A reflection on family photo albums left behind You are the mother of my children in the photos with them where I am not – and which I do not have. They still ours these days long since the great divide of all things that pressed images between leaves. Those books of hours testaments of devotion of our middle ages, fully illustrated by the faith once shared. And I? I am part of ‘ours’ post-reformation spared the assembly of you and they and those testaments. 2019 © Andie Davidson
Write me a letter I can wait for.
Let me find you on the mat
lean you against my teapot
warm your thoughtful words.
Send me an envelope to open.
Let me slip a blade carefully
in the gap above the tongue
where you licked it closed.
Choose a special stamp.
First or second is fine, but
so I can spend a moment
on its miniature design.
Spread your words over pages.
Unfolding them, turning,
uncovering you at leisure,
I will bring you quietly home.
We could email, message, text.
I could open, read and answer
in a moment in a thought
it could all be said and sudden.
But we would be in a crowd.
In the clutter of chatter and
comment, appeals, spam – and
I would rush not to lose you.
So send me a letter I can wait for.
Give me time to expect you,
joy to discover you, patience
with simplicity – and tea.
2018 © Andie Davidson
You know, when someone is dying, but they can rally for a day, seem strong and lucid, and it seems a sign, not of recovery but an inevitability. I passed someone on a late autumn day that was like summer, and we exchanged our ‘good day’s. Was it? After new records this year, is it falling apart?
It is a good day – she stands as complete
as yesterday five years ago
gathered together from her bed
making sense and in command
with fragments in a sentence
that is still real.
Yes, it is a good day.
It is a good day – as the summer extends
into a reluctant autumn
floods recede from hurricanes
matchwood lies after typhoons
expense of fires and high seas
seem unreal.
Yes, it is a good day.
It is a good day – the sun is warm if low
a container ship has sailed
an easy north-west passage
and harvests were shorter too
drowned villages dried
stood real.
It is still a good day.
Today she left us – the leaves are red
we had known all year, kept
the good days to protect us
as everything slowly changed
as darkness dawned
became real.
It is still.
A ship has sailed – ice fragments
make sense shorten
it is a good day for change
we move inland leave villages
and coast gather
it is real.
It is.
© 2018 Andie Davidson
worn sparingly
a low sun and still too much
twelve years
ago I was 50, a tipping point
in understanding mortality
twelve years ago
you were in school, gatherings
in our world of your friends
twelve years ago you were
calling me a hippie – we both were green
by degrees in my garden
twelve years, two degrees,
two is the difference between a frost
and a frosty day
two is a third of
the difference between Brighton and
Yorkshire in summer
two degrees
are the difference between a heatwave
and a heatwave
one is nothing
the other is forever, neither small,
yet far too big
it is everything
everywhere and all of us, nothing else,
now numbered
today
today is our tipping point unseen
a day of silence
Autumn leaves
unsparing in a low sun, still
too much
The day after publication, October 2018, of the IPCC Special Report that gave a 12 year window to avoid 2 degrees global warming.
2019 © Andie Davidson
She doesn’t quite catch my hand
it falls—shatters on the ground.
You never quite know.
Windows down the empty way,
nostalgia with suspicion —
a Trabi sits on the lot, a tiny
sufficient reminder
that trust is fragile, still.
I look down at my hand
the pieces silently explain
why I had danced apart last night
to rock, metal and stones, a
wrong fear of anyone too right.
They pointed at us.
They looked disgusted.
You just didn’t see.
At the fruit blossom fest last year,
—and I recall.
The pieces of my hand reluctantly
rearrange themselves, reoccupy
my glove, find my pocket;
join every love darkened by fear
es tut mir leid.
Yes, and knowing
that this is not how change happens.
2017 © Andie Davidson