Decided to go to work today. Got the train to Victoria and felt so poor that I simply phoned work and got on the next train home again. Can't seem to shake this dratted virus off. My colleagues okay about me being off however.
Home. Spoke to Matty for a bit. Did resting until Toby came to stay before zooming off back to Canada from Gatwick tomorrow. Lurked about chit chatting and watching TV, as I was not up to going out again. Also spoke to Mum too.
The poem I put in yesterday's entry had the idea of running backwards as a spooky element. The backwards thing also crops up in this excerpt from a poem called Call it Fear by Joyce Harjo:
The backwards thing also appears in a poem I wrote in the 80s which was published in a small magazine called Bound Spiral. It is about making a wish in the wishing pool in Guernsey, which I did again just a few weeks ago with Romy and Toby.
The next wish
Climbing the waterlanes to the wishing pool
An eleven year old boy, his mother
And younger brother tugging the damp hedges.
On hands and knees they unwind time
Each writing three circles on the drinkable water
Anticlockwise, leftwards, sinister
But altogether familiar.
The older boy wishes a girl in his class
Will one day marry him: the mother,
Pretty and practical, unwishes her husband
While on the spot, the brother
Conceives some mercurial scheme.
All three, in sharing this ritual,
Strengthen the family.
Three circles, then the cool fingers are lifted
To drip one finalising drip
Into the still centre of the expanding rings.
Next morning the older boy returns
Having slept uneasily on his wish
Touches the cold water and revokes it.
The pool and the poem open time.
First to be said before it can be done
Every expression every wish or poem
Changes what is to come.
A wish alters everything, and this poem --
Having rewritten the past --
Informs me. I must one day take
my family to the wishing pool
To make tight new rings in the water
And watch with contentment
Their inevitable broadening.
This I shall never revoke
This is the next wish
This poem is the next wish.
The pool and the poem open time.
Home. Spoke to Matty for a bit. Did resting until Toby came to stay before zooming off back to Canada from Gatwick tomorrow. Lurked about chit chatting and watching TV, as I was not up to going out again. Also spoke to Mum too.
The poem I put in yesterday's entry had the idea of running backwards as a spooky element. The backwards thing also crops up in this excerpt from a poem called Call it Fear by Joyce Harjo:
Not that,
but a string of shadow horses kicking
and pulling me out of my belly,
not in the Rio Grande but into the music
barely coming through
Sunday church singing
from the radio. Battery worn down but the voices
talking backwards.
The backwards thing also appears in a poem I wrote in the 80s which was published in a small magazine called Bound Spiral. It is about making a wish in the wishing pool in Guernsey, which I did again just a few weeks ago with Romy and Toby.
The next wish
Climbing the waterlanes to the wishing pool
An eleven year old boy, his mother
And younger brother tugging the damp hedges.
On hands and knees they unwind time
Each writing three circles on the drinkable water
Anticlockwise, leftwards, sinister
But altogether familiar.
The older boy wishes a girl in his class
Will one day marry him: the mother,
Pretty and practical, unwishes her husband
While on the spot, the brother
Conceives some mercurial scheme.
All three, in sharing this ritual,
Strengthen the family.
Three circles, then the cool fingers are lifted
To drip one finalising drip
Into the still centre of the expanding rings.
Next morning the older boy returns
Having slept uneasily on his wish
Touches the cold water and revokes it.
The pool and the poem open time.
First to be said before it can be done
Every expression every wish or poem
Changes what is to come.
A wish alters everything, and this poem --
Having rewritten the past --
Informs me. I must one day take
my family to the wishing pool
To make tight new rings in the water
And watch with contentment
Their inevitable broadening.
This I shall never revoke
This is the next wish
This poem is the next wish.
The pool and the poem open time.
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