Two poems for Bat Bean Beam

One could argue that getting behind in your poetic commitments falls into the category of good problems to have.  As mentioned earlier, I find that my lyrical confidence is decreasing rather than increasing at the moment, but there is only one solution to this and it is the opposite of not-writing.

I am struck by how my theme is largely stories about my family and my ancestors.  Against the big themes I keep offering the small, or rather, intertwining the small with the big.  I’m not sure why, but don’t suppose interpretation is particularly my responsibility in this regard.  However, it may worth mentioning, with regard to what appears below, that I find images and stories from Pompeii too upsetting to consider directly.  It’s a particular quirk of mine that has persisted since childhood, when it was part of a more generalised terror of disasters.  (Gosh but I was easy to wind up in those days.  I must remember that when I come to write on Giovanni’s more recent post about starting school.)

Human Terrain (in response to this post)

On the back road from Karamea
the bobby calves were gathered
muzzles at the wire
using cows for cover.

After a day of driving
Aeneas started to waver
lacking the stomach for Latium
tasting the air of Hades.

He’d gone down and down and down
saw his wife, father and lover
without a thought of the meat dust
on the road from Karamea.

Pompeii (in response to this post)

Plaster, poured on Tonks Street, might
trace the short road down to the shore
and thus pollute North Brighton but
not show us much of where she died.

Her trace got left us somewhere else;
a short life and a briefer death.
Three artefacts to crack the heart
put incompletely back together.

One family photo: there she is,
a fair-haired, round-kneed, chubby child.
One story: she had rheumatic fever.
Her sister carried her on her back.

One tree: the weeping silver birch
whose roots protrude, whose branches show
the still site of her unmarked grave
abortive tale with seasonal shade.