A Friday afternoon
In the hairdressers
At the bottom of Beaumont Hill
A pleasant summer’s day walk
Down the unadopted lane
From Mon Plaisir
I was taught how
To scrunch my hair
Whilst I blow-dried it
This, by the young woman from Liverpool
Who also asked
Where it was that I was going that evening
In this way, one with one
May become a twosome
Or the twosome already
May recoil to one away from one
I don’t remember where the dance was
Or if we ever did make it
The poem as I remember it
Is not the poem as he wrote it
Indeed it is a poem about a plant
Whereas I thought it was a poem about a person
I had it in mind that truth
That truth, with belief, were side by side
In those clear moments of experience
Also that love, with beauty, had played their part
I acknowledge, willingly
That this was not chant, nor response
These were not the sounds of a silent
Monastic order; or were they
Was the whole conversation
Not a means of reaching
A point of common ground
A place for both to move on from
The relationship, as I remember it
Is not the one as she lived it
When it was extended periods of doubt
Whereas I thought it was nigh-on certain
I would not have worried you
Had the telephone not rung
Liz on the line, from Lincolnshire Life
Actually what I say is not entirely true
For I had thought of you earlier
When writing of self-help books
Samuel Smiles Self Help in particular
Purchased in the Antiquarian Bookshop
One Saturday morning in St Helier
That I have ever been in need of self-help
Is self-evident from this morning’s writings
First in my Morning Words, now in my poetry
How my path then has followed paths of guidance
Even our first meeting, often thought to be happenstance
Was led to, by my thinking of my own self-help study
First to become a chartered engineer
Which turned into a search for a self-actualised man
In turn to be fuelled, or felled, by psychology, by love
I answered the phone, thinking that it might be
In response to my scan results; perhaps a date
A date for consultation, a date for operation
Out of the blue
In the depths of meditation
No desire for clue
To love’s indebted accreditation
One breath in
One breath out
One verse read
Of the Night Prayer
In to the new
Sidestep the contemplation
No path or shoe
To love’s indebted accreditation
One bell sounds
One bell decays
One thought happens
You peaceful soothsayer
That new or blue
That breath of meditation
That surprise of truth
To love’s indebted accreditation
Would it do
To spend all day
Writing poetry
What would it do for you
To learn that my day
Was for writing poetry
Would it do for you
That my day, all of my day
Was spent writing poetry for you
Shoo
Would you say
Be away with you
How dare you
Spend all day
Writing your poetry
Spend all day
With your mind on me
While you write your poetry
