The Gooseberry Set
                             The Bohemian Life and Times of Martha Rowe-Dente
                                                      An Authorised Biography
                                                   By Genevieve Hedgley-Hogg


              At her beginning Martha was born into a scramble of pink and hairless siblings, all eyes-a-bulge beneath blind sealed lids in the squabble to compete for a place at the teat.  Alarmed by the rudiments in the basics of survival, Martha knew that she must search out beauty down the by-ways to dreams and once fixed upon this noble purpose, promptly barged two brothers and yanked at a sister to gain the firmest nipple for the longest suckle of the sweetest milk.
             Once grown away from Mama's warm and patient belly, Martha preened her auburn fur and took a wide eyed look over and about and around.  Twitching her nose to the air, Martha turned tail on Mama's skirting-board home and scampered the pattern across the linoleum floor with a hippety skippity run, run, run right out of the parlour's back street door where the gutter welcomed her with a half hot dog dobbed bright with a yellow mustard that overkeened her big brown eyes until they smarted a mite too much and moved her on to a stale bagel to neatly nibble on in little mousey crescents before proceeding on her way to skipperty whoops through a grating into the Miller's cellar where she flipped top over tail to belly first most flop onto a softfall sack of flour.  A timely repose...... until bumpity wake up and down bounce behind the back of a horse drawing a barrow upon which herself was found to be on a ride atop a pyramid pile of softfall sacks all a-judder to the cobbles dancing down the street until the salt-sea breezed on Martha's whiskers and the horse hoof clipped its clop, rocking the wheels on quarter turns by a Steamer-Ship-Cruiser on the Water-Dock-Front.
             Two stevedore arms threw Martha and sack across the burly-broad of a double-bend back and then down into the hold of a ship's black echo where a fellow mouse introduced himself as the Honourable Ismbard Rowe-Dente, Philosopher and Poet.
             He was a kind mouse and escorted her to the ship's kitchen where they sat by a porthole eating gorgonzola and patais de fois gras as the ship sailed away from the huge green lady giant wearing a star crown and holding a flame. Ismbard explained that she was THE BIG LIBERTY and they were leaving her country now and sailing to London England where he had lodgings behind a mahogany bookcase in Cordwray Square off Gooseberry Street and Martha was most welcome to join their commune and even be his Mousewife.
             Martha accepted and settled down her life in amongst composers of nutshell symphonies and sculptures in turnip and potatoes and Martha too found her own limelight as an artist of some repute in the medium of many coloured lentils and the odd dried pea.  
 

                                                       CHRISTOPHER'S PENNY


Christopher Jessop steals a penny.
His hawk-eye swoop selecting any
But the old and dulled from crust and rind,
Patina'd from their daily grind.
He pockets a belief that luck shines new,
With a flourish of his his wrist to enhance and accrue
An enchantment beyond the Mint's Royal form
But a mock magicians vanity mis-invokes the charm
And a pen'eth bright talisman to ward off strife
Begins the miscalculation of the rest of his life
As Christopher audaciously chooses his worth
From Fortune's coin-fat, sow-ear purse.
Fate does not expect to be picked,
Chosen, stolen, manipulated, tricked.
Destiny plays on empty selves,
Sturdy bookcases of vacant shelves
Where volumes amass and pages unfold,
Connecting the chapters of lifetimes told
With counter plots that combine and cleave
As chance encounters interweave
Each symbioses episodic code,
Bound, titled, embossed and stowed
Upon oaken ledges across spine-lined walls,
While driftwood libraries of penny-dreadful lives
Are the pulp and plunder of pirated archives.


Postulation is his coin-tossed way
Of little to do about much to say.
Arrogance intoning superior stance
Promptly flicks the penny askance
To barely skim Friendship's crown
As self-indulgence spirals down
Its centrifugal, gyroscopic fall
Sucking attention from one and all.
A desperation perfectly able
To systematically make itself stable
By the duplicity that dwells behind the eyes
Where fierce heat actuates cool surmise.
The sycophantic swooping on samaritan prey
With his talons drawn for their deeds of the day,
Ready to translate each charitable act
As a matter of dutiful, subservient fact
While Flattery's fists uncurl their plea
To deliver impassioned falsity
Abundant with gratitudes empowering request
And chaining Goodwill to bogus behest.
A concave belief boasts a mute penny's charm,
Enforced by the hand with the begging-bowl palm
Of Christopher Jessop's obsequious game
Where Grandmaster versus the timid and tame
In his faking of a path to a victory at last


