The tip of the lost wand poked up through the gravel, as if a sharp star or the shine in your eyes had fallen from soft blackness. I was barefoot. And that was the story that repeated itself again and again.
Moments
Drop
Even so many years later, if I ever drop a raisin, as I bend to pick it up I see the snake slide silent out from under the cupboard….
Tear stains
You said the book of my poems I lent you was now tear-stained. My breath was taken, and I too cried a little. But you had said tea-stained.
The architecture of the hooks
I saw the delicate blueprints, blue, old style. I leaned over to see them better on the desk, my hand soft on your shoulder. The chalky paper and the tracing of the clever blue lines. The architecture of the hooks. The sharpness for piercing, the long long straight wire that slips through flesh, stronger than hope and stronger than regret, and then the unexpected undefeatable curve and the late, too late, barb.
And when you left you left the hooks in my heart. A constant low burning and then too often the sharpness when the music touches the line, the taste or the odour, the colour of the scarf in the distance.
Inspired by a line by Hardeep Singh Kohli @misterhsk
Off to work
The chocolate Labrador looked out of the white van window, his pork pie hat tilted forward over one ear. “Left hand down a bit, mate”, he growled, flicking the butt of the very thin roll-up into the gutter. “Just park here. Let’s go. Let’s do it.”
Home is where
When I told my friends I was going home, they knew the house I meant; the house I had been born in seven or eight years before. You can never play for long enough but I knew it was time to go home if my da wasn’t to come looking for me with the dog. So I went home, to the house I had been born in, the only home I’d known or would know for twenty years.
When my friends asked me where I was going on holiday, I’d say I was going home and they’d laugh. But that’s what my ma called the island, that’s where she called home. She’d been away ten years now, and would be away for forty more, but every summer she took us all home to granda’s on the island.
I was at home there too, and my brothers, when we went out on our granda’s boat or watched him watching the tide against the light, eyes slits of green. It was my home as much as it was ma’s, it was home as much as the house I’d been born in. Aunts visited every day and ma’s friends we called Auntie, hair ruffling, old chocolate gifting. Then one summer the curtains were closed for a year when nanna left us.
In my twenties my home was in the deep sky-blue south, sun and sea, friends and just enough. My da said I made my home there. But it takes more than making to make a home. A home needs to be, to become and be. And once it is, it always will be. Now when I go back to visit where was my home on the sea, in the sun, I am at home with my friends. As soon as we arrive I breathe deep the air of home, I feel the calm warm quiet in the eye of the world’s storms, and our home here, our home in the city, is out of mind until we return.
When we are in the south, home is where our friends are, home is how we feel, not where we are. At home on the sand, at home asleep under the pines, at home late at night round the fire on the roof.
Back in the north, we watch from the top of the worn mountain as crystal light streams into the melting haar. We can see our house from here, now the mist has drawn back to the sea. Our house, our home, where many have been and many have gone. Home where our families became family, where our friends became family, where the heart is.
I have been to many places and have lived in many. Home is the magnet that pulls our hearts, circles become spirals and funnel slowly to the centre of our world. Years ago I saw a poem that said that home is with you, breathing slow beneath the skins. And now I know it is.
First published as part of Scotland’s Stories of Home April 2014
http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading/stories-of-home/story/home-is-where
Jimbo’s leg
Jimbo eyed the other men’s bare legs uneasily. The others all had thick black arrows pointing to the left knee; the arrow on his pointed straight at his right knee cap. Nobody caught his gaze but when he turned his eyes away he felt hot twitches of attention flicking over him. Over his knee.
One by one the others were told to get on their beds and were wheeled away. The women’s bright efficient voices were the only sound apart from the shrill birdsong floating in with the cold-aired sunshine. They all went quietly. Jimbo watched the wheels turn; no squeaks.
Three had gone. None had come back. The birdsong had stopped and the sun was gone. It was cold. Jimbo rubbed the arrow on his leg. Nothing. No smudging. He licked his finger and rubbed again. Still nothing.
When the women came for him, he too stayed silent. Until he saw the other men’s legs again.
When a good person leaves us
When a good person leaves us, we cry for the person and for the ideas, the ideas we fear may fade without their light. And we cry for ourselves, so deeply for ourselves, we cry for how we might have been and how we will have been.
Family and love was all that ever made us cry; then friends departing and friends letting us down. Reasons for tears grow with us. Tears sting and fists rub eyes.
But a good person leaving us brings the deepest tears, the tears that shudder from the deepest place, the place we did not know existed and did not want to exist.
Then hope? Perhaps.
Returning home
Where was my hat? I retraced my steps and there it was, on the bench in the bus shelter. Well, OK. I unrolled my sleeping bag.
I sat there among the young ones
I sat there among the young ones, my house and hope gone. The photographer must have thought I’d make a moving picture as I hunched forward, face in my hands, my daughter looking away from me. He must have knelt on the muddy torn grass to place the clever metaphoric clouds in my background. He must have made a noise to make me look round. But I did not look at him when I turned round, I looked at the man with the gun and the knife, who left only me to tell the story. And the camera he took from the photographer’s hand.
Can also be seen at http://spontaneity.org/issue02/i-sat-there-among-the-young-ones/
