White, Lynn

Lynn White

Pool

I have a small pool
out there.
Not dark like night, but
full of pale milky light,
and shimmering smoothly,
rippleless.

It's not deep either,
hardly more than
a footfall.
Just deep enough
to hide my dreams
without them drowning.

Perchance a Dream

'To sleep perchance to dream.'
Who said that?
Sounds so gentle,
but there's a rub,
a rough edge to it.
Not the long deathly sleep, though,
but drifting away in nighttime slumber.
It can take you anywhere.
Take you to places you haven't been
and may not want to go.
Send you spinning,
tumbling,
raging,
spiralling,
crashing
out of control
to an indeterminate end,
with demons and dragons
as companions.
Daytime dreaming is preferable,
more gentle than it sounds
fitted into a busy schedule.
In wakeful dreams
you can determine the beginning,
at least,
and invite the participants.
Sometimes
they may act out an old story
with a predictable end,
sometimes
they can drift into a new story
and then
the demons may join in
your daytime dreaming
as well,
perchance.

After the End

The sideboard was full of magazines.
Not whole magazines but
pages torn from them.
Pages of recipes.
Meals never eaten.
Exotic desserts never attempted.
Guest never invited or entertained.
At least the furniture had been used,
had had many years of use.
The clothes had been worn,
the pictures admired and enjoyed.
But the recipes were the saddest thing.
So many of them
for so many people
who never came.

If I Were a Butterfly

If I were a butterfly
where would I fly?
I could grace every home
bringing good luck every time.
Make sure that my children
ate up all the weeds,
and recycled the waste
without judgement or hate.
In a world that’s at peace
I’d find my place.
Hmm, if I were a butterfly
I’d think this must wait.

If I were a butterfly
where would I fly?
If my soul were parochial
it would hang in my space,
It would look pretty in my garden,
propagate where I said,
and keep watch with indulgence
as my kids ate the rest.
If I were a butterfly
I’d think this was sad.
A life is too short
to live in the past.

If I were a butterfly
where would I fly?
Like all souls of dead warriors
for justice and peace,
I’d fly
down the throats of the haters,
war mongers, arms traders,
parasitic self servers.
Yes.
They’d choke on my body
and ingest my eggs.
My children would eat them,
feast on them, thrive
then fly on to the next.
Yes.
If I were a butterfly
that’s where I’d fly.

If I were a butterfly
then where would I fly?
I would grace every home
bringing good luck every time.
I would make sure that my children
ate up all the weeds,
and recycled the waste
without judgement or hate.
In a world that’s at peace
I’d find my place.

The Bucket Man

I saw the Bucket Man today,
Upside down, his head in his bucket,
his arms folded tight
to entertain the crowd.
“It’s my living," his sign says,
“puts a roof over my head."
Such focus and fitness,
such determination,
such imagination,
such creativity.
Will it lead him
to a different place,
one day,
this man and his bucket?
And what if his parents were wealthy
and had sent him to Eton or Harrow,
What then for the Bucket Man?
Such focus and fitness,
such determination,
such imagination,
such creativity.
Would it lead to a different place
for this man and his bucket?
But he does well, it seems.
And for every coin in the bucket
there’s a ‘thank you’ and
a thumbs up from an arm
released from it’s fold.
He’s a popular entertainer,
on Facebook now and Twitter.
So, what if one day his head
meets up with the treasure in his bucket?
Will he kick his bucket away
and pay
to send his kids to Eton or Harrow,
What then for the Bucket Man,
would he still have his head
in a bucket, screwed on tight,
or up in the clouds?
And what if he falls, or his body
says ‘Hey, I’m not designed
to work upside down.’
Will his bucket be kicked away from him?
What then for the Bucket Man?
What then for all the ‘bucket men’?

A Disappointing Day

If they hadn’t asked her
to smell the nice scent.
If she hadn’t remembered
the scent from before.
There would have been
no screams, no stamping
up and down on the trolley.

The nurse would still
have her cap on
and the doctor would have
no fist or feet marks
on his white coat,
no red hand mark
on his pale cheek.

There would have been
no shock, horror reports
to those who had put away
Red Riding Hood
and were waiting
anxiously for news
of their little girl.

But they did ask her.
They did ask her.

