Friday
3 March 2017

— strange bright orb in sky peeking in and out between clouds

Good Morning All,

On my side desk, I have three small pots of spring bulbs, one white hyacinth, one purple hyacinth, and three dwarf daffodils. They are all in full bloom this morning, the living room redolent with their fragrance. Some twenty minutes ago, the purple hyacinth tipped over from its own weight and made me jump with surprise, despite my own weight. (Back when I still had my good old Twyla cat, weird or sudden sounds in the house never bothered me. I could always attribute them to her. Now I tend to spook easy.)

I am sorry to report another poem has happened. This one has been kicking around in my head for donkey’s years without ever quite getting finished. It’s one I put on a list of unfinished work to be avoided while operating a moving vehicle. I had to do this so that I could avoid coming to a complete stop at green light and/or blithely sailing through red ones.)

Anyway, I think it is finished now. I wanted a seventh line for the middle stanza, but that is not going to happen. I also wanted to get the swing of my mother’s handbag into the poem, but it refused to fit or swing correctly, so I stuck it up there in the title. 

I usually don’t waste a lot of time trying to figure out what a poem of mine means, if anything, so long as it more or less successfully evokes a particular feeling. But this one, I think, and other than being a love poem, is an attempt to suggest how the conventional and mundane can hint at the special.

The Swing of My Mother’s Handbag
C. R. Magwaza

City street or country lane,
Cars, cyclists, buses, or not,
Other pedestrians or only one
Low-slung scurrying cat,
My father takes a firm grip
Of my mother’s elbow
Whenever they cross over.

He’s been doing that at least
As long as she’s been flicking
Bits of lint from his lapels
And—mornings—freeing
A trouser cuff from the top
Of a gaudy argyle sock.

They don’t notice these small
Gestures any more, except down
Deep in their shared being.
I have seen them sitting thigh
To thigh on a beach bench,
Watching the wheeling gulls,
Saying nothing and everything.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron