Off The Peg Et Al (18 Poems) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.My Mother the Gazelle
Mother was neither a horse nor a zebra
More of a gazelle

My uncle stole her favourite doll
He buried it out in the field
Grandfather thrashed him

The tom-toms beat a warning in the dark
When grandfather died

It was a long fall from the cliff of love
Now, my uncle was king of the family castle
The gazelle became a rabbit in a box


2.End Play
I am a sparrow, a mouse, a moon
In water, earth, and air I trust
Rounding a corner, all too soon
All that I am will change to dust

3.Trying on Poem Titles for Size
The Iceberg Theory
Cleaning the Elephant
The Forest of Tangle
The Lost Baby Poem
A Tray of Eggs
St Francis and the Sow
I saw you Dancing Father
The Strait-Jackets
Forty-One, Alone, no Gerbil
Ode to the Onion
Mrs Midas
The Tightrope Wedding
The Emperor of Ice Cream
Killing Time
The Panic Bird
My Father Carries me Across a Field
The Rustle of History’s Wings
A Piece of the Storm

4.Callander June

Clouds hold rain like pressure cookers
Will they/ won’t they burst?

Ringless-fingered mothers fuss round buggies
The bus is hot’s a greenhouse cooking plants

Ankle deep in buttercups, black cattle
Sweat in a fizz of flies, on painted shadows

I have made an appointment with June
I have cleared my life for a week
Half a year’s slipped by, I’ve been
Too busy to notices the nuances of Time

Yet I’ll observe the salt content of yoghurt
The headlines in the latest people-scandal

5.Six Degrees of Separation
Some folk I know have met important people

A woman talked to a Beatle in a theatre
He’d come to watch her husband’s latest play

A man offered Leon Cohen a cigarette
He didn’t want it, but refused quite nicely

A girl met Sir Rolf Harris in her nightie
(She was aged twelve, a fire in their Hotel)

A boy, waiting for fruit, saw Margaret Thatcher,
(Briefly just behind security doors)

A man met at a famous actor at his stall.
His wife was nice, he said, but the guy was grumpy.

A girl spied Lauren Bacall at a do in Glasgow.
She didn’t speak. A bouncer sat beside her

A man was queuing at Lord’s cricket pitch
Stephen Fry was standing two behind him

A girl’s parents gave her cot away
(It held six babies sideways) to Mother Theresa….

She also met Germaine Greer at a party…
Too shy to speak, she’d eaten garlic fish cakes

A Doctor faced with treating Eric Morecambe,
Couldn’t put up his drip, her hands were shaking.

A girl in a London Club stood up for manners.
Told Chelsea Clinton ‘Switch your mobile off! ! ’

A woman slept in the Duke of Edinburgh’s bed
(At Cambridge College, not while he was in it)

And I stood three rows back from Alec Salmond
As he unveiled the famous ‘Turra Coo’


6.Inventory of Notable Things
The Lerwick lifeboat climbing the High Seas
The orange Indian skirt that brushed my ankles
The elephant’s head, ears flapping like two fans
The stag at the Brig o Quoich with the broken antler
The Buddha’s shining face beneath Green Tara
The infant son who growled like a bear
Mandolin’s tearful tremolo a-quivering
Grandmother’s grave in winter, holly berries
Hurt places that healed, and those which didn’t
The plastic deer in Callander that sings


7.Off the Peg: Bridal Fitting, June 2013
Marriage unhooks the girl from the family peg
She’ll stand alone after that, unique, in her own self
Fashioning a conjoined future with her groom

The bridal dress shimmers with sparkles
A scalloped frothy hem
Like Primavera rising from the sea
Happiness glows in the girl like a lit bulb

But this is not a poem in praise of bridal props
Rather to celebrate a daughter, ripe in loveliness
The peach flesh of her back, her strawberry lips

She has climbed from the childhood years
Up to her own place. Her throat is like the linnet’s
A nest of honeyed song resides there

Slowly, through the bones of her hourglass figure,
The past recedes. The future waits to come


8.Rules on Visiting Aberdeen
This is not Vienna. No feeding of pigeons or seagulls.
They shit on the civic statues, dive-bomb travelers

We are a cold city. Don’t complain.
Wear thermal underwear or stay at home

The Bacchanalia takes place from Fridays-Mondays.
Those of a nervous nature should stay indoors

No nudism on the beach, no smacking children
Despite the provocation, they have rights

Don’t weight us in the scales beside Ibitha
Don’t treat us like Braille, with hugs or familiar touching
We are not interactive till we grow to know you
And that may take a year or two my friend


9.Valentine Card
I spent shed loads of money on manicures
Dresses with cross over bras
I was a sucker for makeovers

I wanted to look like a mannequin
Up on the catwalk haughtily strutting her stuff

My hair was styled and bouffant
My tights were fishnets
Hoping to catch a beau
I was the ad man’s pushover
After there was absolutely nothing more to be done
In the good looks stakes
I was still always one of the leftovers
Nobody wanted to woo

And then the Valentine came
Roses are red, violets are blue
It’s you for me XX and me for you

Well, I was halfway up to the moon
Looping the loop like a loony
When Mother whispered to Dad
‘Probably sent for a lark
As everyone knows….
A card’s not the same as
Actually having a lad’


10.A Day to Remember
I once took a trip to the past
The journey was thrilling and fast
But where I was conveyed
The scene I surveyed
Was Jurassic. The day was a blast.


11. The Cry of the Summer Butterfly
Am I beautiful?
Am I beautiful?
The summer butterfly cries

Yes, the flower whispers
For today.


