Spanish Street

Clouds gathering

Airing my feet in a Spanish street

While my iPhone is charging 

Silent town of Dominigo de Garcia 

You could swing a cat ,they say 

But the cat in front of me is not walking away 

Late afternoon and the crafty inhabitant

Watching me 

Waiting 

Knows the albergue has food 

Has walked past and looked 

Walked past again 

Skuttled away 

Patrolling this end of town vigilantly 

For scraps 

Too hot 

I’m forced to sit 

To think 

To write 

While my iPhone is charging 

My iPhone ,an umbilical chord 

To a world outside 

Populated by people I know 

Filled with noise and jobs and love 

Beds well made 

Food on the table 

I know that world .

Here I am nothing 

In this vast and unknown landscape 

Where the wind blows in the morning 

And the sun still blazes past midday 

No-one knows me 

And indeed not sure if I know myself

Or how the day will end .

This stripey ,wiley cat knows if it waits long enough

It will have dinner

The Visit

Always Sunflowers
-End April 2021 Visit for annual check /CT Scan post cancer

I stand in a queue with my referral and hand it to the receptionist .She tells me to sit on the chairs and wait .So I sit on the chairs in this white room .A man (he tells me he is the radiographer )comes along and tells me politely to change into the gown and takes me to the corridor ,gives me the gown and a basket for my clothes and suggests I change in the loo.I take everything off and put the gown on ,struggling to understand again which way it fastens so as not to gape in front and show half my stomach and breasts .Immediately feel a patient as its so ugly ,so open ,so gaping .Muddy grey with one tie at neck .Stripped and cold I sit and wait again on a bench in the corridor outside the radiography room .The radiographer comes back and tells me I can move into the CT scan room .I follow him in and lie on the bench .He .sets tup the tubes before asking the usual questions :name ,date of birth .,allergies .

” Had the blood test ?”
“Yes ,the results should be here “.
Pause “Oh well you seem ok and you say no problems with your liver ?.We’ll go ahead .”.

He ties the tourniquet around my left arm and then has trouble getting the needle into the vein .A pause .
“Better check the blood test “he says .Leaving me lying on my back looking at the ceiling he goes off to phone for the blood test results .I can hear him murmuring and he’s gone a long time it seems .Back he comes .”Its s all ok “.Phew!

We start.
Slide into the cone .Breathe .Slide out .
Slide in .Voice says again “Breathe in .Hold for 3 Breathe out “And as I breathe out the bed is slid back out of the cone .
And its in and out ,in and out, in and out ,with the disembodied voice instructing me on my breath
Then the liquid is pumped through the reclatriant vein.That icey feeling inside my body .Sliding in and out of the cone again
.
Its over,I get up slowly off the table .Not for another year .It didn’t hurt .It wasn’t all that long .Hopefully the results will be good .So why are my knees shaky and my hands trembling?
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Babies,Water and Swimming Against the Tide

I have been thinking about the title “Starting again ,or New life “and there are a few questions about that very notion .There is no such ambiguity about babies At the moment of birth a baby just IS.It is only later that he or she may be endowed with the doubts and worries,expectations and beliefs of our own existence 

Hello Baby 
I saw you this morning on the screen 
Right arm flailing about your head 
Tadpole body wriggling in space
I couldn’t see your face

Baby -Hello . 
Uninvited,unheralded,unplanned,unplaced 
Not mine;
Yet the force of your existence casts a skein over my life
Is already changing my direction 
Already changing my perception 
Altering my reality
Forcing me to question.

You’re coming into all our lives
But let’s not make you the arbitrator of meaning 
Lets celebrate your existence 
Not hang our lives on it and wear you down
With the weight of our longings.

I love you.
I’ll beat a drum for you
 I’ll weave a dance for you 
Sing a song for you 
Until you sing your own.
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hello baby





















	


	

			






	

		
Life’s Messy un
	


	
	

		


Yes it is -messy


Sometimes I think it’s like spending all day cleaning, putting stuff away, rearranging, deleting. Culling. Then start again in a few days, hours, weeks


Each time at the supposed final putting away there’s a sense of relief. Breathing in uncluttered spaces and the way ahead is beckoning . ” All clear”


Foolish thought. Only momentarily clear . But hold onto that and start again with hope


This Messy Life is what is