Christopher's penny bribes a belief
In self-exemption from misfortune's grief
To focus the fanaticism in dementia's eyes
Through desperation to delusion's disguise
Of foppery chancing a brocaded arm,
Languidly cradling the gilded charm,
Loquacious in pretenses of grandiose ability,
Elaborating his non-existant nobility
With a wile both witty and debonair
Able to outstare what is not there.
Where an unremarkable coin was found,
Plumes and kerchieves trail the ground,
Bowing and scraping to an imperious role
In deference to Christopher's splendid soul,
Baroque etiquette beckons admiration
With curlicue gestures of self -adulation.
Until the penny's charisma tires
And egotism's patina conspires
To rewrite itself in parody
With melodrama's tragedy
Of error eluding shame,
Prompting bigotry to recast blame
In zig-zag acts of counter-claim
As scripted accusation through turns of rage
Where justification exits the stage.



A shiny penny, a deliberate fake,
An amulet inducing the ultimate mistake,
A deviation across Christopher's palm
Heralding elitism's dysfunctional charm
Whereby he over-supposes himself
A crust above the upper-shelf,
An attitude throwing choice
Out of the mouth and through the voice
To assume assertion's delirious pride
Covering in one misguided stride
The dead-step distance of a cul-de-sac
Where cement never sets beneath soft tarmac
So he browbeats certainty into Fate's round hole
In angular accordance with his self-styled role
Of bonhomie brimming fear,
City sorcerer and urban seer
Tipping elation to spill distress
Laced with a tantrum's verbal prowess
Of inaccuracies summoning an image-mirage
To spellbind his faery entourage
With wizardry's wind-bag affectations
Expounding long-bearded incantations
To compound fracture a frail wish-bone
As magus minus alchemist's stone
Melds head-call ego to tail side coin.

                                                                         Mary's Bridge


Mary Forest walks a bridge
Across a gully steeped in mist
As on a stair not actually there
She treads her way upon the air
Each stepful, a half-pace to a truth never found
Before the consecutive heel meets the ground
In just such a nick of delirious time
Her stumbles are kept from falling
Callous inglorious depths
Blind through fog, the whitest of fears
Sensing her ridicule by silenced jeers,
Pierced by the angry jutting of chins
Of rugged scorn on opposed rockfaces
Massively dropping to their temporary bases
Where the merest trickle of the sharpest doubt
Is the blade that gouged the entire gorge out.
Crossing these breaches of self-infliction
Are the bridges that span self-belief's suspension
Where the stalwart traverse the humped back stone
Anchored from whence and toward,
While Mary is offered only upturned bellies
Of rotting timbers, unsecured,
Over which she now scrambles
To the loud snap and crack
Of a long strained hope too ferociously yearned.

Mary washes her sorrows with sins.                



                                                                               2



Midway across is an icy draught
That creeps through flesh and catches hearts
On a note of pain in the key of flight
Its perfect pitch kills the beat of life
To leave its victims turned to stone
Standing upon the bridge alone
As if before an invisible door
Forbidding an entry that cannot be seen
By its own non-existence its closure remains
In equidistance from losses to gains
Where souls sway as the raging trees,
Rooted, yet flailing in the mounting breeze,
The Herald of Almighty Storm.
In the wake of The Storm not arriving
Comes weariness in place of calm
That might have rewarded her patience,
Her waiting, her withstanding harm.
But incentive is a vague nostalgia,
A perspective of sepia'd passio
n and pain,
A leeching of colour from a prime desire
Necessary to Mary's creative fire
Long since extinguished by a rain-sad cloud
Dissolving belief to build self-doubt
As a phantom bridge of crumbling pride,
A disintegration to no other side.



