Just now...

Just now
The world may feel strange
The light and the darkness both
May seem
A trifle unreal.
You may be
Sleeping suddenly deeply again
Or lying wide wide awake
A staring mind in the night
Until the sun rises.

Just now
It may be hard to believe
That anything will ever feel
Comfortable and at peace again
Every breath you take now
Is ill-at-ease with itself.
You may be
Crying inside, or be
Too exhausted for
The effort of tears.

Just now
Each day is a new task
The effort you did not know
You were capable of making.
Just now you may
Want to be left alone
Or long for your friends, and fear
Above all else, solitude
And the void it brings.

Just now
I hope and pray
You'll have the support
You need; just that much,
No more, no less.
You have
The right to go through
The darkness, this night, with
The tools that work best for you.

And you may feel
No-one can ever know
What this has cost you,
This journey up
From the depths, to the moment when
Your head breaks the surface
And you can breathe easy again.
You are such strength
As others dream upon
And you will come though this.

It may all seem
Strange beyond belief
But you will live.
You will sleep sound again
You will find reasons to carry on again,
And smile, and breathe, and think,
No longer only to weep
Though that may be all you know
Just now.

Shyness

(I had a very nice Posh Afternoon Tea on Friday with some colleagues.  Good tea; I had an excellent Darjeeling, a lovely clean clear taste, and no-one bugged me about my not having milk with it, hurrah! (why spoil decent tea with milk?).  Also good sandwiches - especially the smoked salmon and the cucumber with capers - good scones, some very good cakes, even a glass of Prosecco to finish off with.  Lovely.  But oh, my heart; the chap I have a wee crush on was there.  I know I'm being silly; it's always good to see him, even now when I know he's not free.  He's an intelligent, articulate, interesting man with an immensely likeable sense of humour.  I enjoyed having the chance to chat a little and to get to know him just a scrap more outside of work-based conversations.  But because I'm not yet over the crush, I find I'm still painfully shy around him.  I wrote this afterwards.)

Shyness

Let no-one say

That shyness is a blessing

Or an attractive thing.

Shyness is a cord around my throat

A tremor in a healthy hand

A blind spot in the vision

An earthquake in the stomach.

Let no-one say it's charming

Who has not felt

That nausea of dread

At being among

Strangers, or friends.

Or seeing that chap you like

Pass by, when you've not

Had a chance to prepare

Anything at all to say.

Shyness is a fever

With no external symptoms,

Shyness is a wound

With no external scars.

The shaking hands,

The quaking heart;

Shyness is me psyching myself up

To go into that room

Full of my friends;

Losing a little more hope, each time

I see you pass by;

And never having

Anything at all to say.

Not some enchanted evening

It’s the afternoon, and 

It’s a quiet moment, and

Your eyes meet

Just for an instant,

Then you both look away.

It’s that moment, across

A crowded room

That leaves you

Thinking

Why did I look away? - and

Why did you?

Ithaka

(I'm not getting any progress at the moment on the flatshare-hunting; I've emailed about a dozen possibilities but have had as yet only that one response from the guy who wasn't really in Barnes after all, plus one very obvious scammer, who I've politely told to buzz off.  So to give myself something to do, here is a bit of poetry for you).

Ithaka

So this is the third year, and the thirtieth
That I have travelled towards Ithaka
And for the first time I have achieved my goal.
It's been a long dream, a long time since
That plump schoolgirl, nose-deep in the bronze age,
Dreamed of a modern Odyssey; nostalgic for
A home she'd never known, an ur-home, Ithaka.
This morning an hour past dawn I stood on the quay
And saw a dark shape across the water.  Tall and wooded,
Shrouded in morning shadow, a dream beyond dream.
Perpendicular it looked, looming, a high mystery.
No longer a girl's dream but the wild myth made stone.
The legend had bulk suddenly, presence of forests and cliffs.
We sailed east, out of morning, into the island's shadow, the night-side of myth.

It isn't only Ithaka I have dreamed of reaching.
Every home I've ever lost and every lover; every struggle failed
And all that are half-completed; all, all are Ithaka.
They have all loomed beyond me, like the great mysteries.
I can no longer count the sum of my unreached dreams.
Lately the longing and the travelling in my heart
Have both been reaching out again for the hope of love
And the road out of loneliness, the greatest
Mystery of them all; and today
I've carried the image of that love with me
Crossing the calm gulf of morning, to this island;
Carried him here in my heart to the one dream I have achieved, to Ithaka.

In the end, it was an ordinary beautiful day
Of island towns and landscapes and gold-grey stone
And the miraculous blue of sea and heaven.
There were no revelations.  Nothing
Was vouchsafed me, save the knowing I came here.
Arriving at last, longing, in my way longing no less
Than the much-travelled desperate Odysseus,
To tread this mythic soil, taste this strong wine,
Walk under these dark pines while my one day turned
From night to a sunlit afternoon, and my daydream to realised hope.
After all of my travels here, I held out my hands
And touched what was unattainable, and found it true.
No mystery; or, the mystery is still further, and still more secret,
Still shrouded like hope in the high night-side of the myth, and deeper than Ithaka.

Stories

It seems to me now

That this story

Has reached a crux

And I don’t know

Where it will go.

