or not I will sing

it is such a beautiful folly

 

PAX

From here on in

No more apologies

For what we were

Or might have been

Let recriminations

Lie there

Recognised

But at rest.

The past is past

Irredeemable

Irreproachable.

 

IN AVOIDANCE OF MARRIED WOMEN

we are not islands you or I

we do not come like Last Tango*

without histories, the resonances of relationships

without obligations, responsibilities

self-images and self-respects

the internalised expectations of others

no matter how hard we may wish

how hard we try

we are our pasts and our futures too

if it were just you and I

in an island bubble

we would be free, adrift,

happy perhaps for a while

discovering ourselves alone

but our contract is limited

by time, by place, by circumstance

how can we be free when so constrained

when spontaneity is touched by dread and fear

and secrecy feeds on guilt and guilt on secrecy

I have little stomach for such ‘affairs’

and fear their consequences

“How do we live tomorrow?”

must colour how we live today

frightened by passion

fearful of the sterility of the passionless

wishing to love

yet fearing to say I love you

I will not let

the abstract desire

be particularised here in you

AHIPARA

What is it I fear

When I fear to say

I love you?

Trading devalued currency?

My love no better than pulp romance

Of the common crowd,

A grain of sand blown in the wind?

Is it that I fear –

Pulp romantic me?

Or do I deal a commodity

I do not have,

Cannot live,

As strange to me

As bird flight, fish swim;

Looked upon yet unseen

Copy-proof?

Or rebuff I fear?

Is that why I barter so

Swapping postage stamps

Like for like

A fair exchange

Waiting your opening bid

To manoevre my advantage?

Or can I live the thought

But not the action?

Do I fear

To threaten fantasy

To face the inrushing tide of consequence

Combing my beach clean?

Or is it that I do not love you?

But what I feel I feel I think

Why else so seek you out

Yet fear to speak my mind,

Tittle-tattle in embarrassed silence?

Why else my poem piece –

Or is that too to remain unseen

Unlooked upon

Locked on the ocean floor?

What is it I fear

When I fear to say

I love you?

IMAGES AND MOODS

I see you through the window window

Barriers apart

Beyond reach

So near, so far

My spirit searches out, seeks out,

Conscious of your world.

In the same house, untouching

Repressing the feeling to the page

Trading in trivia, the price of honey,

The yield of cows…

Peace

Peace

Is the knowledge not sufficient

End in itself,

Why then possess, devour?

Or is freedom only for captives?

THAT WORD LOVE

I know I feared the word

And with much cause

But there were moments

Flashes

When

Just briefly

I did love you

Touched your soul

From the heart of me

I would that I could

Have prolonged those moments

Nurtured the spark

To a full blown flame

But it was not to be

I could not

Or would not

And for that

We are both the poorer

 

DREAMING AGAIN

glittering crab

baited by happiness

rests on high mountains

where the views are clear

and a soul is calmer

                        (to be sad

                        yet feel so well

                        is curious

                        secretly I am amazed

                        at such optimism)

the honey in his veins

is bait

cast from the mountaintop

for a growling bear

                        (what does not destroy me

                        makes me stronger

                        poisons brew balsams

and wounds

contain powers that heal)

soft-treading lions are loose

conquering their freedom

to be masters

in their own domain

                        (spreading dreams again

                        so vulnerably

                        yet for now

                        it is enough

                        to believe you love me)

it is no sacrifice

better the follies of the mountaintop

than dreamless shadows

plundered

squandered

in desolate valleys

FINGERS TOUCH

fingers touch

hands hold

eyes meet

no words speak

for a starving man

the merest crumbs of time

fashion a feast

a banquet of joy

feverishly grasped in fear of returning famine

as if the taste were transient

a springtime bloom presaging no summer sun

did not Camus

in the midst of winter

find within him

a glorious summer

(before blowing out his brains)**

does not summer follow spring

uncluttered by fancy’s fears

does not the bell-flower cherry

after naked blooms die away

put out a leafy shade

to nurture new season’s growth

should not then

the hermit crab***

scavenging scraps of womanfood

subsisting on frugal fare

inside the bubble of love

his cold night warmed

by dragons breathing fire

fearing careless claws

will burst the magic moment

the fragile friendship

cling on tight

to life’s roulette

chance a final turn

on fortune’s wheel

bask in the honey glow

of conscious care

his ice-freed soul

sustained

by a Sagittarian sun

fingers touch

hands hold

eyes meet

no words speak

 

REGENERATION

the caress of your hands

the sweet warmth of your lips

the joy in your eyes

your eager wetness

these are life to me

earth fire air water

elemental passions

that nurture me

feed me

and bring me back to myself

I thank you for them

with a sunny poem

on a soulspring morning

 

SOMEDAYS

somedays I feel a pain so deep

a drowning despair, a watery sadness

beyond the reach

of alcohol’s morbid mask

of soporific soap operas

the deadening beat of rock

the social chatter of partying friends

work’s partial concentrations

and tennis balls struck in anger

a pain that only

the most elemental sensations

can block out

within the compass of sea and sand

my floating body washed by the waves

dried by the sun

within the compass of our mutual joy

the warm embrace

the sensual touch

the present passion

the orgasmic now

the quiet nakedness as

through your love

life surges back.

 

Why do I love you

Why do I love you

Let me tell you why

I love you because

You accept me as I am

The mad passions

The tranquil joys

The tearful sadness

Because you give me time

To discover myself again

And make me feel

Free to be me

I hope that I

In my turn

Make you feel

Free to be you

Always.

____________________________________

*     The reference is to the film Last Tango in Paris.
**   I don't know where I got that idea from; Camus died in 1960 in a car accident.
*** My star sign is Cancer and I was born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon.