Broken Wing

When she was born 
I hoped she'd be an eagle
but like a feather
torn
from a crippled wing
she got caught in a stinging breeze
spun through grey mist
and swept into a turbulent pool

Numb to the ache of an ancient break
I thought I was healed
until she tried to take flight


©Jane Paterson Basil

The Theatre of Life

Sometimes
I feel like a bad actor 
in a play I thought not to rehearse. 
fudging my lines, 
smudging the plot.
Sometimes  my mind slides to 
a distant place and time
and I forget I'm on stage.
The fans must surely 
perceive I'm a sham.

Sometimes it's like
I've failed an audition
for a part in a thing called The Human Race
and having been banned 
from the theatre of life
                                       due to some kind 
                                        of failure or something I lack 
                                        that no-one explained
                                        and I don't understand
I've broken through the roof 
and am watching the acts
with my back to a grey-blue sky.

                                        Sometimes 
                                        I see evil, destruction,
                                       hunger, need and corruption
                                       and I find myself screaming again and again
                                       Not In My Name
                                       Not In My Name.
                                       At least it was not me
                                      who stole a killers role in the play.

Sometimes I know I am inept with those 
who sprang from my womb 
and I think of the myriad ways 
in which I have failed, yet 
I see 
their wisdom,  insight and grace
and feel forgiven.
I am inept with friends 
yet they see me, understand, love
the why and what of who I am.
Even strangers like 
the incomplete face I display to the world,
so I leap from my peeper's perch,
my alien ship,
to embrace the living earth.

Sometimes I cognise, re-cognise
I belong.
I am real.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Trophies

The gulls cry to be fed
and the woman raises the sound on the TV.
Hungry for love, the gulls screech
and the woman preens her hair.
Desperate, they beg.
The woman 
slings slices of white bread 

They land just within reach

She straightens their feathers, takes 
them to a place where a man 
coils words around their beaks, their eyes
and shoots
framing their formal guise

The woman 
places the portrait 
on the living room wall.
The gulls see.
This must be love, they say.
The woman
Switches on the TV
to drown out their squall.

The gulls grow.
 raise families of their own.
Their polite poses  
crowd the woman's wall.
Not a hair out of place,
Many mouths saying “Cheese”
many obedient eyes gazing 
into a stranger's face.
He clicks, and it's done.
He clicks.
He clicks, and the children - for
they are children - stretch their muscles,
appreciating release.

The proud matriarch of three generations
turns from the TV
and and reaches to make space 
in her spick and span home
                                            for another trophy.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Agoraphobia

Jacket on, my fingers 
reach 
for the latch 
which leads me 
to the other side of the door
which would take me outside.

Its arrival is always 
sudden,  
sometimes a surprise, yet 
routine as the seasons, 
pumping through my veins like
a sullen child dragging me back, like
a whining child unwilling 
to go outside.

Out loud, I say
you can do this,
it's just laziness, 
but the tainted blood 
           shoots 
      needles 
through my heart.

I call myself a coward, 
recall the feats of my youth,
the heights attained, 
the dangers faced and erased, yet
my feet refuse to move and 
my hand is stayed inches 
from the door.

I say to myself,  I can do this
can't I?
Silence but for the hard beat of my heart.
I repeat:
Can I do this today?

No, yet 
I trip over the reply, doubting 
my level of intent, feeling shame, even 
as the shudders wither my brain - even
as the room sways.

I need milk and a dozen other things. Please 
let me do this today.

No. The reply comes from deep inside.
No no no.

I back away, 
back to safety,
back to my lair, 
my table, 
my chair. 
Defeated, I glare at the cars passing by 
beneath the grey horizon.

Milk, vegetables and eggs
will wait another day.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Butterfly Kyodai

You can't think straight. The reins 
were always slack. They slipped 
from your hands again. You can't 
remember when; could've been 
in your sleep or while you  
escaped into butterfly flight, 
clicking: once, twice, watching  
colourful wings flit...
as if 
they 
could save you...  

anyway you let go or maybe 
those reins were stolen and 
now there is no escape from 
the claw that clamps your flesh,
forcing you 
back into the cold  
of an echoing cave. 

