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Casserole Dish Gardens

humanist55

You planted me two years ago
myself and my sister casserole dish gardens
– you who have always been fascinated
by the miniature worlds of Bottle Gardens and Bonsai.

Bottle gardens grew too lush
in the sweet-jar worlds
of your teenage window sill
Pennywort and Maidenhair ferns
an unruly tangled jungle
and Bonsai you studied and realised
you needed a Master
not just to teach the art
but from whom you could inherit
because a hundred-year-old tree
needs a hundred years to grow
no matter how small it is kept
by tortuous processes…

Coming back from Covid lockdown Crete
you smuggled fragments of plants
to create me – a miniature garden!
In Crete, Jade trees the size of bushes
a plant you didn’t even know had flowers
now grace us gardens as tiny trees
planted next to choice rocks
a nod to the Bonsai plantings
of your dreams

We are mostly filled with succulents
which flowered this year in ways
which surprised and delighted you
reaching a flower-tipped tendril
towards the light but then shrivelling
and dying – perhaps not to return…

One of us you inherited
from your late sister in Ireland
whose partner delighted her
by planting  a pink-dyed
spiky phallus of a cactus
along with succulent friends
in the lopsided glass
of a washing machine door
– the self-seeded Shamrocks
came along for the ride
the tiny Mexican-hatted miniature
of Tequila – “For Emergencies”
redundant, since she
had already encountered
her final life emergency.

You took us to work
where there were wider window-sills
than your open-plan hayloft conversion
and you see us and celebrate us
whilst weekly watering us.
People think we succulents can survive
without water but in truth
like most plants – we like it weekly

Meanwhile, as your eye wanders
through we miniature worlds
do you feel in control of your creations
or are we in your life
a living reminder of
mortality and fragility.
Do you wonder if we will outlive you
and carry on, watered by another –
inherited by another?
Do you wonder whether
anyone has even thought
to water us these weeks
you’ve been consumed by covid
when, head full of cotton wool
you forgot to ask anyone
to fill in for the gardener?

Don’t worry – we can manage
the occasional drought!
Can we say the same for you…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This poem is posted in response to Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at dVerse Poets Pub

Sunflowers

humanist55

Trauma is nowadays
seen as implicated
in almost all ways
in which people are derailed
in their mental health.

Addiction to drugs or alcohol
sex or over neatness
– these are the symptoms
and not the diagnosis
– whichever label eventually applied

Those who are traumatised
are often complex souls
and doctors often feel challenged
and give up on their role
to get to the bottom of things

Borderline personality disorder
is a favourite soubriquet
for those that cannot be rendered
silent about the roles their trauma plays
and refuse all other labels

Some disorders may respond
to the doctors’ pharmacopoeia
hardest is the slough of despond
a symptom so common it’s hardly seen
as mental health but just a frequent human condition

Bipolar is stabilised with lithium
yet patients constantly reject its spell
preferring the rush of manic fun
and whilst the black dog they would quell
prefer half a life than all life levelled and flat

Vincent van Gogh would today be told
he was bipolar and given lithium not talk
He said “Normality is a paved road
– It’s comfortable to walk,
but no flowers grow on it.”
And we would be deprived of his flowers…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This poem is posted in response to Haunted – Tuesday Poetics over at dVerse Poets Pub hosted by Melissa Lemay in Uncategorized

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 18

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Caren

No street photographer I
no Cartier-Bresson
but I do sometimes seize a moment
as with this elderly couple
reviewing their garden
and a lifetime of closeness
I imagine – in Upwhey
where the River Whey comes up
before plunging its short course
down to Weymouth
with my late mother
I snapped them…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

As you can see from Caren’s postcard to me, which from the relative dates, I calculate means she had received my card to her and has responded in kind with a painting of trees and a poem to match (which I wish I could show you).

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 17

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Robi

“The graves a fine and private place
But none I think do there embrace”
wrote Andrew Marvell
– marvellous metaphysical poet
but I like to think that
in this graveyard
at the back of my house
young lovers or even old
do venture into the dark
to woo – as Marvell’s poem’s
subject would do
creating fonder memories
than the daytime dog walkers
or even those visiting
the quiet residents do…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Robi sent the arrangement of fans and other objects bearing the Stars and Stripes and wrote a charming Haiku about waterskiing…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 16

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Toni

A solitary crow does not
a murder make
I like to think
I am not even sinister
unlike the direction
sign I sit upon
I will not even defend my perch
if a bigger bird takes a notion
to supplant me, in a blink
I will fly away to keep the peace.
You thought different?
We crows get a bad press
but I don’t care a jot…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Toni told a tale of being scandalised by a (very young) naked Englishman! Below is her card to me…

