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The Holland Haul

Holland House, Cropthorne

Monday 1st to Friday 5th August 2016

Arrivals & Departures

Arriving…

Arrived!

‘Arrivals and Departures’ was a very fruitful topic.

I’ve tried to group poems together under these two

themes while realising that, in many cases, an arrival

is also a departure and vice-versa! Prize-winners,

tutors’ poems and the haikus are, of course, included

as well as poems I simply found moving and

pleasurable to read. I hope you too enjoy this

reminder of the happy and productive days we spent

at Holland House this year.

Alyss Dye, editor, Holland Haul, 2016

It was a great loss that we had to forgo Hannah

Lowe as tutor through an illness which struck

two days before. Even warmer thanks therefore

to Mimi and Myra (mystery guest). I suspect

we all wrote more poems than ever and the

Holland Haul is a tribute to this productivity,

the poems sensitively arranged by Alyss.

Thank you! In the Chinese tradition we did

some group-work on haiku (4 Rengas from 4

groups) – so little time, yet these are elegant

and convincing. Thanks, Myra, for the exercise

– writing about parents – which inspired us.

The photographs and captions are a highlight,

though I look a bit like a human Tee-to-Tum....

Dilys Wood, Co-ordinator, Second Light

2

Arriving

is taking off my travelling things,

plunging into the pool –

no, not plunging,

lowering myself

inch by inch

into the shallow end,

the cold gripping my ankles

my knees, my thighs

invading all the intimate

parts of me;

then when water and skin

are easy in each other’s company

I’m in the swim of things.

Jenna Plewes

It’s Thursday and I’m meeting Alice

As always, I wear

the Highland teddy bear

dancing in his kilt

so she can see me

no matter how far

away when she’s

assisted from

the train.

As always, it takes too long,

the train, to come to

a full stop,

cough out its cloud

of passengers, for them

to part

and let the sunshine in.

Anne Stewart

An Arrival

Air thick as porridge,

hot as burnt toast.

On the evening news

a reporter fries eggs

on the pavement.

Passers-by watch

from the shade of awnings

then disappear inside

over-cooled shops.

Sales of ice and ice-cream

have soared. Salad

is everyone’s choice

at dinnertime.

We all study

the weather maps,

dream of the cold front

supposedly creeping up

from Antarctica.

Midnight. Wind rattles

wide-opened windows.

We reach for the sheet,

pull it up, fall into sleep

until a blaze of lightning,

a cannon blast of thunder

springs us out of bed.

We rush outside, stand

with face and hands raised,

catch the cold sting

of hailstones.

Kaye Lee

So, how was it for you?

3

Our Dream

We knew, of course, the journey would be long

and dangerous, my mother old and frail,

the children trusting, so that it seemed wrong

to put their lives at risk when we set sail

in this old overloaded rubber boat

which took on water, forcing us to bale

with just one plastic pail to stay afloat.

The wind was rising, no stars in the sky

to guide us on to Lesbos, so remote

and as we huddled close the waves grew high

crashed down and flipped us over with a swirl,

flung many to the depths and some to die –

for here we lost our precious baby girl.

But strong arms pulled me, mother, son and wife

to safety – shaking, grieving for our pearl.

So now we’re in a camp, a dreary life,

long queues for food, not knowing when we’ll leave,

my mother sick, for cholera is rife –

but still we dream of peace, we still believe.

Jean Watkins

Travel at a Time of Ebola

We descend to air that thrums

with cicadas. I’m sleepless-drunk

on dreams of buffalo and elephants.

And, yes, Johannesburg is sizzling,

‘Stand back, take your glasses off.’

I raise my naked face and blink.

‘Do you feel well, or feverish?’

Walls are punctuated by smudged moons,

people walk about like trees.

Why is my phone set only for emergencies?

‘Tell me, where can I buy water?

Please, may I take your arm?’

Carol Beadle

4

Making a Call to Senegal

after reading Anthony Loyd’s Letter from Tripoli

We have no words, it seems, no common language

in such times, and yet if faced

with pain, we know our own.