                                                                                3

Mary Forest does not fall,
There is no vertiginous gorge at all.
The drop is Delusion harnessed to Desire
Where Sorrow and Disappointment conscientiously conspire
To lead her across Humiliation's rift
On the pride broken back of an illusory bridge
And suspended so high in her dizzy minds eye
A life-locked, death-white, bone chilled fright
Has muted true talent, once forthright,
Now left at half-mast to Vocation's call,
A ragged flag in a bitter squall,
Tattered by the hoists of expectation.
Disastrous insignia flown to distraction
That were better folded deep in the hold
Of some secret vessel that might chart a life
Without emblem or figurehead inviting dissipation
Of the one sure course and true.
For while Tall Ships are dispatched to port after port
Of Umbridge, Pique and the Cape of Forlorn,
Their rudders shifted by others' scorn,
The sea-mist boats and low grey barges
Steer their own invisible voyages
By the hand of self-recognition,
Through storm after storm, past fear and submission,
To the places that shout "AHOY".      




                                                                             4

Mary Forest has known such a place,
"Ahoy" and welcome to this sacred space
Of knowing who you are and what you must do
Without recourse to the counter view
With which others will try to wear you down
By the glower of a strange and eerie frown
That understands nothing of a Path or Way
But fearing your success, insists you stay.
So Mary has embarked on her peculiar Life,
Undaunted but aware of its inevitable strife,
And so she strode far and wide,
Bonny and bold with nothing to hide.
'Til an evil twang from an enemy bow
Shot an accurate arrow from her crown to her toe.
Poison tipped and poison barbed,
It fastened its septicaemic fear,
Year, after year, after year, after year,
Bringing Mary to the fever of her hallucinatory bridge
Where from such parallel, pre-constructed crossing,
Her foe, already maimed, had maliciously aimed.
And Mary will duplicate the venomous quiver
Should the malignance grow and her soul not deliver
A formula once lost as a remedy regained,
And by this rediscovery reinstating the pure,
Walk from her bridge by miraculous cure.    

Isabel was either writing or thinking about writing and she wrote many different kinds of things. Among these were her stories for children and I've reproduced one here in the hope that you might read it to a child in memory of Isabel or any other lost loved one.
              The story is taken from a collection of ten entitled "A Woodland Journal", which opens a window into the life of the hedgehog Genevieve Hedgley Hogg and Ottersby a befriended otter.


                                                           OTTERSBY'S DRAGONFLY

               A little bit quite before the mid-of-the-day, Ottersby sploshed into the cloudy-green for his swim-time up the upway of the stream for the surprise-catching-out of a fat-lazy-trout.
               With his paws a-paddle beneath the cool and the summer warm upon his back, he kept a tidy pace on the exact mid-line with his special V-shape ripple a-rolling out from each of his either sides to the backwards and outwards, to the east bank and the west bank, making all the river his own.
                 In the flash-of-a-blink out of the corner of one eye, Ottersby glimpsed the hitheree-ditheree hover-dance of the delicately beauteous-ful dragonfly and changed his direction with a roll and a dive to resurface wet-nose-first beneath the jewel of all the flies for a closer close-up spy.  She hitheree'd and ditheree'd all garmented in shiny rainbow and kingfisher blue and Ottersby was entranced in a dreamy trance until such time as off and away she flew.
                 Ottersby scampery-skipped up the bank and through the long-sweet grass that edges the river's edge and trot-trotted into the woods to a place where the wood-chop-men had not very long ago been.  He picked up a tiny-pointy piece of charred-cold wood from the wood-chop-men's old-burnt-bonfire and sketched himself his very own dragonfly onto a roundy slither of the pale inside of tree. Then he mosaic'd his very own dragonfly with the pretty petal pieces of bitter-sweet-forget-me-not-Rosebay-willow-herb-robert and varnished them down with the sticky clear resin from the fir cone tree and for his finally finishing touch he dippy-dipped the endmost tips of his whiskers into the ashes of the wood-chop-men's old-burnt-bonfire and finely traced the faint fairy filigree of his dragonfly's wispy wings.
                All gleamy-eyed with pleasure and pride he raced home to Genevieve his most favourite Hedgley-Hogg and showed her his very own dragonfly to be forever kept and forever seen where he bang banged it with a nail to the wall and when his tummy rumble-tumbled with the forgetting of the catching of the trout, Genevieve served him with an especially fat slice of devilled worm pie with mint and rocket salad and they toasted Ottersby's dragonfly with an especially old and favoured vintage of rosehip and crab-apple wine.

