Blue

Catching my breath- heart pounding

My excuse is a photograph.

“Are you trying to kill me?” I gasp.

She only smiles wryly

“It’s good for you!”

She is fit and slim.

“So, what colour would you call that?”

She asks.

I hesitate.

I almost blurt out- well, blue-bell blue!

But that doesn’t describe the indigo shaded places

No- it’s deeper than that

Yet lighter than talc in the powdery bright.

More a feeling than a colour.

The scent is a  remembered hug from my Mother

The blue a flash in her eye

And like an adult I am holding back

Wanting to run as a child

Into the middle of all the blue and be lost

Untouchable blue!

As she is now, today, her birthday

A million twinkling ice blue candles for remembrance

And the blue shifts

Slipping now into adolescence the newly bathed baby

As a wistful sigh

Held there for a moment on the breath.

A kiss that begins slowly

Pulling you deeper into his arms

Down into a warm blue

Mauve, lilac, feathery-pillowed bed

I breath all this in.

And to her question I reply

“For ever”.

The Heralds of the Summer

Have  you stopped to hear the bird song from a garden seat

And noticed how they shout above the sirens of the street

And the red-tipped metal dragons drown out the bitter sweet

Tales of Spring - their songs heard still incomplete

Have you heard a cuckoo call in the woods above the Thames

No not since a child  dipping in the pool with my friends

Spotting a fisher king darting liquid blue by Cliveden reach

For the tiny diamanté sticklebacks  sparkling on the beach.

Now they say the robins sing at night to better hear their mates who call

Above the buzz of motor-ways cutting through the urban sprawl.

Have you heard people say “Spring is in the air!” whilst mobile calling behind the wheel

Entrapped in offices of sound- proof glass and steel

With i-pod stuck inside the ear

When did they take the time to hear

The heralds of the summer?

Two poems I wrote for Mike Springate’s poetry evening dedicated to all things Spring. Held on 28th April 2009 as part of the Cookham festival.

The first inspired by a beautiful blue-bell walk at Cliveden and the other just sitting in the garden listening to a particularly noisy air craft go over head.