Polar Express

The ultra sound gel is cold and blue.
I have been in this room before.
Ice in my veins. Too many biopsies,
scans, skipped heartbeats.
I am marked with a small circle
that will take days to fade.
She says, ‘That’s just your rib.’
Some bruising left over
from old scars. Nothing new,
nothing sinister. I’m so grateful
I start babbling about
my appointment with Santa Claus.

I am standing on a platform
waiting for a steam train
to take me to the North Pole.
As the fog swirls with the ringing
of bells, your face lights up with belief.
The door swings open to shouts
of ‘All Aboard’. Golden tickets,
the howling of wolves, hot chocolate.
It does not matter where we’re going,
it matters that we can still make the journey.

Vows – recording of my poem on One Stage At A Time, a poetry project for people affected by cancer.  We are currently looking for submissions.

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Dress Rehearsal

The snowmen sit in a huddle,
melting warriors with hats askew,
ready to sing of anger and the hot tears
of one little boy who doesn’t have
a costume. Inconsolable in his wellies.
The devastation of wanting a carrot nose.

You believe it will snow for Christmas
just as it does on every ad on the TV
but this morning the streets are wet with fog,
mysterious clouds that turn the tinsel lady
into a ghost of a nursery rhyme.
I hold the song of your belief in my hand,
so fragile, so pure, so full of magic.

Going to Maggie’s For The First Time – this poem is being read at Maggie’s Oxford Carol Concert

 

 

What To Say To Small People

Birthdays in November  – recording of my poem on One Stage At A Time, a poetry project for people affected by cancer.  We are currently looking for submissions.

 

You want to bring your ninja warrior
for show and tell but ask me
if I was too shy for preschool?
Do I admit I was terrified and homeless?
That perhaps I still am?
Do I wrap you in stories of lost lands
and the contagion of homesickness?
Or do I click the rope on to your belt,
adjust your night vision, tell you
the silent scaling of tall buildings
is just what little boys do?
Will I always be here for you to come back to?

New

September in a heat wave
as the mist burns up
the morning sun.
You worry about
our stream horse
lost in the fog.
It’s been a summer
of not touching the ground.

Now I’m back in the hospital
with the taste of winter
at the back of my throat.
She talks through drawings
of a smaller me,
the impossible made possible,
snowflakes falling.

You ask me if it hurts,
only when you wake up I say,
only when you wake up.

Mammogram After Devon

Superman in the sun.
The sky a vast stretch
of sapphire summer.
We dig for white gold
in the shallow waves,
feed chocolate biscuits
to the seagulls. You help
dig a tunnel to the sea.
The afternoon is made of
sandcastles and smiles.
A perfect picture postcard
of a holiday, a little boy
playing in paradise.

We drive back
through broken clouds.
The waiting room hits me
with the last time I sat
on this plastic chair.
A bad feeling,
a very, very bad feeling,
a crab crawling in my gut.

She shows me photographs
of what’s no longer there.
It’s been a year since nothing
spun the room around.
I am summer speckled,
sand in my toes, scarred
like a star fish, but I still
have the sun on my face.

Listening

The house is empty. The rain murmuring
against the wall, slicing down
in sheets of green grey mist.
A single bird wings through cloud.
There is a song that comes from being alone.
The percussion patter on the roof,
the drumming of the lark.
These moments of pause,
when there is little choice but to rest,
are full to the brim with distant thunder.
I am the ghost of myself and yet in this absence,
this removal of birth, there is a phoenix
curled inside a cocoon of ash.
A streak of fire that will cut the sky in two.

Waking Up

The ghosts are cooing
in the broken arms
of their mothers.
They pour their afterlife
into bottles of sleep.

Leaves carefully labelled
as armour. Brown trousers
and a sky for a t-shirt.
Hair sculpted into a time machine,
teeth stuck to the wall.

A monster packed into a bag,
dinosaur shoes. The metal doors
of an education. Strapped in,
not sure where the routine has gone.

Kisses blown across the desert,
come home, come home, come home.
The echo of a hospital,
mornings stitched back together.