Collected poems

By Claudia Macey-Dare

You are, I am

Two words thrown and 

    remarkable isn't it, worthy of note,

that two words,                one person    makes

three,                and between three people,

you are             means

mine.

And,    I am,    means

yours.

Always, always, love always

Avoiding difficult conversations about death

It wasn't meant to be that everyone

knew. And when they did,

they were silent

despite moving on 

so quickly in the way you do

at twenty-two,

when life says "take a step

forward. Gasp out my

name." Burn and bury this hand 

and speak her name

to me.

Route 168

On a bus by Oxford Street

a man with a megaphone shouts

Apocalypse Now.

The bus driver, having heard

Apocalypse Before,

turns left before the red,

brushing the road's skin softly,

scuttling and teaming with life

inside.

St. Edward the Confessor, Guildford

We do not break our backs before

to those we love, we tell them we do.

I love you not by the hours and seconds

to the end of our last meeting,

and I love you not for the photo of us all

under the apple tree, in your back garden;

but, if I could have known the light grain on the roof of your coffin,

at the edge of the Downs, on the 11th July;

I, too, would have broken my back,

so not to have been a pall bearer.

To the Least Spectacular Sunrise

Sometimes a sunrise is just a sunrise,

and the sky isn't lit up in incandescent shades of blue, magenta, orange

yellow and white.

There are no great revelations,

and no one's soul is touched.

Sometimes a sunrise bleads itself

a soft pink, and gold.

Underneath low lying clouds she says:

        today I am tired.

So, she brings out her bicycle late

giving the moon and all the night sky

five more minutes.

So, the tide comes in harshly.

In bars of green, black and brown

he crashes into the shore, saying:

        make me take what is mine.

Dragging a pebble beach back

into the ocean.

Sometimes a day is cold.

The wind whips up against us,

and the sun doesn't want to rise.

Virginia

     'A Dark Pool' / 1918 / Laura Knight / Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Matted roses, slathered in gold,

on an ugly ornate frame.

A dark pool, Dame Laura Knight.

Distracting. Just one look at her

distance retreats and 

she thinks herself a girl in red

rasping on a rock.

Sea below brought out 

in battered hues of blue.

Barefoot catching the waves

breeze picking on her

peach skin, red dress

billowing out -

but her short

brown hair is immaculate

posture saying:

I'll remember you this moment

I'll remember your song

I'll remember this hour

and if I be wrong

Blue in daylight 

Blue on Blackpool sands

Blue by dappled clouds

Blue moves my hands

Blue heard my calling

Blue spoke my words

Blue is twilight falling

Blue beats my heart

Brick (14/12/21)

Why do the English build with brick?

Brick walls, brick ceiling,

brick floors, brick doors,

cemented shut, keeping us in

-between brick windows,

brick halls, hallways smelling red,

unpainted leading rough

wondering what they taste like,

feeling grazed knees in memory 

on brick courts, at five

years old. Salt in the mortar,

brick brought a high price

for blood, and in brick kilns,

a pound of well cooked flesh.

Mason

Rune stone, Uppland, Sweden / 1100-1150 / Unkown Artist / Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

            I

This meant something.

This gravestone.

She says there's a deep story about Vikings.

Old hands weave red runes,

dead for a thousand years.

Lidsmond had this stone carved

in memory of Julbjorn 

his father.

            II

He holds 

the rock

carves it.

He says

become.

He gave it

a dark lilted 

shape in grey.

He says 

become.

He whispered once to

create a pretty thing

it knew only love.

He is

at one.

In autumn, in spring

Did I in autumn -

    once think that these

    long days (and nights new

        would last for-ever

        in winter's long overdue

                return?

Did I in spring -

    give myself over

        to quarantine, in a cottage by the coast).

            Getting drunk at midnight, to

           the sounds of the sea,

         and thoughts

                    of you?