Nine years of waiting for
Beloved
Neverwas.
Nine years is 108 months
Relax -
Have patience
It will happen by itself
108 months of
Expectation
followed by …
clutching at the slightest straws
of late days
phantom hopes and false alarms.
Friends who share your ups and downs
Fall
nervous to tell you
of their
Good News.
Avert your eyes from
passing pushchairs.
Complete strangers,
always men, shout –
Cheer up love it may never happen –
The test results served cold and crisp
like it was a small thing
not the felling of a mighty oak
nine (hundred) years in the growing.
I wanted to prove
to myself
and the world
that I could do it right this time
given a loving man.
You shared my pain
although I could only feel my own.
You chose to stay
Regardless.
A salve to the wound
the doctor said
-
Sad-
fortress of your private space.
I wait alert
standing beside you
to offer an arm, a shoulder, a hug
should the citadel break.
The singer sings sweet and slow
“… who saved a wretch like me…”
but your faith in God and angels
keeps you firm.
Some journeyed hundreds,
some thousands of miles.
Two sons,
two grandsons,
two nephews,
cross arms for strength,
tread measured steps,
like soldiers,
shouldering the weight
of oak and bones.
Their footsteps echo
the beating of our living hearts.
April 2009
This mixed-
Generations of women are linked as all Mum’s costume and clothes were made by her mother, painted here by her daughter.
As a girl my Mum was called by the pet name ‘Titi’. This is for her.
surrounded by her Memories,
children, grandchildren, great-
and me.
This mixed-
On a good day
you know my name.
Today you saw only
Phantoms
and addressed your questioning to them.
A shadow
of the man you were.
The man you were
glimpsed
through old correspondence.
Letters of condolences
Thanks
Regret
Academic proposals
Meals-
Minutes of meetings
A multitude of minutes down the many years.
Although four score and more
your Friday hobby
became writing job applications
with attached CV.
A lifetime of hard graft, achievement and service
concentrated into a succinct
half-
Like the umpteen boxes of paperwork
crowding the loft
you never threw anything away.
We sift through your life
wearing out the delete button.
Words vanishing from the screen
but alive still as
Phantoms
in your room.
He sits in his chair watching his favourite DVDs on TV, over and over, joking about not remembering what happens next, or how they end, watching his own mortality slip away.
The present may be fuzzy and blurred, but the past replays itself in sharp contrast. The world that was roamed and ravaged by War, rebuilt on the building sites.
Surrounding and enclosing him are the photographic images of the ‘stuff’ of his daily
routine – pill organisers, toiletry needs, pain relief, religious objects… -
He was always at ease with men. The words on the outer edge are his monologues, some of many, repeated and told afresh on each visit as if new to our ears.
It has become a small world.
-
Eyes like a newborn
unfocused and wide,
brimful with marvel
and incomprehension.
Freckled translucent skin
hanging loose over
vivid blue purple veins,
pools of brown bruising
visible, vulnerable, exposed.
Smells creep out from below the sheets,
you lie with safety cot sides up
buffered and framed with pillows.
Weak as a kitten.
Plastered with tubes to feed and save you
with strong medicine.
As you talk, I memorize every detail -
the undulations of your eye sockets.
I want to draw you but daren’t ask.
I catch my mind working out
the combinations of coloured paint
the sequences of actions
to commit that strong head to some immortality
on canvas.
Oxygen tube tucked neatly under your chin...
I came to say “I love you”
in reply
“You have no idea how much I love your mother”
... good enough.
You talk for almost an hour in a barely audible whisper -
Pop songs mix with the rasping of your breath.
Annie Lennox has an angel playing in her heart -
about the War
something about a German pursuing you here in the ward.
I nod and smile
stroke your hand and arm
through sterile latex gloves
Does this comfort you?
I hope.
There’s nothing more I can do.
Tucked up,
Neat stripey blue cuffs,
Blankets up to your chin.
Watery blue eyes
open and gazing up mute -
Am I being good?
Deathcold hands -
and held like paws -
Shrewd man
cutting and keen.
Man of power,
power and words.
Man of a world of words.
Watery blue eyes
open and gazing up mute -
Am I being good?