The scent wasn’t nice.
She knew it.
And there was no ice cream
afterwards either.
They’d lied about that
as well.

A disappointing day.

♢

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On Our Watch

If it had been on his watch,
he would have seen,
he would have given the alarm,
would have been heard
and catastrophe would have been avoided.
She also was alert,
but it was not her watch
and no one heard her warnings.
On their watch we would have heard
the warnings.

But it happened on our watch
and we were sleeping.

The Lighthouse

I was a little crazy
to buy the old lighthouse.
I knew it at the time.
But I wanted to be somewhere,
somewhere where I could shine,
shine lamps out into the vastness,
shine like a beaming beacon.
And it was so high.
It matched my mood and then some.
Higher than high.
Higher than high.
There was no housewarming.
No one came.
There was no one to come.
So, only I could relish the exposure.
Only I could walk round the top
of the tower and look over the edge
into the dark deep depths.
Only I could see the swimmer,
a mermaid, surely? waving.
Or was she beckoning
as she approached the mooring.
Only I could come spiraling down.
Come down from the heights
to open the door,
to run down the steps
to the mooring.
And then the lamps went out.

It's Clear

On a clear night
I should see the moon full silver
in a sky shot by moonbeams.
Not greyed by a smoky mist
and dust clouds rising from the ruins.

I should see a black, black sky.
Not bright from the orange glow
from the fires of hell on earth.
Which send sparks high enough
to compete with the stars,
the pinpoint moonbeam spangles.
Not beamed by lasers.

I should hear the silence
in the depth of the black night,
not the explosive cacophony
brought by the masters of war
and the silent screams
buried in the rubble.

I should hear people talking in the street
and the music and laughter of the night.
I should see them walking home
to feel firm flesh loving and soft
unsplintered and unblemished by shrapnel,
unbroken by the metal clad monsters
masquerading as humanity and
wrapping themselves in the uniforms
of a thousand years old myths
dressed up as history.

These should be my rights.
But they aren’t.

I have no rights.
Nor do you.

Only what they give us,
the men of the flags,

temporally.

Blue

Blue skies, blue sea,
a day of sparkling sunshine,
with a shimmering horizon.
And then, out of this blue,
You,
smiling sadly with your lovely blue eyes.

I knew you from the back, you said,
the cut of your hair, your bright blue mac.
I wanted to see your face again,
it’s only fair, you’ve seen mine.
You must have done,
me, being who I am.

I wanted to smell your clean hair smell.
So I took a chance, and here I am.
I wanted to
abate the sadness.

I nodded. Yes.
I know it’s true.
It’s all been said
and we won’t be sad.
No blue moods
on this bright blue day
of smiling sunshine.

We’ll go together now,
for now
and be glad.
After all,
one way or another,
everything will end
in tears, I said,

So let’s take our now time
and chance the rest.

Through the Glass

A long time ago, Alice saw herself
in her looking glass and walked through
into a topsy turvy world
where everything was back to front and inside out.
She drifted into a dreamscape
of madness and unreality,
without breaking the glass.
She wasn’t cut by the shards of her mirror
or the place she entered into.
She had only to wake from her dream
to make things the right way round again.
But with a clear glass,
a transparent window to the world,
things would have been different.
She would look towards a place
where everything seems the right way round,
where everything makes sense
and adds up sweet with reason.
There seems no madness in this place
which looks easy for her to enter
and welcomes her without sharp edges.
But the clear glass is an invisible barrier
to the life on the other side
that seduces and entices her.
And to step inside she has to break the glass
whose sharp edges cut her, really cut her.
And then propel her crazily on.
Unable to wake, she finds herself in
a jagged, topsy turvy place
where things are spinning round wildly.
Where caricatures of humanity scream out,
distorted, trying to make sense of it.
Front to back and outside in
Everything is the wrong way round again.

Summer in Gaza

In the rain of the rockets
there’s no water.
Metal rain.
In the rain of the rockets
there’s no sunshine.
Smoke rain.
Black rain.
In the rain of the rockets
there’s no life.
Death rain.
Life ending rain.
Death without life rain.
In the rain of the rockets
there’s no hope.
Deaf rain.
Deaf rain.
Deaf rain.
Death rain.

Go to page 2 of Lynn White's poetry