Poems

Yesterday, I posted a photo of a poem on Facebook. My grief hung out like freshly laundered underwear.  There for everyone to see but hoping that no one really looks.

I wasn't hoping for sympathy I just wanted to share a brilliant poem that had made me feel.

After my dad died last year I wrote what I hoped were mildly amusing blogs about grief.  This time has been different. I could only write about birds.  My brain broke. I fought elephants in my sleep and I couldn't even begin the process of grieving; being normally sad that my mum had died.  I told my GP everything that had happened and she told me that it would take at least 9 months if not 2 years.  She didn't say what.  Gestation times, maybe? Humans and elephants. But I had some therapy that I can't recommend enough (will blog about it separately) and now I feel sad. 

It's alright though because it's normal sadness.  It's what you are meant to feel after someone you loved has died.  It's normal.  People die and people you love leave a hole in your heart once they have gone. 

Social media is often full of people's grief.  They post photos and memes which sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable and I worry that grief that is managed quietly is somehow less. 

Maybe I posted the poem picture because it was time to be less quiet.  Time to show that I cared. 

Or maybe I posted it because poems are brilliant.  They speak directly to your heart.  Distilled down to just the most important words, with meaning in the gaps they say everything they need to.  I wish I could say more in the gaps.

I had to buy the book because I picked it up in Waterstones and read the poem about being cast adrift amongst the furniture with no one to tell you off and I cried.   Wendy Cope is a poet that always seems to speak to me in a way that makes me wonder if she is following my life.  The first poem in her Anecdotal Evidence collection explained my need to be with birds.

Evidence

Centuries of English verse

Suggest the selfsame thing:

A negative response is rare

When birds are heard to sing.

What's the use of poetry?

You ask, Well, here's a start:

It's anecdotal evidence.

About the human heart.

The birdsong is healing, the poems are healing. And wait until I tell you about the voodoo magic that is EMDR.

Godwit

Godwit day. 

I'm not a bird expert.  I'm not an anything expert but birds are still following me around.  They are everywhere, judging me and making comments on my life. So, when faced with a large group of long legged, long billed wading birds I wasn't quite sure what they were.  Wading birds near us need long legs and long bills, so that they don't disappear completely into the mud and they can get the insects from the bottom. They could have been sandpipers or snipes but they had a red/brown body and black  and white stripey tail and wings.  Usually, they hang about in big groups but there is always one that is shunned by the crowd, going it alone, preferring it's own company, not joining in the general seaside chatter.  I was watching the lone bird, wondering why he chose to be on his own.

If you walk along the sea wall you can see these birds by the lakes at dusk.  They gather and shout at passing humans. The humans, in turn, try to photograph them.  Some humans have flash equipment: tripods, long lenses and light meters and stand still or sit in hides being quiet and thoughtful.  I keep walking, as I take photos on my automatic setting, chatting to the people who are taking it seriously.

"What are they?" I asked the young besandaled woman with knotty hair standing by her tripod.
"Oh, they're just godwits," she said, "but on the bank up there is a heron."
I looked through my camera and zoomed in, confessing that I probably wouldn't be able to see it.
The Long Suffering Husband laughed loud enough to frighten a few gulls into flight and said he thought I had lens envy.
The young woman looked very serious and said, "It's not all about size though is it?"
It was then I saw that she was with a man.  I could only see his camouflage trousers and that in his hand he had an enormous camera lens as the rest of him was obscured by her and the camera.
"Oh, I don't know, it helps."I looked up and walked on, catching the man with a full on wink.

It was only then that I realised that I knew him.  He was the ex-husband of a friend and he looked as if to say, "What has she been saying about me?"
The godwits changed from their general seaside noise to a very clear, "You're a twit. We are godwits but you're a twit."

It's been a while - crack on

It's been a while since I wrote a blog. 

Sometimes my mind gets a bit clogged up with things that would be funny to write about but because I don't blog straight away it feels too late.  I was enjoying my bird a day theme but we've missed curlew, marsh harrier, sparrow and wren, which all came after 'Tern day' which was the day I thought I started to feel a bit more normal (whatever that is) and began to speak to  real living people again.

We went to Aldeburgh for a few days away.  This is where all the posh people live, or have holiday homes.  I have a natural aversion to a plummy accent and the sense of entitlement that goes with it.  

The teenagers in Suffolk are particularly funny and are probably the basis for Mitchell and Webb's Pilots.  

We first realised that we had stepped into the linguistic upper class when a shop keeper said, "Would one's dog like to come in?"  The Long Suffering Husband thought that only the Queen used 'one' as a pronoun now.  

The next morning at 6am, we were walking along the beachfront towards Thorpeness.  Once we got past the area where the signs told us dogs were not allowed we moved to the water's edge.  After a while we saw an old couple, who were just preparing for their early morning swim.  The woman was furious.  

"One is not allowed on this bit of the beach with one's dog," she shouted. "One should be able to read the signs."

We were confused, as there had been no signs that we could see, although once we got back on the promenade we could see that she was right and one vowed to read all the signs from then on.

Here are some of the signs we saw.

Widdling is an underused word, I have no idea what a barking gate is, I agree with the sign about parents, and I can't help think the large crack down the town steps makes a mockery of the impervious paving.

The last sign was fascinating.

"Do you think swifts can read?" I asked the LSH.

"I doubt it," he said "but the signs are always where there are swift boxes." He pointed to one on the eaves of the roof above the sign.

"Do you think they pay rent?" I asked.

"Hummm," he thought for just long enough to make me think he wasn't listening. "Maybe not but they certainly leave a deposit!"