19th Century Creen Indian

Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
we will realise that we cannot
eat money

(Taken from a postcard)

the smile

it is autumn
a woman steps through soft bars of moonlight
on the edge of a tall forest
a white owl hoots from the tree tops,
leaves drift down all around her
in the dark wind
like huge flakes of golden snow;
as she comes nearer
she can hear the rustle and sigh of the ocean
see the distant gleam of the surf on the beach,
she smiles
as though she has found a way
to climb through the air to the stars.....

The Lions Carcass

By
Isabel Wallace

This novel will capture and challenge your every thought and emotion - are you who you really want to be or has someone taken the self from you?

The Lions Carcass based on the story of Samson and Delilah a must read and only £4.99. Follow the link to make your purchase.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/isabel-wallace/the-lions-carcass/ebook/product-21130454.html

By Chief Seattle 1854

"This we know - the earth does not
belong to man, man belongs to
the earth. All things are connected
like the blood that unites one
family whatever befalls the earth
befalls the son of the earth. Man
did not weave the web of life, he
is merely a strand of it. Whatever
he does to the web he does to
himself."

The Jewelled Cover Of Night

The jewelled cover of night
Defeats oppression;
The mind in sleeps' arms
Lives the subconscious,
Where "Stars shine on revolutions"
And no prophecies freeze

Such prophecies freeze
When a frosted sun
Awakes reality's silence
Time to get up
and conform.

(October 1977)

ANOTHER LOST SHOE

With two glass slippers
Cinderella feels fine,
The star of the Ball
Sipping fizzy white wine,
Waltzing with the prince
Beneath chandeliers,
Filling her future
With grand ideas.

The clock strikes twelve,
Its all too late.
She bolts, trips and limps
Through the palace gate.
Her riches turn to rags
And unrequited desire
As she hails a passing
'Pumpkin For Hire'.

A man in livery
Knocks at her door
And shatters her shoe
On the kitchen floor.
With dustpan and brush
She sweeps it clean
Of every shard
And smithereen.

Unbuttoned by Buttons,
Her purity eschewed
In lusty pursuance
Of the exotically lewd.
So happily ever after
The couple settle
And have two children
Called Hansel and Gretel.

The Fairy Godmother
Is most dumfounded
To have her magic
So confounded.
Swapping wand for cauldron
And wings for switch,
She turns herself
Into a witch.

(27th October 1999)

For She Who Never Spoke

(AN ANCESTRESS OF MINE)

April was her name
Felicity would hide
For April came
Where two selves divide.
At Felicity's birth
April manifest.
Felicity,'though christened,
Was by April possessed.
Besides this shame
Felicity was pure,
Completely at odds
With April's fissure;
A crevice, a canyon,
A rock fault so deep
Its incongruous uprush
Put the faller to sleep
And of her imposter
Unable to tell
Each time the ground opened
And Felicity fell.
Daughter of contortion,
An asphyxia begun,
Born to a parson
In eighteen-sixty-one.
A child of ringlets,
Smock and lace,
Painfully timid
and fair of face.
Dreams disallowed
She could not yearn,
Deductions forbidden
She could not learn
unless by rote
An obedience was formed
To keep imaginations
From ever being spawned.
And so came April
This folly to displace,
Igniting in Felicity
All manner of disgrace.
She tore at her clothes,
She tangled her hair,
She showed her this "Other"
Her own to declare
Had she not disappeared
Unaware she was host
To April, her "other"
Her inseperable ghost
Who stalked her childhood
Intermittently defined,
Timidity and purpose
Imperfectly aligned.
Her riddles the secrets
Of a silenced sphinx,
Her vision precise
As the famished lynx,
A hunter determined
Continually prowling
Then eerily poised
Afore the pouncing
Upon the pain
Of a disnamed child;
The true Felicity
Suspended and styled
So passed to April
Whence naught could extract
From this mute maid's
Enigma intact.
Twelve long years
The haunting occured
And then an asylum
Patiently preferred.
The noting of symptoms,
The parson's sad tale,
The arranging for residency
Should all else fail.
He wanted her out,
He could not abide,
This "other", the stranger
The daughter beside.

The demon, April,
Duly lured,
Shamefully dismembered
And Felicity Cured

Of fury.

Subdued, subtracted,
Anonymous pain.
The bland, empty life
Of the certified sane.
But truth is immortal
And April will not die
While its silent growth
Erodes the lie.

