Flowers in a Medicine Bottle

How a woman of few words was the centre of the universe to her husband and silent sons.

True to her stock she bred only sons

to the shy hulking farmer, iron-husband of hers

and -- dying -- despatched hard Methodist prayers

from her bed's tidy exile: 'Soften their way

and bring them (sightless) home'.

 

Sundays they went to her grave

shambling up the worn hill; five

(ill-fitting) strangers rubbing shoulders

stranded in the cemetery’s toy puzzle.

 

They spent the rest of Sunday clearing ground

stumpchains linking the same thick hands,

stacking the gorse afternoon in heaps. 

 

Evening found them drifted apart

lonely shadows working on into the dark.

Reviews

[Ron]

I am a novice writer faced with adavanced writing. Writing of competition standard and I don't mean Writers Cafe competitions. I don't mean that in a flippant way. The words are art sparcely cut from granite. A line of Whitechapel bronze, cast bells, crafted to perfection comes to mind too. Also turns of individually chosen Tibetan prayer rolls spun. You have to read every word. It took, no doubt, vast time to write so it takes such time to read and digest. When you do this the poem huge quality rises from the few hard sought words the poem is composed of. This poem to me shows huge sadness, regeneration in the hardest life you can get. The small family farm. Mother, fellow worker and wife torn away. Yet work and life must continue and continue at once around the grief. The BBC London has annual poetry awards. Poems of this quality should go there.

[little mermaid]

I wish I could have said all that Ron. This work is truly breathtaking from the very outset. The picture those carefully chosen words (including the title) paint is masterful in its use of tone, composition and colour (greys?) The best I have seen here yet