This mixed-
On closer viewing, the Christ child is dead, the Mother blind with sorrow.
They are surrounded by news images, from war zones around the world, of slaughtered innocents and their grieving parents.
Beneath the lustre of the frames lie images of spent artillery shells, the end result of the thriving and profitable arms industry.
Morningafter walk in the woods.
Squirrels setting the leafy branches rustling
releasing their watery load
from the stormfilled nightbefore.
Night flashed huge urgent brightwhitelight
across the wideblack sky
moving from West to East
in its thunderous roaring progress.
Morningafter walk in the woods.
Fingers plaiting in tight embrace exchanging
glances heavy with happiness
from the stormfilled nightbefore.
Hearts burned beat urgent sweatsweetnight
cutting the breathless air
moving from There to Here
in its thunderous roaring progress.
The passing down of womanly knowledge and feminine power from mother to daughter through the generations. (I wanted the mother’s mother in the painting too, but couldn’t persuade her to sit).
In the Christian faith, Eve gets a bad press. The temptress, the Fall, Knowledge as sin. Here I wanted to show it as a benign force, a gift.
The sky is dark and stormy while bright sunshine lights the field.
The apple tree has leafburst but no blossom.
The older daughter already holds her apple and smiles.
The younger daughter accepts her apple with inquisitive delight.
‘Missing’ is a reworking of a theme explored in 2007. Here the ‘absent’ child is a bruised void. I used a classic ‘Madonna’ pose to highlight the tender feelings left without an object of affection.
Below, two of the original trilogy ‘forever… & ever…. Amen’ explore the themes of miscarriage, phantom pregnancy, and postnatal depression.
I wanted to try to express emotions through paint techniques (knife and drip painting), and the use of empty but stuffed clothing to represent the absent child.
I had finished painting a portrait of Sybil for my neighbour, Ron. He had been very kind and welcoming when we first moved to the village. When I hung the picture in their living room, I noticed her slippers were still placed by her chair, two years after her death.
Ron kindly sat for this painting. I particularly like the way the curve of his stomach echoes the curves of the sofa.
It turned out to be a study of enduring love.
hot-
of Gibraltar’s granite Rock.
The sisters slap and splash,
brown as berries, bared feet sticky with sand.
Salt-
the soft-
“ Atrapame si puedes. Atrapame si puedes.” * *(“Catch me if you can”)
Yards away across the border
Staccato-
Shattering heralds of fight-
“Por favor no atrapame. Por favor no atrapame.” * *(“Please don’t catch me”)
Fear and Uncertainty,
slip their clammy hands into yours,
lead you on a one-
for your next nine years of growing;
when,
as young women ripe with life,
the guns
finally
fall silent.
Maria, a washerwoman, short-
She finds refuge in a corner of your room,
flotsam or jetsam
from the tide of displaced humanity
with ideas
too dangerous to live.
Freemasons, politicos, gay men, Jews
find refuge.
Grandparents, wives with children
set up shop
or camp in doorways,
filling the cracks of any unused space
like pools of liquid sorrow.
All hoping the thin-
from cruel beatings and the final bullet.
Or maybe the charm of Britannia’s flag
hoisted high-
The death knell tolls
the length of Main Street
from Europa Point to Catalan Bay.
St Mary-
for Guernica.
Biblical slaughter,
target practice for the Luftwaffe,
a taste of things-
the sirens over Tottenham Court Road,
sing a similar song
of fiery-
You tell me stories
of fiesta, fairs
and the deadly game between Man and Bull.
Old-
of the matador’s “Ole”.
As-
the black of the bull’s bulk,
the roar of the crowd pumping iron into the soul
of Man and Beast alike.
Between bouts
sand is poured over the blood
fast-
You sit with your children, grandchildren
and great-
framed and hung on papered walls
faded with countless summer suns,
a safe haven
and Paradise regained …
of sorts.
Laura F……., nee Borg (meaning ‘rock’) of Gibraltar and a Hard Place,
The APPLE is a symbol of fertility, love, joyousness, knowledge, and wisdom – the forbidden fruit.
Brides, like my mother, wore apple blossom in their hair.
“Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me…”
01444 471562
mcnabali@yahoo.co.uk