(For Dónall) A Summer Day - To Dónall on his Birthday
It was a summer's day when we first met
the memories are clear - I won't forget -
traffic noise, new faces, beer and sweat -
that summer day when you and I first met.
The kilt you wore - it played its part that summer day
your naked knee on mine, I felt your strength and knew
though we sat down as strangers, my compass was reset
I could not bear to say goodbye to you.
That summer day we met, a year ago
in love we lay, in love we have remained
together we are free and both do know
in loving touch our love will be maintained.
We met amid banality and yet
we kissed and changed our courses - compasses reset
the memories are clear – I never will forget
that summer’s day when you and I first met.
poem by Janice Windle
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(My Mother) Retirement Plans
“When I grow old, ” said my mother, “I’ll change my life.
I’ll rent a garret on the Left Bank of the Seine
in Paris, give up being a mother and a wife,
spend my days painting, drink red wine all night,
my friends will be artists - maybe I’ll write.
“But what about Dad? ” I objected.
My mother reflected.
“He’ll be okay, ” she said.
“He’ll buy a djellabi, sandals, a scarab
and live in the desert, along with the Arabs.
He’s learning the lingo at evening class.
He’ll go over to Gaza” – I thought, what a gas!
I’d spend April in Paris, winter with Dad –
there was going to be some fun to be had!
I hoped that my parents’ dreams all would come true –
but after all that they just moved down to Bude!
poem by Janice Windle
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(Memory Chest) Salvaging the Past
How surprised the sea-chest must have been
when it left the sea
began voyaging with me.
No more travelling in the creak of the hold,
bringing home trinkets
from Sorrento and Port Said
Instead
the trunk set out on my Rake's Progress through
West London's bedsits and flatshares,
painted white in my minimalist period,
covered with a kilim in my exotic Ealing phase,
acquired the status of the Holy Ark
when my childhood's relics, unearthed
from my parents' attic,
found no other home than this dark space,
doubly dark, it rested under my own roof
when for three decades my life I
threw down an anchor, moored
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poem by Janice Windle
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(Growing Pains) Blue
Blue was his colour, he always said. Went with his ice-blue Michael Caine eyes.
Midnight blue velvet suit, in the seventies, their twenties. (She stroking nightly its nap as they sat on her hard two-seater sofa, until he exposed the smooth contrast of the skin beneath.)
His wedding suit a sky-blue linen creation. (Her parents late to the ceremony, she, tearstained at the flower-decked registry office table, hearing her mother breathe, ”Isn’t he beautiful”)
Cerulean and cobalt shirts in the eighties (pure cotton, hell to iron, but hell, she was still in love.)
Prussian blue golf shoes and an ultramarine Armani fleece in the nineties, as far as she could recall.
He bought her a cloud-blue Honda car to do the shopping in, just before she decided to head off into the blue.
In it, she struck out on a polychrome adventure, alone, drove towards the lurid sunset to look for gold at the end of her rainbow.
When they met again, she saw that at some point his eyes had faded to grey, along with their hair.
Blue was still his colour.
poem by Janice Windle
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(Growing Pains) Red Shoes Blues
This is a song which should be chanted! (Based on a childhood memory)
............................................. ................................................. ..............
Red shoes,
she wanted...
red shoes...
they had to be red she said,
they had to be red...
no way she could explain
when she was only three...
no way that she could dance
through her three-year-old day
without
red shoes...
red shoes...
she got the red shoes blues.
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poem by Janice Windle
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