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Analgorhythm

  • Posted on December 12, 2024 at 1:33 pm

Let me start a thread
that avoids a link to a page
that might be a promotion
or political and unacceptable
and therefore of less importance.

So here’s a cat.
Not just a cat, but a
leaping cat, to distract and amuse you
no time to watch it all, skip
to a seasonal meme or a

yes, wonderful landscape
of dreams of a place you might
have been or want to escape to.
Any place but here, because
it’s too hard to consider
genocide

just for a moment choose what
to think, between brutality
and cultural oppression of any kind
because it is merely the way we do things
the traditions of millennia
maybe.

So we’ll stay here and wait
for intruders and, like a cat
pounce on killjoys who
rudely knock to disturb our peace
our place, our comfort.

Like what is a woman?
what is a dictator?
what is just and fair and
what is just
the way things need to be.

Let me show you a person
who carries kindness like
a hidden locket jewel, not
because she is an activist
or a leaping cat but because
she cannot belong where truth
hides in fear of what we know:

that we are all looking away.

© Andie Davidson 2024

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Drawing trees

  • Posted on December 12, 2024 at 12:49 pm

A poem for a grandchild I may never meet, who will not know me. But who will surely draw trees.

One day you will draw stick people.

They will all smile and look back
with dots for eyes.
Sun will shine, reach out with rays.

Soon, stick people will have hands
like coppiced willow.
Like the sun has a smile.

Cloudy trees will become dark
woods with bears, scary tales, with claws
reaching out for you

but still furry, and you
will hold your bear with love and
willowy fingers. Your trees

will grow from cumulus to sticks
with structure, with roots, with winters and
in their fingers, beds of birds.

You will learn of ash die-back, oak
apples, mistletoe, ivy and
bark beetles burrowing elms to end.

You will wonder at nests, so spare
all feather and sticks you will ask:
how eggs, so fragile, were ever safe.

How trees bend and sometimes break
what roots look like after a storm
spread like a giant hand splayed

like the rays of the sun.
And what colour was the blackbird
in this nest?

2022 © Andie Davidson

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What it means

  • Posted on November 10, 2021 at 9:01 pm

This is what it means to be trans
to get up – in the morning, get dressed and
(face the world)
This is what it means to be trans
to face the world – take the car to work
(and drive)
This is what it means to be trans
to drive – and when asked for whatever reason
(show your licence)
This is what it means to be trans
to show your licence, know it represents you
(without questions)
This is what it means to be trans
to face questions – when being yourself always
(means different)
This is what it means to be trans
to be different – yet confident, ready to explain
(but avoiding)
This is what it means to be trans
to avoid – your history, leave yourself behind
(sometimes to lie)
This is what it means to be trans
to lie – with someone you love, find comfort
(and it doesn’t matter)
This is what it means to be trans
it doesn’t matter – when you’re trusted, only when
(you aren’t)
This is what it means to be trans
you aren’t – safe online, in theory or ideology
(because sex)
This is what it means to be trans
because sex – is a word and gender isn’t to some
(you’re unreal)
This is what it means to be trans
when you un-reel, unwind, lose yourself, dare
(simply to love)
This is what it means to be trans
to love – simply, uncomplicated without script
(or licence)
This is what it means to be trans
to be licensed – to be driven and to face the world
(with permissions)
This is what it means to be trans
to be permitted – to be conditional, debated, clothed
(in everyone’s fears)
This is what it means to be trans
to face those fears – go home, take off your clothes
(and address the night)

2021©Andie Davidson

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Rolled up

  • Posted on February 9, 2020 at 5:39 pm

I come to you, not with baggage
but a rolled-up carpet, a rug
of dust, footprints and wear.
Sometimes it unrolls – something
pulls it back under my feet.
I hold its pattern, heavy, marked
by soles not just my own.
Textures and smells return years,
a memory becomes a feeling,
a footprint stands out, named.

You’re troubled by my silence,
unseeing where I stand
eyes dimmed, coursing, distant.
I’m still here, but so is everything,
not visiting but layered – sometimes
today is not opaque enough to see;
closure not what it seems.
You can seal a bag, but my rug,
my carpet, rolls on, past and present
curled close, over and over.

2019 © Andie Davidson

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It is this

  • Posted on February 9, 2020 at 2:27 pm

It came at first when I was sleeping,
in my dreams I felt it breathing.
To my window while I was cooking, from
the corner of vision would see it snooping.
It would come in like a cat while I was eating,
brush my leg uninvited, for attention.
Leave quietly when I wasn’t looking
until I raised my eyes from reading.
Then it came to my bedroom door
and I could hear it scratching, scratching.

Scary, insistent, prowling, invading,
it is never a ghostly presence.
Far from dead, it is coming to life,
not threatening, it is begging.
I hear it denied, denounced, defended—
so I am not alone in imagining.

Today it was sitting on my sofa.
I asked it to leave and it stared.
It moved with me to the loo,
perched on the bath and waited.
I heard its breath catch as I washed,
felt it tug at my skirt as I dried.
It has not left me all day and I fear night,
as if it might creep in my ear, fill my head.
I don’t want it to become part of me,
I want it to go away, bother another.

Only I don’t wish this on anyone.
This heavy presence, this animus
that we have created in so many ways.
For everything I do brings it closer,
I am learning how it belongs.
I feed it, nurture it, bring it home.

I cannot sleep while it curls on my pillow
where it waits with its stories to tell.
I know them as bad dream tales,
as dark-and-stormy-night pages
that turn and turn without end.
The light is still on and I can see it
waiting for my ear to be close enough.
It tells me there is time to see and hear,
if I want to stroke it, I will understand.

“Ice melts, waters rise, the world burns
yet still men ask the price of oil …”

It is this. 

2020 © Andie Davidson

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