©Jane Paterson Basil

A New Chapter

.

I am entering a new chapter in my life… so… this morning I got out of bed uncharacteristically early – roughly the time normal people are expected to rise. I switched my computer on to find that all of the unpublished poetry I have written over the past six months – including the poem I was planning to post today – has disappeared. Gone forever! I shrugged my shoulders, smiled and glanced out of the window. That’s when I saw the feather. I wrote this poem:

A pale feather swims,
gently ascending,
leaving no scrape on the empty sky.
Swept by the wind
from a dying bird, it flies free,
distanced from risk
of dirt and decay.

Then I edited it…

.

A pale feather swims,
gently ascending,  leaving
its modest breeze on the clean sky.
Swept by the wind
from a bombastic bird, it flies free,
distanced from danger
of jabbering shame.

.

©Jane Paterson Basil

The End of the Line

Valentine’s day
Pre-planned passion
hangs in the balance

Suspense

reigns

He lopes home
hugging a rain-drenched
bouquet to his frame, hunching
keep rain from staining petals, hoping
the beauty, the ruby hue, the perfume
of these hot-house blooms will halt
the drift. He’s humming a tune.

He walks in, singing
Roses are red

my love

He presents the spray
She feigns cat-lick surprise, yet
her greedy eyes betray

dismay

disdain

the end of the line.
Cheapskate flowers again;
hints for a cruise, or at least
a long weekend in Spain
were in vain.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Recipe for Happiness

Embed from Getty Images

Chipped nails choked with scraped grit.
Blisters swell unfelt, then burst;
a wet revelation on shaft of spade.

Weeds deftly parted from precious roots,
left in bins to rot
and someday feed the plants whose food
they recently plotted to rob.

Working around worms whose blind cycles
play their part in our survival,
digesting, evacuating, aerating the earth.

Shrubs catching my hair,
tangling it, taking loose strands as souvenirs.
Thorns scratching, blood dripping as I squeeze
between close neighbours, secateurs
gripped tight in my hand.

Snip, snap;
sure of my skill, I amputate weak limbs, lending health
to good wood.

Chipped nails, burst blisters, tangles and scratches
might not sound like life in paradise
yet it is my recipe
for happiness.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Winter Cocktail

At cocktail hour when summer fails
bright colours vacate to the Mediterranean
Skies slide into leaden grey,
grumpily gunning to fulfil a bleak threat of rain,
their perfidious clouding slyly announcing
that dusk is well on its way.

Brittle twigs cling to knotted limbs.
Catatonic in the bitter air,
their scribbled criss-crosses laid bare,
bereft of the layered frock that veiled
the bland dwellings which crouch, blind-eyed
beneath my lofty window.
Spring’s brave growth crumbles to mulch,
all pride, grace and levity faded away,
its flesh consumed for future gain.

I pause mid-thought, my mind
resorting to fantasy:
might these spectral skeletons recall
unfurling
to make safe hiding places for fledgling birds?
Perhaps they remember saluting the June day sun
their emerald hands swaying in celebration,
and nudged by a temperate summer wind
dancing, jiving, twirling.
Perhaps they relive
the betrayal, the brittle break,
the skittering fall.
Maybe they grieve, and yearn
the loss of green youth.

©Jane Paterson Basil

Transition

Just like tormented teens
scratch secret passions in wet cement
before builders bring bricks and mortar
to smother initials framed in hearts
and pierced with cupid’s darts,
I write.

I present abortive tales of trial
like frosted slices
of erringly early halloween cake,
but the story moves forward,
the genre transforms leaving no regret
as soon as my poetic icing is set.

Houses rise, filling the landscape,
sandwiching old ache between hidden nature
and newly fulfilled need.

©Jane Paterson Basil