HOUSE WITH NO DOOR

As I mentioned last post, I have been camping in Dorset, not that you can call taking the campervan camping. Especially not when you have a real bed and duvet.  It was good to catch up with friends and to sit under the stars and talk nonsense late into the night.  We sat and watched the shooting stars as the planet passed through the Perseids. A Catalan friend of mine told me that they call them the tears of St Lawrence (apparently he was martyred on 10^th August) which sounds a rather better name for them to me. 

We went for a walk to look at an old shepherd’s cottage with amazing views. It was literally a two room house, derelict as you can see from the photographs.  The house reminded me of an old song-hence this week’s title.

Here’s a poem with, as of yet, no title:

In the big blue bowl lie blackcurrants,

shiny, some over-ripe, others hard,

it is between us,

the place to fix my eye,

as reluctantly I listen.

Hear more than I would chose to know.

Your hands comb these cobbles,

collect stalk and leaf.

We walk around your puzzlement,

you talk to make it sense

The arguments…the silences…

Now you hold a large blackcurrant,

I imagine it the ivory ball,

the wheel is spinning,

your present life the stake,

the odds are against you.

Don’t you know the house always wins?

The poem is still under construction-what do you think?  Seeing the house all abandoned and deserted made me include it in this post.

J.I.VING

You meet her under an umbrella.

It’s innocuous enough, a jazz concert,

you exploit my passion for cover.

She brings her husband, who she says

Once roomed with a man who made a CD.

No one looks at anyone else’s eyes,

you face him across a round table,

conversation is still born.

I can remember not one note

But you two lean as close as you dare.

Confirmation plays and the husband knows it.

Outside in rain, after stilted farewells

and long last looks;

I ask you what the hell you are about.

You quote someone else’s poetry,

I shake my head and unlock the car.

Again, this is not finished but it seems to bookend the first poem. Confirmation by the way is a Charlie Parker tune. As I say I don’t remember a single note of the performance but artistically it fits the poem.

Nick gets seriously arty.

I am going to leave you with some more positive images. The rabbits at the campsite were so used to people that they wandered where they would.

Have a good week.