Motherhood

She screams a sound
that goes through bones and rocks.
The gull is witnessing the drowning
of her wounded young.
Circling anxiously over the waves,
attempted rescue doomed to fail,
she can not help. Her desperation
goes beyond what she knows safe.
She looks at me.

I hold the hands of both my young
that cry for what is going on.
Her fear of me forgotten, now she lands
before my feet. She waits till I take action.
I walk into the water for some steps,
but the undertow is quicker;
the young gull does not once emerge.

The mother flies,
stays above our heads a while,
her screams are fading
in a hoarse cry over loss
before she sets off to the sea.
On the deserted beach, three crows
come looking for the small cadaver
when it’s washed ashore.
I take my two back home
into the safety of the nest.
We hear her cry all day.

You don’t know me

I saved your words out of the spam
and in my bed I read them loud,
your words are what my life’s about,
how well you know me in your verse
but you don’t know me.

The snow keeps falling over buds
while flowers should be screaming out,
their lives seem lost in silenced doubt
that there will be a Spring again
as they don’t know that.

I keep the poem and the buds,
and shiver now I do without
your smile. You touched a dying sprout.
How well you know me in your verse.
But you don’t know me.

Caught

Fishing means both of us crying,
me and my son who’s only five,
both sad because the hook has pierced
the slimy cheek of the small sprat,
that looks with one eye where it lived
and one into my soul that dies,
it knows that all is lost. Sweet life.

My eyes half closed I free the fish
and feel the flesh reluctantly
let go of metal. Hope returns.
Son puts it back into the sea
where in surprise it swims away.
Blood on our hands we are relieved.
(Son held his breath accordantly.)

Another male is passing by,
son waves the angle with bravour.
“We caught a fish!” And let it go,
but I won’t tell. We buy some fish
and chips for home, no eyes are seen,
no questions asked. He takes my hand.
We let a sprat go well mature.

Be a dreamer

There are dreamers at the seaside
who will never sail the ocean.
There are ships that sail forever
on a sea that has no coast line.
Some have lost their crew, abandoned
they keep searching for a harbour.

There are places where you salvage
what remains of thoughts, reminders
of ideas you had, ambitions,
long forgotten loves and wishes;
in those places you will find them.

Some birds fly with no directions,
some stay near the fishing vessels,
others know where they are going;
all will gather at the harbour.

Be a guest once more in harbours
where the fishermen are dreaming
over days when they were sailing.

There are places near the seaside
where you need not leave the harbour.

Be a dreamer coming home there.

I wrote this yesterday when I was looking after Eline -she was in her bed then- and this morning I decided to make it a poem with fading number of lines per verse (6,5,4,3,2,1) like in a nonet (thank you Christine ) the lines get fewer words (9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1) . Sorry for my bad English here, I am not good in explaining. But I hope the poem shows what I was trying to do 🙂 HAPPY EASTER

March of horror

When words can’t say the horror
that paintings can not draw,
and music has no notes for it,
what use of rotten memories,
that come to pester us in dreams?
Just when you think you have forgotten,
come marching skeletons of long ago.

Some memories are not our own,
but haunt us as they need to be remembered.
When words are gone, and tears dried up,
where silence screams of what was done
to others. They come to tell you what you know.
They should stay in the memory of all.
Cold wind is blowing over Bergen Belsen.

Bergen Belsen was liberated in April 1945. Anne Frank died there in March 1945.
Bergen Belsen

It’s just water

I have spent too many hours
near a sea that is just water,
cried an ocean over lovers
who would never care about me
and the sea seemed there to comfort,
with a soothing sound and rhythm.

Every tear that fell, was honest
as my love had been so real then.
I have spent too many hours
near an ocean that’s just water,
thinking that the sea would feel me
but it doesn’t. It’s just water.

So much of what I knew

You were so much of what I knew as life,
you went and never I had felt such pain,
no part of this great love remained with me.
I lived alone and loss had shown us how.

You went and never I had felt such pain,
when others said it had been for the best
I lived alone. And loss had shown us how
you found your rest. I can not sleep at nights.

When others said it had been for the best
as they would never understand just how
you found your rest. I can not sleep at nights,
I miss your hand, your eyes, your love.

As they would never understand just how
our bodies yearn for those they can not see.
I miss your hand, your eyes, your love.
My nights are darker than a grave could be.

Going out the door

The worried oak shakes his head over me;
I can’t wait for him to have leaves again,
I need to see how my geese are doing,
hope to find you standing in the distance,
or someone like you. I need to feel my blood.

At home in heated rooms I can’t find life
where only caged birds live. I walk in cold,
exist in memories of warmer days.
I have been dead too long now to give up.
Like trees I shall invent myself once more.

Recipe for a memory

To remember you by,
I take a bit of sandalwood
smelling like the soap you used,
a drop of Spring rain water,
a ray of sunshine dust
as the light fell
on our mornings,
and a tear, and blend it
in a night with silent
cobalt skies, to inhale
and drink your memory
just sip by sip
to feel that you
are with me, in me, near.

Lover

My hair was a veil and your laughter a dance,
a romance in a weird way maybe.
It was in a library in a place called Paris,
I didn’t know anyone there but by chance.

The books all in French must have heard
how my mind was only with you,
when we met in a Baudelaire poem
your hands were becoming a bird.

Your bird then revealed my veil and my cover
in a room with a view of Montmartre.
In your eyes lived a war struck memory,
twice my age, half my length: my French lover.