How long?

Ten thousand days
And one hundred years
She burrows her sedition
Through progeny of hers.
In daughters of daughters
April, is known,
In her great silence
These words were sown

By April, called Felicity,
An Ancestress of mine.

(November 1992)

Prayer To Gaea

Reared in ignorance
I have walked many paths
To your ruin

Hewn in arrogance
I fear the piety
Of this prayer

Possess me.

(October 1989)

True Love

Translucent liquid gold
That flows so naturally.
A richness that envelopes you
A purity that overwhelms you
A sensation so strange and revealing.
All your trouble dissolves away.
They no longer exist.
Instead there is a mystical world
Of velvet clouds that engulf you
Diamond stars that surround you.
Godlike faces smile at you
Their long, soft whispy hair
Dances in the gentle loving breeze.
It is everlasting, immortal
It is for consuming, inhaling.
How I worship you.
My passion for you will never fade
Oh "Johnnie Walker"
With your sturdy base,
Round shoulders
and crystal clear skin.
Will you ever know
How grateful I am?
For your 26 2/3 FL oz
Of pure Scotch Whisky

(Spring 1977)

'Voyages'

I looked for you in the night
like a swimmer searching for a lost diver
I glimpse your face in the dim light
like a blind fish in dark water
I reach for you and hold you
and feel the lonely throb of old sorrows
tremble from your heart

my hands
gentle as the hands of prayer
summon the cool peace of empty cathedrals
to soothe you,
stroke your face, your hair
like the whisper of a breeze at evening...
and now that you smile
we drift together
to the warm house of sleep

and it's only love moves through me
nothing less
nothing more
and it's only love that frees us
guides us on all our calm or troubled voyages
to a safe and friendly shore.

A Gypsy

A gypsy wandered
Through a distant destiny,
Far from her mystic flesh.
For this world is still a lake.
It mirrors a clear beauty
Of no substance.
So her mind travelled
Through crystal mist
To the visions glass core.
That still lake!
It took her soul,
And drowned it.

(October 1977)

The Victim

He stumbled and fell.
Down,
down,
down.
An eternal depth
Of vile contortion.
An evil hunger
devoured his reason.
A cunning thirst
drained his sanity.
A ruthless flame
consumed his soul
And left his body, empty.

(Spring 1977)

breath

i sit by the tall window in the falling light,
the clouds settle on the mountains
like quiet sleepers curled round a dream,
the snow lies deep on the frozen lake,
the fire lingers in the hearth,
i rest my head on the cold glass,
the house is empty, everything is still.....
i miss the way you glide to me
and breath slow wings through my heart.

Love Life For Me

In love with you, I ran from you,
Cradling every detail of the missive you had bourne.
And now, high in flight
On the quill tips of my angel muse,
It is too many years too late to return,
Though in vision and in dream,
This I see, this I learn;

That your love of life has crumbled
Time and time to dust
Between the smug, dry palms
Of anothers distrust.
Colleagues and companions
Mindful of your courage,
Jealously obliged
With intent to disparage.
Pinnacles of falsity,
Narrowed, pointed, confined.
The spires were all cold
To the dreams you had in mind.
And sweet Jayne in black lace
Made from many a maids' tears,
Her morbidity arising
From the pit of her fears.
She informed the movie mogul
That you were a lost young man.
To abolish your goal
Was her fiendish plan.
But I spied your etheral guide,
I saw his name upon a stone
And above his name
Was carved your own.
Like the Mayflower you must sail
From the grey and passionless Isles,
From yellow mouthed promises,
From shallow-eyed wiles.
Find meaning in the misfortune
That has rendered you lame.
Carry the banner of calling
Into the battle of fame.
Go forward as an orphan,
Untutored, unchecked.
Lay bare your truths,
Embellish, dissect.
From the heights of glory
To the depths of strife,
Reinstate extremity,
Repossess your love of life.

I am now the messenger
As you were once a messenger to me.
My message is this;
'Love life for me'.

(July 1990)

For the Lone-traveller

Where is he?
The lone-traveller,
The poet I never met.
Who left me wild flowers
Bound in sweet grass.
He came in the night
And left at dawn.
He walked in the early mist
Through the wooded slopes,
And valleys of his mind.
I never saw him.
He never saw me,
But he left me a message
Of wild flowers
More touching and remote
Than any made with words.