Contraflows (Piccadilly Circus)

humanist55

The circular ticket hall
of Piccadilly Circus
London Underground
sees in the evening
the contraflow of
two disparate populations
theatre-goers flow down
to the tube line lines below
digging deep to drop coins
in the pint-size paper cups
of the beggars at their feet
or not…
the tide of supplicants
washes in to catch
the beneficent potential
of culture sated happiness
or not…
One group headed homeward
to cosy homes in the suburbs
the other homeless
unless you call a cardboard
mattress in a shop doorway home
and if these homeless are also addicts
then what is an addict if not someone
who also wants to be transported elsewhere
counting the fare to their next fix
perhaps they too want to go home
or perhaps to get as far away from home
as possible and anywhere but here and now
watching still purposeful feet pass by
this Ticket Hall is home to no one
a place of transit and temporary contraflows
Earlier in the day
commuters on the way to work
hurried past less generous
with the urgency
of earning a buck
and when their tide turns
at clocking off time
they flow against the stream
of theatre-goers
bubbling up from underground
and both streams
bypass the static beggars
arranged like rocks
around the confluential hall
That is the way it seemed to me
when years ago
I sometimes navigated the waters
when working in London
but maybe the government
has forced the Tube
to sweep away
the detrital evidence
of years of draining austerity
clashing with personal derailment
on the rocky journey through life
But places exist in time
as well as space
and I suspect these tidal flows
of rich and poor effaced
still meet for an exchange
of generosity and relief
somewhere out on
the streets of London
People, like water
will find a way to go
a time and place
to contraflow…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Posted for OLN #348 – Two Opportunities to join us LIVE @dVerse Poets Pub

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 15

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Katie

From the ashes of what fire
did the family name of Phoenix
flutter forth, what history sired it
and does your clan
live up to its name
re-emerging from
whatever disaster the times
heap on your homes
– challenge your lives with
to be reborn and renewed
tempered by the flames?
These bonfires fed with prunings
from the olive grove in Crete
likewise strengthen the tree
for a more fruitful future…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This photograph was my favourite of all the ones I took in Crete during lockdown in the Winter of 2020. Katie’s card (below) was all about Summer and making the most of it…

A Nice Little Soup…

humanist55

“A nice little soup for a nice little face”
is a colloquial expression from Menorca

Menorca has the third-largest harbour in the world
and supplied the Royal Navy with portable soup

A soup is a collection of ingredients easily portable
until combined with liquid to form a broth

Scotch Broth, Mulligatawny, Phở and Minestrone
soups to take you around the world

To each their own world of culinary tradition
ingredients, flavours and cooking methods

Methods passed down the generations
soup is the starter or can be the main dish

And who the heck knows what they mean in Menorca
by “A nice little soup for a nice little face…”

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  merrildsmith in Poetics has been cooking up Soup as a prompt…

Five Photos Leading Me Home

humanist55

Westward a bunch of flowers adorns the table
in the living room upstairs
sent by kind neighbours after person(s) unknown
threw an empty bottle through
a downstairs bedroom window

Northly I sit in the yard garden smiling
wearing a new shirt and waistcoat
bought by my love
finally getting a photo I like
for all my online avatars

A Buddha sits on the window sill
South view over his shoulder
sheltered beneath a tree size avocado
final success after countless
failures to grow from a pit

A Buddha head sits among plants
on a garden shelf, contemplating
fossils garnered on English beaches
and brought East by our son from Mexico
but not from its yellow hills

Clematis blooms pink against
the impossible blue of the May sky
fluffed with clouds
each year the Montana climbs
to such height

Photos call us home
in a sixth dimension
of the heart

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Today’s post is written for Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at the dVerse Poets Pub.
The prompt is based on “Five Directions to my house” by the poet Juan Filipe Herrera.

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 14

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Shari

Each stranger’s name and address
is like a mini detective challenge
I follow police protocol
and locate you on a map
so I know you are in Seattle
home to the PoPo Fest
Beyond that
your name gives me nothing
but for no better reason
than that you are
one “O” short of a monsoon
I picked this picture of
Indian shoes some years past
at the Leeds Asian Festival
so blinging I couldn’t resist…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Shari was quick out of the blocks, her postcard poem being my fourth to arrive – which means she had no more idea about me than I had about her… Her card was beautiful, her poem short and sweet…