There are so many

Paths it could take.

There’s the version

Where one of them dies,

The version where they all die,

And the version

Where the good guys win,

The invaders are defeated, and

True love conquers all.

Nobody dies in that one.

There’s the alternative

Universe, where

He’s really an alien

And the rest are zombies

And they eat one another’s brains.

There’s the one where they all

Learn to do magic

And lay down their lives

Fighting the enemy.

And the universe where

They never meet at all.

There’s the story where

Love is true, but it’s

Unrequited, or

Unwise, or unwittingly ill-given;

There’s the love

Between friends, between

Siblings, between lovers, comrades,

Like-minds, and

Between those who can

Never even touch.  There’s

Love, and there’s death.

These are all stories.

Maybe in ours

No-one is ever going

Even to speak

The first line of the play.

Maybe this story is all

Pinteresque silence,

Blindness and regret.

Or maybe this will be

The one where all my scenes

Were cut, or the one

Where you and I

Were written out

Before rehearsals began.

I’m waiting

I’m waiting for my cue

But I don’t know the scene we’re in

Or what part anyone plays.

I don’t know if you

Will fight at my side

Or put up your sword and

Turn away in embarrassment.

I don’t know if my friends

Are the heroes or the enemy,

Or even the zombies.

I’m lost in here

And the story rolls on.

Is this the way it ends, then?

The crux of the plot

A crucial scene

Between the characters

Who matter; the commanders

Their captains-at-arms, and

You, their champion.

And I sit in the back room

Worrying, and am

Forgotten about

While others nurse the heroes’ wounds

After the battle is won.

It seems to me now

This story could go

Completely off the rails

Or come home happy

Or, just end.

Who knows? – but

All I want now is

Just to get it over with.

So leave me alone, in peace

Let me turn the pages

And see.

Settling down for the night

Still as a hushed sigh
I slide into the quiet
And the darkness tonight.
Settling for sleep,
The ordinary mercy of
Seven hours' oblivion.
And not the bare
Bodkin, the longer quietus.
It has no allure
These days, that dream;
I am too old
To long for such things
When I know
They are coming
Anyway.  So settling
In the hushed dark tonight
For sleep
And the merciful cliché.
Tomorrow's another day.

On the river's edge

A heron's silhouette,
Inverted teardrop, waits,
Raises a poignard,
Stabs.
Daylight shatters
Every second as the wind runs
Across the water; it
Scatters
As off a swordblade
Damascened
With spring sunshine.
And the wild bird
Kills and kills again as I
Cross the bridge.
I cannot defend myself.
If I am overwhelmed
I will fall
Into the steely water,
But I cannot stop
Walking forward into today.
The bright steel of morning
Glitters
And the heron unfolds herself and
Slowly flaps away
Certain and strong as
Hecate.

In the distance (2)

The second time I saw you
Go by in the distance
You were with friends, and smiling.
I hung back, bowed my head;
I didn't dare so much as
Look up, lest you should see me
Watching you.  I stared
Down at my lunch as though
That salad fascinated me.

Yet seeing you smile brings
A smile to my lips also,
And knowing you are happy
Makes my serious heart
Glad for a moment.

But if you had wanted
My smile, to lift your day,
You might have glanced my way
And seen nothing, save
Averted eyes, and a dark head
Bowed down; you might
Have seen not inadequacy
But blank indifference
Focussed on lunch.

What kind of friend am I
If too shy to smile
When I see you go by
Happy, with your friends
There, in the distance?

Spring day

Already some of the blossom

Is falling; already small shells

Of white, pale petal-saucers

Are scattering the grass,

Settling into the gravel,

Preparing to rot away.

Already the first blush

Of happiness is passing;

And today we have rain.

But in the tall bamboos

The year’s first reed warbler

Is singing his raspy joy.

For all things their seasons,

Their blossoms bright and dark,

Their myriad passing days;

Ephemeral as rain,

Their ways to happiness.

In the distance

I saw you going by today
In the distance,
Looking so sad
I wanted to run after you
And say, hey,
Hey, hey, my friend, my dear,
Can we be sad
Together, or better still
Find something to share
To make us smile?
But I wasn't sure
You'd want to hear my voice
If your heart
Was aching already today.
The sky was grey,
Your face was lonely,
Your brown eyes sad.
I didn't know
If I had anything
That could make you smile.
So I said nothing, and stayed
In the distance.

April mist

I wrote this a few days ago.  A bit late for a spring equinox poem, but it's really a friendship-poem anyway, easily as much as a season's one.

April mist

April the first, and a thick mist

Lying close in the Thames valley.

Birds sing unseen above me

And the towers hide their heads.

Trees are fixed ghosts, and traffic

Is ghosts that move.

I cross the bridge, walking away

From one mystery and into

The next.

If you, my friend, were just

A hundred steps ahead of me

I would not know

That you were there.

And perhaps you are.

Perhaps you too are walking

Quiet in the quiet mist

Between two mysteries.

I cross the bridge, as you

Have done, or will do soon.

One would not know, looking out

That there are islands here;

Even the river itself

Can barely be seen.

Still, I am crossing water,

Towards the invisible

Blackbird singing ahead,

Towards the hidden wonder,

And, maybe, to you.