(August 1977)

I Beware

There is a distancing
Now that what we both thought
And I still think
Is for you, no longer true
Although I feel I already know
For you and for others
It is only time who is allowed to tell
Time the Judge and Time the Saviour
Until in desperation for some proof of love
You heed the evidence of a misplaced truth
And by your own foolishness
While away the days and hours
Of Time the liar and Time the slayer.

I Feel

I feel isolated
I feel
unreal,
I feel
locked up inside my outside,
I feel
restless,
I feel
discontented,
I feel
like breaking out.
I feel
unabel,
I feel
unready,
I feel
I must wait.

(Summer 1977)

Debutantes

Shaped, patterned and textured.
Delicately destined to vanity.
No core is enclosed.
Blind to the seas' secrets
Shells, exhibit themselves.

(Spring 1977)

Press Release

Isabel Wallace presents new retelling of Samson and Delilah

Biblical story retold in modern times in ‘The Lion’s Carcass’

TROWBRIDGE, England – Throughout her life, author Isabel Wallace loved to express herself through writing, be it prose or poetry. “The Lion's Carcass” (published by Lulu), published posthumously, is Isabel Wallace’s fresh, new retelling of the classic biblical story, Samson and Delilah.

Set in the town of Somerset, England, during the 1970s, “The Lion’s Carcass” updates the classic story of Samson and Delilah. When Sam and Dee fall passionately in love, their union becomes the catalyst that starts a chain of events seeped in jealousy.

Isabel Wallace’s keen insight on relationships drives the story as the Sam and Dee’s love begins to crumble around them. A thrilling love story of passion and betrayal, “The Lion’s Carcass” will delight readers until the last page.

An excerpt from “The Lion’s Carcass”:

“The solstice surprise on Bantock Hill was a yearly event for the Philistines and Dee was expecting their arrival, but no one came and when the dawn broke the east with its first strip of daylight it was for Sam and Dee alone. The sun rose, a giant glowing orb like a red moon in a sky that was a pink and cirrus sea that washed its weird tide of colour and unfathomed emotion over the man and girl on Bantock Hill.”

Readers can find more of Isabel Wallace’s work at www.isabelwallace.blogspot.com.

“The Lion's Carcass”

By Isabel Wallace

E-Book | ISBN 9781291494679

About the Author

Isabel Wallace lived most of her life in the west country of England. She traveled quite extensively, but always returned to her home. She was a kind and modest woman who loved reading and writing as an art form. She previously published “Starshine, the ocean and the unicorn,” a story of London’s underworld, and “Ecstasia,” an erotic novel. Isabel Wallace passed away at age 51.

night and day

in my sleep

there was a frozen waterfall

caught

like a sudden splash of a huge white moon,

and later

there were fireworks and rainbows

that gave out wonderful music

as i danced and sang

on the shore of a wide black river.....

this evening

i walk in the door

of a house full of strangers

the air full of slow jazz and wine,

a woman, wide eyed and solemn

turns in the lamplight

like the earth towards the sun

and greets me

and aah!

the magic ripples between us thicker than silver

and i laugh and shake my head

like a beggar who finds jewels in his soup -

oh, what days and nights these are!

Muddle

It rained.
I rushed.
Confused.
Recent conversations
Bleach my brain.

Thoughts grow,
Muddle,
Disperse
And are lost

The sun glares on puddled-pavements

Walk towards another problem.
Try to solve it
Before I meet it.

(July 1977)

I feel your beauty

I feel your beauty
Running through me
So many secrets
Leave our love sleepy and tongue-tied

I want to fly with you
Through cirrus sea
To wake up in sweet summer
Feeling your mystery close and alive

Two teas
Both with honey please
And let my naked magic flow
For it refuses to lie still
Under green moss.

Writer and Muse

I am the vessel
That carries her voice
She embarked on my journey
And left me no choice
She came aboard quite suddenly
How could I refuse
I am the writer
And she the Muse

I am the child
Who is loyal to no other
She took me for a daughter
Though she is no mother
She adopted me quite ruthlessly
And began to enthuse
I am the writer
And she the Muse

I am the prisoner
Waiting for bail
She is the judge
Who threw me in jail
My sentence may be life
Bid who can I accuse
As I am the writer
And she the Muse

I am the dove
That flies from her sleeves
She the magician
Whose timing deceives
Plucking quills from my tail
How she does abuse
I am the writer
And She the Muse.