12. Midsummer Solstice
On the Tomnaverie altar stone
A yellow petal of broom
Is flashing like a star
About to fall

13. Doomed Ivy

Roof high ivy
Stripped down from the wall

A young man’s plant
Only the young can reach
To curb its growth


14.C’est la Vie
One parent drunk, the other mad
A child of ten cleans out the grate
The only family he’s had

Call it misfortune, call it sad
Call it the roll of the dice, or fate
Many the journey starts out bad

Monsters and perils, life’s Iliad
What would it take to clean the slate?
Make everything jolly and nice and glad?


15.Lines on a summer’s Day
The hectic beating of wings
Mayflies, weaving their death dance

The loch opens its face
To the shilly shally of rain drops

An aspen sifts the golden dust of summer
A cat’s eyes gleam from a mesh of honeysuckle

Tall hens breast the nettles by a duck pond

A tortoise, horny-humped
Lumbers over a lawn to a cabbage patch

Two spotted ladybirds
Split their wings like flamenco dancers’ skirts

Midges seethe in the trees between the pines

Welcome snail as you cross the morning grass
Like a juggernaut pulling a trail of oiled dancers

Under a two bird sky
Loch waves shiver on shingle

Deep in a tree an invisible bird is singing

Three spits of rain drop from a frowning sky

A cat stalks by
Mouthful of mouse to the left and right of its whiskers

Red tomato on the green chopping board
The hour all slice and peel

White house, grey cloud, black swift
White house, grey cloud, no swift

High summer
In oak’s worn heart it’s autumn

High summer
In oak’s worn heart it’s autumn

A flimsy cobweb
The fight of one small fly
Hangs by a thread

Sky blue forget-me-nots
Buried in nettles

Mist moves in the wind
Bens become No Bens

Nests are made to be filled
How sad when silent!

Fish plumps in the loch
Nibbling last night’s moon

A carved flower is weather cracked
A craftsman’s work is withering

The path to the bulrush pool
Dreams of winter
Free of talk and footprints

A summer syllabub
Rose offers her nectar

Fox trots from the compost
One bird less in Balquhidder

Dead deer’s belly
Split like a pea pod
Food for feasting flies

Grass is speaking in parables
In the wood’s cool tomb
Hare’s vertebrae clack like rosaries

Mouse scuttles under a giant yellow iris
The pool’s a broth of green

A waterfall thunders Hosannas
From the long dark throat of the Ben

The Ben has forgotten its name
For the wind to echo

A line of ants process between the twigs
Bearing the crackling relics of a leaf

Dragonfly scrolls an illuminated letter
On the gold page of the air

I raise my palms to the sun
Everyone carries hurts and ancient healings


16.House Martin on a Wire
Its tail, the top two lines
Of a music score

The notes in the bowl of its breast
Waiting to quiver out
In a piping trill


17.Balquhidder 2013
Star struck daisy, buttercup
Speedwell, yellow poppy, rose
Mist applies a cover
Where, unseen, the oak tree grows

Pinnacles of fox gloves tower
Where the fiery nettles sleep
In the kernels of their nests
Fledgling sparrows thinly cheep

Widdershins I walk the bounds
Of the morning in the glen
Gathering honey with my eyes
Hills to loch and back again

So the golden moments pass
Quickly as the flying years
Like the sun motes in the grass
Like the dew, the moonbeam’s tears


17.Bragging Rights at Haddo House

Child one: I saw:
Giant redwood, an avenue of limes
A great stone mansion from Edwardian times

Rowan, sycamore, squirrel’s dray
Dark green woodland where the badger’s play

Chanterelle, puffball, ink caps, cherry
Elm, pink Campion and white snowberry


Child 2: But I saw
Meadowsweet, pignut, yellow rattle
Frog hopper insect in its cloak of spittle

Fungi, fountain, a game larder
A lake where the otter and the wild geese stir

Swans and cygnets, a dark bird hide
A pipistrelle nursery with bats inside


Child 3: I heard
An osprey visited but flew away
From the wild flower meadow and the rookery

Child4: I spied
Pine trees, lichen, marsh marigold
An ancient beech tree that’s centuries old

Alder, aspen, field mushroom
Wandering willies and the golden broom

Rye grass, yarrow grass, a heron and a well
Forget-me-nots by water and a grey wagtail

Comfrey, ragwort, woodpecker tapping
A buzzard and a sparrow hawk above clouds, flapping

Ox-eye daisies where the damsel flies speed
Dandelions and nettles and the white hog weed

St John’s wort, beechnuts, dove cots too
Ragged robin in the rich, wet dew


Child 5: I spied

Spiral staircase, sundial, chapel
Birds’ foot trefoil and the green oak apple

Devil’s bit scabious, Kemble’s seat
Deer and grouse shoots where the hunters meet

Child 6: I spotted

Rhoddies, clover, inscribed stones
A graveyard for horses and for small dogs’ bones

Yellow flag iris, marsh orchid
Dens in the forest where the fox lies hid

Children:

Haddo, Haddo, the things we’ve seen
In the grounds and gardens of Lord Aberdeen!


18.Rite of Passage
Eleven years old, going on sixteen
School prom, pupils signing t-shirts
First outcrop of acne on teenage cheeks

On stage, singing of angst and darkness
Children wearing the clothes of their celeb idols
Morphing into vamps

Grow up! Grow up! The Ad man hype
Colours their waking moments

So young, so young, willing their lives away