memory

Belated Day 30 ~ Where Are You Now?

/ A. Gouedard / 1 Comment

Where are you now?

~

All the things that matter to me, mattered to us,

matter so little to anyone else

if they even matter at all. It’s all so intimate. Small.

No-one but you could ever remember how we sat in that bar.

Must be fifty plus years ago now.

I can try and explain, paint a picture, tell the tale of our joy and the blight on our stars,

But why should anyone care?

~

No-one but you can know or remember that one special night

when we met in a world that was flooded with lights.

We were there. We were present. We were so very there.

No-one but you can remind me of words I have forgotten beyond all trace.

I have to scrape every shadowy cave of my brain just to recall the shape of your face.

A face I so loved. A beautiful face.

~

No-one but you could make me keep looking, hoping to see you around every corner, through a window, in a crowd, alone on a bench, out with your kids (assuming you had some), walking through galleries, buying fruit at the market. Do you still play guitar and sing in the street? Do you visit our favourite tree in the park? Have we passed each other by? Maybe you can’t even walk anymore. I don’t care as long as you’re there. Somewhere, still there.

~

I’m so frustrated looking for you.

© A.Chakir 2023

Our house (a letter to my grandfather)

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

I went to the old house today. For you it was the last house.
I went down into the kitchen garden. It was a tangle, overgrown, and gone to weeds.
The pony shed was falling into ruin. You used to leave your muddied boots out there. They were gone of course.
The pear and apple trees still bare fruit.
The plums look especially good this year.
The rooks still nested in the poplar trees.
I went back in, to the kitchen and the remembered scent of lavender and yeast.
Our big table was gone. Everything was gone. All changed. Modernised beyond repair.
I didn’t venture on the attics stair.
That would have been too much for even me to bear.
Too dark. Too old. Too empty.
No laughter echoed anywhere. Only in my memory.
Old songs. Piano keys. The paintings missing from the hall.
I thought 0f Rumpelstiltskin and naive Goldilocks.
Your versions were so good. Funny and irreverent.
Clouds still passed the window where you told those tales.
The trees still moved in the wind, their branches bouncing up and down.
My life has wandered on. I don’t have the money to buy a house like this.
I sometimes wonder if I might return here on my last breath.
Today I was an intruder for a while.
I left through the side door beside the servants’ stairs.
No-one saw me. No-one cares.
I won’t go again there,
except at night, in dreams.

Clearing House

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Wisteria and heliotrope tap upon the window

Cascading canopies of blooms obscure the lace of light

These antediluvian drifting dreams needs a careful cleansing

 

Wander though the rooms

Trail a finger here along the shelves

Leaving lines behind, each one holds a story

 

The old clock with a muffled tick marks time,

A perpetual metronome to music echoed in the hall.

Polished, worn piano keys, lid closed now and silent.

 

Take a yellow dust cloth, wipe it all away

Open wide resistant, creaking window frames

Shake the dust out, flying to the stratosphere.

 

Life is not for fragile vases, balanced near the fire.

Crematorium dust belongs beneath the roses

Sheltered in rich earth.

 

At the kitchen sink, elbow deep in suds,

I recall a rubaiyat, I sense reverberation

Somewhere in my memory, a penetrating message, from Arcadia.

 

 

 

Yes

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

following the lane, walking up the hill

talking of our dreams, ambitions and hopes

yes, it was moonlight, yes, we were young then

this memory, so strong, always returns

 

i wonder why a momentary walk

comes back so clearly again and again

we wandered less than a mile in the dark

it held pure perfection, yes, it was love

 

yesterday the thought brought me a smile

today it hurts enough to make me cry

an image etched on my brain and my heart

yes, i grow tired remembering you

 

 

 

A Welsh Voice

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

 

The mists, the mountains, cloud topped giants,
houses hung beneath the roads,
the mysteries of Cader Idris,
the bearded lake, Arthur’s stone,
a throne beside the glassy water
hollowed rock o’er grown with moss,
the leap of silvered salmon in the river,
the sheep, the lanes, the wayside markers
in the wall of wild flowers blooming,
by granite seat of ancient Bards,
where people gathered
hearing story roll from lips and memory.
All these things we saw together,
wandering in the wilderness of Wales
with my father, as a child.