(January 1989)

Ibby Bluebell

Ibby Bluebell lives
In both light and shade
Beneath the dappling of the leaves
At the edge of the glade
Where the sun's intensity
Shines outright
At the constant burn
Of yellow and white
Alchemical flames
Of creative fire
Where writer and Muse
Meld to inspire
With sentences, gramar,
Peace and soul
From hearts and minds
Alert and whole.
Both muse and wordsmith
In one conflagration
Of earthbound and immortal
In divine integration
Through the woodlands
And the hedgerows,
Over marshes
And the meadows
To the tree of words.

(An extract from the Flower Quartet)

I Beware

There is a distancing
Now that what we both thought
And I still think
Is for you, no longer true
Although I feel I already know
For you and for others
It is only time who is allowed to tell
Time the Judge and Time the Saviour
Until in desperation for some proof of love
You heed the evidence of a misplaced truth
And by your own foolishness
While away the days and hours
Of Time the liar and Time the slayer.

The jewelled cover of night

The jewelled cover of night
Defeats oppression;
The mind in sleeps' arms
Lives the subconscious,
Where "Stars shine on revolutions"
And no prophecies freeze

Such prophecies freeze
When a frosted sun
Awakes reality's silence
Time to get up
and conform.

(October 1977)

HELLO!

HELLO!
Can they hear me?
No they can't
I'm too far away
Away inside myself
They see a person
Which is my body
They know a person
Which is my act
They don't know ME
Because they don't know I exist
Because they don't know THEY exist
And that's what matters

(Summer 1977)

Ibby On Her Travels

Prayer to Gaea

Reared in ignorance
I have walked many paths
To your ruin

Hewn in arrogance
I fear the piety
Of this prayer

Possess me.

(October 1989)

Love Life For Me

In love with you, I ran from you,
Cradling every detail of the missive you had bourne.
And now, high in flight
On the quill tips of my angel muse,
It is too many years too late to return,
Though in vision and in dream,
This I see, this I learn;

That your love of life has crumbled
Time and time to dust
Between the smug, dry palms
Of anothers distrust.
Colleagues and companions
Mindful of your courage,
Jealously obliged
With intent to disparage.
Pinnacles of falsity,
Narrowed, pointed, confined.
The spires were all cold
To the dreams you had in mind.
And sweet Jayne in black lace
Made from many a maids' tears,
Her morbidity arising
From the pit of her fears.
She informed the movie mogul
That you were a lost young man.
To abolish your goal
Was her fiendish plan.
But I spied your etheral guide,
I saw his name upon a stone
And above his name
Was carved your own.
Like the Mayflower you must sail
From the grey and passionless Isles,
From yellow mouthed promises,
From shallow-eyed wiles.
Find meaning in the misfortune
That has rendered you lame.
Carry the banner of calling
Into the battle of fame.
Go forward as an orphan,
Untutored, unchecked.
Lay bare your truths,
Embellish, dissect.
From the heights of glory
To the depths of strife,
Reinstate extremity,
Repossess your love of life.

I am now the messenger
As you were once a messenger to me.
My message is this;
'Love life for me'.

(July 1990)

Mermaid

MERMAID

Chapter The First

I

Myth of the ocean,

Nymph of the sea.

Half fish, half sprite,

Aquatic faerie.

Perfectly formed

From skin to scale,

Strangely conjoined

From flesh to tail.

Cutting through water,

Streamlined and sleek,

With powerful thrust

And perfect physique.

A swish

Through a swirl,

Diving deep

For a pearl.

From surface to seabed

In a descending spin,

Countering currents

By the flick of a fin.

II

Sea goddess

From head to hip,

Extraordinary fish

From navel to tip.

All human above

With voluptuous torso

Merged in iridescence

To the tail below.

All mother-of-pearl

And aquamarine.

A coil and a flip

Too fleet to be seen.

Rarely glimpsed

By human sight,

The mermaid swims

Too fast for light.

Preserving her myth,

Her legend intact.

Is she the fiction?

Is she the fact?

