Buttons

Monsoon lightning

Rips the dark sky like tin.

We quietly sort: Pearl, Diamante,

Jet as black as sin.

In the dry season -

Shops a hundred miles away

Buttons make playthings

As heat flies from the day.

Through twelve shady houses,

Twelve verandas and plots

Under a hibiscus tree

Mother pleats and smocks - 

Remembers make do and mend:

Blankets kilts, tea-towel tops,

Dresses of parachute silk.

Memory works Open/Shut, like a fan -

We saved that box of buttons

A touchstone in dementia sand.

Twelve Houses furnished and gone.

Now, a nurse tests for buttons

You know the 'thing' is round.

'With b?' you say, 'not a belt!'

The sugared silence is profound.

© Wendy Vacani

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Blanket Ban

Girls in pearls are, oh, so sure

They gather berries, heather.

Lay soft blankets on the moor -

My darling cannot share.

Stick glossy feathers in their hair

And climb the ragged rocks,

Find the bird's nests, oh, so rare,

Ignore 'her' like a pock.

Oh My Darling, Daughter of Mine,

I'll find you tendrils of vetch -

Skeins so fine, to sew your eyes,

So you'll no longer fret.

Clasp this stem of curling fern -

Lie along its measure,

'Til it uncoils and straightens you,

Gives you strength to treasure.

Take the sap of the bluebell flower

To still your wilder blood.

Listen for all its bells to ring,

When you walk from the mud.

Choose your dock leaves carefully,

And walk the land so fair.

Tell those girls on your wedding day:

'To my trousseau do not give.

I've won my wedding squares!'

© Wendy Vacani

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Paralysis

Evening after evening

she presses the hydraulics, turning the bed

in the shuttered room.

And each evening

in a Monet-style kitchen

salad leaves are chopped

in the proper way with a Moulis.

Honey added to the Dijon.

Guests note, climbing the stairs:

cut glass, pressed linen,

stencilled vine leaves.

Madame answers questions on:

the family's way of life - golf in the afternoon

and after three days

she speaks of her daughter,

who crashed her car coming home

bearing a trophy.

Paralysis in the other room.

Madame writes to the son in Australia:

we've had plenty of guests this summer.

The jasmine you planted is growing -

I think she catches its perfume under the window.

She still can't speak.

Your father, like a fool,

is building her a pool,

so, in the cool,

she'll glide

like a water-lily.

© Wendy Vacani

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Heather

Ram hands through sky - it's blue enough,

touch expansively purple Heather,

and snap the rooted undertow

that twists like leather. Larks explode

like fountains - picture sirens

shooting their sound. Unconcerned.

Rafaella gathers her mood board,

But watch, the clouds are blowing over

Dew shakes inside a tissue grain.

Can she hear the old refrain?
Always Leave Nature Untamed.

© Wendy Vacani

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Blanket Ban

Relic of a past time,

rough on

the delicate skin of a child,

edges distinctively stitched,

with its red symbols of utility,

in a world of pretend order,

fear of authority,

emotional life

concealed in deference

wrapped in

grey or khaki,

clamped tight into

the sides of the bed

to keep warm

when frost crystalised white

on interior windows.

Banned when we all let go,
into equality, for
soft feathery duvets
of variable tog,
freedom and chaos
we bathed in the
soft giving clouds;
weightless relaxation
of central hearing.

© Valerie Taylor

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Heather

Your furtive shrouded mysteries,
in a low growing woody tangle.
Unconscious evergreen life,
subject to periodic visions
of delicate purple bells,
whispering through bleak mists
of mirror lakes and mountains.
Left wild, your truth
never crushed by cultivation;
wind lifting your face to the wind,
cooled by rain.
I’ll leave you there.

© Valerie Taylor

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