The village streets where women gossiped,
the cobblestones and chimney pots
enchanted drifts of wood-smoked air
the clanging chime of book shop bell
as my father lead me to a gloomy room
walled with shelves.
Reaching up above my head
he handed me Dylan Thomas
a poet he had never read.

In bed that night a door swung open
with all the chimes of stream and meadow
louder than the bookshop bell
ringing out in word and image
words delicious in my mouth
the sounds, the shapes, the sensual pleasures
wrapped in beauty, thoughts profound,
laughter, love, the lowing cattle
driven home at eventide.
The orchards and the apple trees,
the night above that shines with stars.
The chapel choirs sang out across the valleys
voices raised in harmony and hymn,
the moaning echoes of the wind in grass
the sighing singing of the sea,
short lives lived
parading slowly to the grave.

It

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

it’s out there somewhere, hovering
at the edge of my mind as i turn
it’s out there somewhere, that haunting
form, a musical note, a flute

it’s out there somewhere, in the glide
of a kestrels wing above the moors
it’s out there, somewhere it’s waiting
just beyond my reach, in light

it’s out there somewhere calling me
persistent, it pulls me, always
out to the hills, the woods, out there
somewhere on the blue horizon

it’s out there somewhere, I call out
asking it to come for me now
it’s out there somewhere, answering
follow me, move, get up, come, walk

it’s out there, somewhere inside me
in every dream and whispered sign,
footfalls to follow, blown open doors
i live with it, out there somewhere

i knew it all so clearly once
high on a rock strewn windswept Tor
i saw it spread out across the land
a flying shadow, a glow, a gleam

i heard it in the forest close
tracking my every cautious step
smiling behind my back, laughing
it’s out there somewhere, i saw

it’s out there somewhere, I know
i smelled that scent of old, ancient,
it’s out there somewhere, primordial
lobe, in the depths of memory

it’s out there somewhere, alive

 

 

 

A Souvenir of Shakespeare

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

A Souvenir of Shakespeare

In a bay window, at a dark oak table, my grandfather sits after breakfast, in a room that smells faintly of pepper when the sun shines in and warms the white table-cloth. My grandmothers green breasted budgie repeats and repeats good morning as he gazes at himself in a tiny mirror. A laburnum branch taps on the window, glossy dark stem and yellow flowers.

The smell of bacon and egg lingers as my grandfather puts on his glasses and reaches for the newspaper. By his hand sits a heavy glass oval ashtray and under the glass, in the centre, a face gazes out, oval too, bearded, in sepia. The ashtray is always there and never used. Age four or five I ask,

‘Who is that man?’’

‘’That’s Old Will,’’ says my Grand-dad, as if it’s his best mate he rubs shoulders with often.

‘’Who is Old Will?’’ I ask, because I enjoy a story and I like to keep my Grand-dad talking to me.

‘’William Shakespeare, the worlds greatest Bard,’’ says my Grand-dad.

‘’What’s a Bard?’’

‘’He wrote wonderful plays for the theatre and poems and he told about all the things people think and feel and do and why.’’

‘’What did he say?’’ I ask, impressed because that sounded very clever.

‘’Oh, lots of things,’’ says my Grand-dad with a smile.

‘’But what things?’’

‘’All the world’s a stage and we but players on it, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, to sleep perchance to dream, to be or not to be that’s the question.’’

‘’To be or not to be what?’’ I ask, falling into my Grand-dads well laid trap.

‘’Well that’s the question, isn’t it’’ he says with a grin. ‘’Now go out and play and let me read my paper.’’

To be, to not be.

How can we ever not be?

Would we be again?

To be or not to.

Was I not before now then?

What if I wasn’t?

Being, not being?

Do they feel very different?

Could I switch between?

My head starts to hurt.

I think I am glad I am

here, now, being.

I run out to the garden to play.