III

True apparition

Or fanciful lie?

A corner sighting

From a sailor's eye

Of a beautiful,

Fishtailed female form,

Diving through the surge

Of an oncoming storm.

A water angel

Who will save his life

By guiding the clipper

Through the broil and strife

Of an angry squall

And hurricane wind

Until the tempest abates

And the waves rescind.

Are those two blue eyes

And long golden hair

Merely a figment

Of a sailor's prayer?

Chapter The Second

I

I know a mermaid

Alive on dry land,

With two shapely legs

On which she can stand.

But her golden hair

And sea blue eyes

Betray her

Lower limbed disguise

As she walks her way

Upright and able,

Through her own

Human fable.

A parallel story

Of life and line

Already well known

Beneath the brine

Where the water kingdom's

Legend of old

Is a favourite yarn

Frequently told.

II

A tale that

I must now relate

To put an end

To all debate.

A narrative bound

To astonish all

Delivered to excite,

Intrigue and enthral

As cynicism melts

Into sheer delight

Where sceptic and romantic

Inadvertently unite

Under the orators

Word-woven spell.

The magic that logic

Fails to quell,

Rendering an audience

Unable to resist

The undeniable truth

That mermaids exist.

III

Once upon a mermaid

In a kingdom marine,

Far from terra firma

In the deep blue and green,

Where coral gardens

And seaweed sway

Set a scenic backdrop

For theatrical display

Of a shoal's precise

And unanimous concern

As stripe and colour

Twitch and turn

Beneath patrolling shadows

Of long-tailed doom

As rhomboid harbinger

Stingrays loom

And omen misfortune

Is but a fin's breadth delay

As danger's ever presence

Paves Calamity's way.

Chapter The Third

I

Unaware of Calamity's

Impending whims,

Our underwater heroine

Gaily swims

Up and down,

Along and across,

Happily ignorant

Of future loss.

The world is her oyster,

That oyster is supreme,

Its pearl of circumference

And radiance extreme.

Her prospects tremendous,

Her reputation grown

As the fastest mermaid

Ever known.

Able to swim

At a pace so bold.

Passing bronze and silver

To certain Gold.

II

But on her way

To The Great Mermaid Race

Calamity struck

And stole her place.

Before the contest

Had even begun,

Misfortune competed

And consequently won

By injecting poison

From a sea urchins spine

Into her tail

So sleek and fine.

Her perfect speed

Stopped dead in its tracks.

Her mirror to the future

Criss-crossed by cracks,

Poised to shatter

What should have been

And reflect that loss

In each smithereen.

III

Each shard embedded

In a broken dream

Unravelling to the silence

Of her internal scream

As pain explodes

Beyond threshold's scope

And the poison spreads

Dissolving all hope

To leave in its wake

An unforeseen dread

As her arms and tail

Turn to lead,

Anchoring our champion

To depths unknown

Where her heart aches

In its breaking zone

But somehow resists

That final tear

Of hopelessness

And utter despair.

Chapter The Fourth

I

A courageous heart beats

At a pace so bold

Passing bronze and silver

To certain gold.

Our mermaid possesses

Such a heart

Forestalling despondency

With a clear head start,

Outpacing the sea urchin's

Toxic traces,

Putting disappointments

Back in their places,

She flicks her tail

And starts to swim

Out from under

Calamity's whim.

A golden resolve

Misfortune forgot

From molten flow

To pur ingot.

II

Our heroine radiates

A love and joy

The injected contagion

Can never destroy.

She laughs, she frolics,

She jumps, she dives.

Her smile lights up

A thousand lives

As shoals turn

In her direction

And dolphins provide

Their playful protection

To an unattained spirit

The venom cannot quell

As she rides the seahorse

Or the turtle's shell

And all acknowledge

Her magical presence,

All mother-of-pearl

And iridescence.

III

While her golden heart

Is worn within,

The once begun

Must again begin,

To capture the gold

She will wear without,

To continue the quest

And quash any doubt

That she is a mermaid

Of some renown,

Destined to wear

The laurel crown

A gold medallion

Around her neck,

A prize the sea urchin

Can no longer wreck

As smote but undaunted

She reclaims her place

And swims towards

The Great Mermaids Race.

Isabel Mary Wallace 01/01/2009

For Stephanie Millward