Memories...

3 poems containing oceans of memory

Holiday

There are no tides to speak of,
just a six inch shift to and fro
under the pink shrimp moon.

Coral seams the beach
with its thin red stitches,
the shells and sea glass sewn into sand pockets.

The reach of a slick rock finger
into the sucking mouth of the ocean.

Grody olive trees plaque around hollow hearts,
cicada beat loud for their emptiness.

Where the sometime rivers are,
frog pools chorus the dusk
as if each pool were a new star birthing.

Here roundabouts are fig orchards
their elephantine trunks spread like the first tree.

Last years olives are ours
and we swim until our bones are ice.

(first published in The Beach Hut)

(my youngest daughter when we were on holiday in Mallorca several years ago, where this poem was written during my April poem a day Facebook writing group )

Mermaid

Mermaids purses empty of coin,
bladders full of squirming memory 
and those corkscrew frills,
but my brother, he found 
the spotted dogfish.

Turned his hearing aids down
to contain his excitement, keep it private.

Reverently, fascinated, 
he held her freckled undulation, 
absorbed the smell. 
Held her cold skin until 
his palms took on her chill.

She scared me.
Her sharks down turned mouth. 
Her black-hole eyes.
That smell that had the air fainting,
	falling full in my face.
Of course he thrust her towards me. 
Of course he did, 
	he knew her transient power. 

He wrapped her in the local newspaper
like something you don't want to break.
Took her home, 
the intention to lay her beside his bed, 
a guardian, a first love. 

But she wouldn't pass beyond the door. 
She stayed outside with the cows, 
mixed their land-locked perfume 
with her wild sea scent.

She rotted there, 
her bodily protest against immutability. 

(first published in Dreich)

(photo of Brighton Beach with some very dear friends)

Treath-lyffn Slide

my dad is the cleverest man I know 
he knows intimately how sunsets are made
and how the stars revolve, and beam their light 
over centuries

it's dark when we throng around him
or do we just close the heavy curtains to block out the sky glow? 
like moths, with moths, we gather round 
our ageing projector, my dad kneels like the high priest

I'm in a rock pool, there puckered anemones blow kisses 
the sun is a flare and my freckles turn up psychotropic 
there are tiny fish only I know are there
they hide in the shade of my legs 
I grip the sand like handles, I'm afraid to fall

 - you can drown in two inches of water

the salt can burn you pure 
I shade my eyes in which other glorious pools
ripple, as if a pebble has been dropped in

it is pure white on our screen 
white that is tidal
have I fallen and breathed the saline? 

(first published in Until the Stars Burn Out)

(photo taken by my dad at Treathlyffn beach in Wales when I was about 7)

Rather wonderfully both me and my dad, Mantz Yorke, were published together in Until the Stars Burn Out. This poem was alongside his work and it was lovely to share this with him. You can read his poems here

Many of you won’t know what I am talking about when I talk about looking at slides. before cameras were on phones and easy things to use my dad, a scientist, and an amateur photographer and concerned himself with exposures, lenses and the magic of watching a moment captured forever on photographic paper. Films were processed at first into negatives and sometimes put into slides, little paper of metal frames, for easy reference before being developed onto paper. We had a slide projector and a screen to watch them on and this whole process was very exciting and quite definitely magical, to sit in the darkness and wait for these moments of our lives to be relived months after they happened.

If you feel moved to buy me a coffee to help grease the flow of words to your inbox I would be utterly overjoyed! Thank you! if you can’t afford anything no worries - but consider restacking or recommending me. :)