Druids once we were
You say now
Reaching back
From later years, become a bard
So bound to search for spirit-life
And fairies, apparently, lambent lurking
Every tree or wayside flower
You see now
Reaching back
Where playground plants in cracks
Coped with tarmac, tiny plot
For pineapple Mayweed creeping
Playthings we thought, threading head to tail
Like daisy chains and plantain catapults
Like daisy chains and plantain catapults
Nought else grew
Except behind the school a scrubby lane
We walked controlled in crocodiles
And sticky buds were there
Miss cut them for the classroom
Nature table
And elsewhere land was waste or common
Wilderness in parcels
Before the roads and houses tentacled and spread
So even with a mother quick to fret
Yet long-rope rambles were allowed
Excursions unsupervised
In search of (seasonally) sticklebacks, tadpoles
Rose hips, blackberries, conkers, crabs
Grass to whistle, shells
So we remarked the months
Their provender, ‘bread and cheese' hawthorn leaves
And best of all, for me, catkins
Lambs’ tails
Signalling the spring
You know now
You see how
Relatively long-rope , we, wandering free
Knew those fairy spirits everywhere
Daily friends
You talked to birds
Still do, encourage geckos
Respond to tree-frogs
Make your hand a bridge
For cricket floundering in the pool
I see
Your straight hair, bright
Centre-parted
Fixed with grips
Brown legs in ankle-socks
Running
And into focus, sharply, from the blur
Me too, like you
Nature’s children, druids
Once we were
18th September 2011, Hounoux, for Clare with love
Sharing memories with long standing friends inclusive to newer friendships who can reach back to a time similar. The 50's may have had its downside for us girls but we sure had time to run free in our ankle socks, explore and get up mischief of one kind or another! Blackberry stained T shirts and scraped school shoes had their comeuppance in my world though! xxx
ReplyDeleteAh yes Jude, you caught my drift as so often. It did have its downside in that women were v distinctly supposed to 'know their place'! and we for example did something like needlework whilst the boys did science, at the top of the primary school. I remember wearing old school sandals with the toes cut out for running free in the summer which would have saved the wrath of the mother!
ReplyDeleteOh yes the toes cut out of shoes, I remember that! I know country dance steps, can balance a book on my head and make a hymn book cover....should update my CV!
ReplyDeletePoem written by Clare in response to mine-GLORIOUS!
ReplyDeleteI peeped into the top of your grandfather clock
And spied the wheels and cogs of time
That have turned since 1812
Or thereabouts.
Turn the nut clockwise at the base of the pendulum
To hasten the swing, for he loses five minutes a day.
But where are those lost minutes?
Where might we find them?
Who has them captive?
Tick them and tock them
The clock will unlock them
At the end of every pendulum swing
In that time of no time
Between the breath of a moth’s beating wing
We wind ourselves widdershins
Meanderings, lingerings
Down the lanes of long ago.
(Not that long – surely!!)
Five minutes to visit your aunties’ sweet shop,
To savour cake melting moments with your Mum,
Five minutes to cycle down the bank
And see again the moment of your missing tooth
As you tumbled on the gravel of an unmade road;
Two ball in the playground and
The Alley Alley Oh!!
Five minutes to sit again on the school bus to the station:
Hin’on Adm’ral, this is Hin’on Adm’ral
The smutty smoke of steam travel to Grammar School days
Early yawnings for eleven year old girls.
Privileged we were (though earned, and then some!!)
Flowering with our two favourite French teachers:
Miss Ching and Mrs Slack; but still struggling with the Maths.
Five minutes to share our working lives
To know your family, for you to know mine,
Our children, grandchildren.
The chimes sound
We turn around
Our gardens are full of children’s laughter
Peeping round the rose bushes
Between the giggling leaves
Hitching a ride
From side to side
As the pendulum swings
On Mercury’s wings….
C’mon, on we climb
For another five minutes of time.
In response to your lovely Druid poem to me
To Sally with love from Clare
Basingstoke
October 2011
And my response to Clare's poem:
ReplyDeleteClare, what can I say other than I LOVE IT!!!! Now I understand a bit about why people enjoy the poems I write for them. It’s always wonderful to share what a poet has to express, but when the poem is full of shared allusions and references it is so much more special again. I love the idea of the lost minutes and what you and I together could do with them, walking together down the secret lane of reminiscence and shared memories. I love the idea of time travelling through the clock, swinging on the pendulum on Mercury’s wings, because of course we did time travel together during your visit didn’t we. How precious to have such a long-standing friendship and to be able to delve into its treasure.. My absolute favourite verse is the second. It expresses something quite magical and it does it in a beautiful language – We wind ourselves widdershins/ Meanderings, lingering. And ‘Tick them and tock them/ The clock will unlock them.
What a lovely return for my poem- and I got such pleasure from writing that too- so twice blessed! I hope you don’t mind but I have copied this poem into the comments section on the Druids Once we were poem on my blog. It is lovely for the blog of poems to be sort of organic and grow from the original with the responses and the comments.
Many many thanks Clare. A real treasure and I shall get pleasure from it for much time to come I know, everytime I hitch a ride from side to side as the pendulum swings On Mercury’s wings-xxxxx