Glistening

The older I become
the more my mind
pursues the thrill of glitter
so I leave behind

questions of politics,
history, love –
all the passing whims
that idly moved

the life I used to know
when I was young –
and instead I focus my heart
on the glistening tongue

of silver and the ancient
pull of gold
in which great secrets lie
as yet untold.

Hope

Taking everything into account –
the bleakness,
the office-grey blandness

and the redoing of the same acts
over and over again
for no apparent purpose,

that ever-rolling wheel of life –

the sky still sometimes sings blue
and the tiny snowdrop dances.

Anne Brooke Books

Dress Problems in 50 Lines

So here I am, trying to buy a dress for the opera

because it’s not often I go

and everything else in my wardrobe has been worn

and reworn over the years

but I don’t want to look shabby

when some glamorous singer

is giving it her all on stage.

 

The dress has no zip

and no buttons I can see.

It’s been so long

since I’ve been shopping at all

that I wonder if the science of fastening

has moved on without me.

 

I search again, and miraculously

I find a small zip just under the left armpit

that leads to the top of the waist.

I can’t see how this can help me

get the faintly ridiculous scrap of material

over my head or my thighs

but I undo it anyway.

 

Ever the optimist.

 

I consider for a while

if it could fit over my thighs

but then plump for the head option instead

on the grounds that it’s smaller.

The material is clingy and soft

and somewhere around my bra strap

it gets stuck.

 

The store label twists up and up

and fastens itself to the collar

so I can’t get the hem down over my back.

I wonder for one or two existential moments

whether I’m doomed to die here

in this changing room,

strangled by a renegade dress,

or if I have the sheer chutzpah

to hop out onto the shop floor,

dress around my neck,

and ask the assistant for help.

 

I don’t believe I have.

 

So I struggle on

and finally the pesky floral beast

is more or less in situ.

I congratulate myself

on a tricky mountain successfully climbed

before I realise two important facts:

it’s the ugliest dress in history

and – worse – I have to get it off again.

 

There’s a distinct possibility

shabby will be in this year.

 

Anne Brooke Books
Gay Reads UK
The Gathandrian Fantasy Trilogy (gay-themed)

The Bravery of Birds

I restock the feeder for ordinary birds
while the goldfinches dance
on the next branch along.

I could laugh or swallow my words;
they don’t spare me a glance
and who’s to say they’re wrong?

 

Not working

The vast expanse of desk
is a desert I cannot cross,
cluttered as it always is with phone and screen,
keyboard, mousemat,
papers of rapidly decreasing relevance
and an assortment of fragile pens.

Not to mention management expectations,
meaningless meetings,
a babble of voices
and the growing sense that something,
some sense somewhere,
might have been lost.

What I wouldn’t give
for a crowd of locusts
to decimate my working life,
send me back to the cool womb of anticipation,
the moment of stepping over the office threshold
all those years ago,

to find,
if she can be found at all,
the woman I used to be.

Unseen

The thing seen

stands for absence

in grey and blue:

 

part blemish

part blessing

understood by you.

 

 

Goldfinch

A late goldfinch

flutters at the bird feeder:

 

a splash of gold

on a cloudy day.

 

And I think next year

a brighter summer

 

might even now

pass our way.

 

English: Another welcome visitor A female Goldfinch visits a garden bird feeder on a large council estate in Plymouth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This morning’s goldfinch has certainly added some autumn cheer.

Jump

Sometimes

you just have to

let go the things

 

that taste of safety

and launch out

into the hereafter;

 

so may the dancing air

and sunlight

carry your weight

 

while the seagulls’ song

salts your skin

with laughter.

 

Seagull in flight (Larus michahellis) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It takes me a while to choose to do something brave, but when I do, I’ve never regretted it.

Spell casting

Hedge in Autumn (Photo credit: kevinjay.)

Outside in the dark

starlight sparkles,

exposes the room’s soft comfort.

 

The witching hour.

The knife’s blade gleams

a deeper silver

 

as it unsheathes

the apple’s white flesh

held in the palm

 

of my hand.

Scent of autumn hedgerows.

Keep the fingers steady,

 

watch the smooth paring

of skin unfold

its secret spell.

 

One length,

then two

before the deed is done.

 

Close the eyes tight

and release

the magic today:

 

apple rind thrown on the fire

reveals your true love’s name,

they say.

 

I remember taking part in this piece of earthlore magic as a child at Hallowe’en parties. We all enjoyed it, though I don’t remember any of us getting it right.

Wasps

Like the slow trickle of water

or the crumple of paper in the hand

the wasps take up residence under the roof

as they did last summer.

At first we do not hear them;

they are cunning as wolves,

accustomed to slipping ghosted

through the splintered cracks of solid wood and tile

to build their undulating nest

away from the innocent eyes of our everyday life.

 

For when the irregular crackle and hiss

of spiky tapping slips into our senses

it could so easily be

the dripping of rain along the gutter

steaming in sunlight

or the steady shifting of a house dying as it stands

which numbs our every thought

until we come almost to accept the thing we fear most.

 

And as in painstaking rhythm

they begin to mark what they count as theirs,

the slow stripe of possession,

stings golden with vengeance

for the many small deaths gone before,

then at last we hear them

as they ease through the folded swathe of conscience,

crawling just there under the skin

and filling our tormented ears

with hazy dreams of flight.

 

German wasp (Vespula germanica). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wrote this poem in 2002 when we lived in a house very prone to wasp nests. It was one of the runners-up in the Poetry Society National Poetry Awards that year.