It chimes with tears, with loss, with being

dropped into a vortex of despair.

A borrowed phone for minutes, to call home –

what could we say when there is no way back,

no place to go, no hope.

He rings. He speaks. He weeps.

Cuffed to the bed, smashed head and ruined wrists,

one leg, no name they’ll take – A common story,

say the nursing staff. He’s sub-Saharan,

a cheap labour source, now even cheaper.

This is Libya. Bad to stay. Drown if you leave.

The frightened dreams of many for some huddled future

that might offer dregs to feed a life.

No real choice. And there are no words

because they have no voice.

Denni Turp

Razor’s Edge

Sweating, bruised by rocks, I clamber

to the summit of Petra’s holy mountain.

Breathless, I reach its small plateau

of sand, trodden earth, trinkets for sale.

A radiant Arab boy sits crosslegged

playing a pipe: music floats across

the ancient valley of pagan altars,

toppled pillars, carved palace facades.

He is playing at the very edge

of a three thousand foot drop

as an eagle wheels round and through

slow white clouds

vast slow white clouds.

Elizabeth Rapp

in collection, What the Trees are Telling Me,

2015, Poetry Space

I can wait…

5

Late Arrival

I had waited so long for you.

The silent monthly frustration of new blood.

I could understand why women went mad with it,

bayed to the moon. I thirsted like Yerma

in Lorca’s play.

We visited doctors, studied temperature charts,

gave away the cot, the pushchair,

parcelled up the baby clothes.

And then, when we no longer expected you,

you started to come – as though, being shy,

you had preferred not to be greeted by a grand fanfare.

It was a long, hot summer that year.

The roadside grass withered.

All the garden birds fled from town.

But in early September the weather broke

and you arrived, like a shower of rain.

Alyss Dye

The Arrival

For Mark

Inside

someone was playing

the piano.

And though unexpected

it seemed fitting

for there to be music

behind this front door.

We had caught up with you

in arrivals,

having your ID checked.

You’d been sent in a taxi.

We had followed by tube.

Ended with a walk through streets lined

with grand houses.

Later

behind curtains,

you undressed

and answered their questions,

whilst we sat

in a bright octagonal room

eating sandwiches.

A head had popped round

the door.

Prof will be up late afternoon

to see Mark,

and to talk with all of you.

I’ll let you know

when he arrives

We nodded.

We had run out of words.

Susan Jane Sims

from pinwheel to budded branch

6

Coming Home

She arrived home,

struggling, bearing her gift

from the surgeon’s knife.

Taking tentative steps

she aimed for her bed and lay,

afraid to cough.

I took her to the shower,

carefully soaped her back,

wrapped her in a towel,

and helped her dress as if she were

my young child again.

Recovering, and stronger,

she came to the door when I left.

As we hugged she, her voice lowered,

said she couldn’t have done it alone.

We both thought of the day

when the spidery staples

crawling across her stomach

were slowly taken out. Neither of us could look

as the demon insects, one after another,

clinked into the metal dish, and only then

could we both breathe freely.

Meg Gannon

A Crossing

At the ferry-port, the sun

a stretch above the rising tide

boys with long guns patrol

between the waiting cars

a bullet-proofed woman walks

a black dog on a blue lead

no-one owns the earth

the smallest bird can fly across it.

Kay Cotton

The Rug

The rug was colourful –

technicolour token of new life,

cover for bare wooden boards

far away from home.

Arrival for a daughter –

university life cracked open.

Departure for parents,

sudden hurting of air.

Boards with blurred tenses –

the tread of the future present,

an echo of past perfect

tapping a door ajar.

- - - - - - -

Arrivals, departures, play havoc

with timelines: new birth for old;

setting out, coming home, leaving;

new countries, friends, parallel lives.

Arrivals, departures, play havoc

with love: always the constants,

significant others becoming old tunes

plucked from the heartstrings.

Arrivals, departures, play havoc

with space: open, back to a nutshell,

rug pulled from under.

Maybe a song,

a turn of the head to inherit.

Belinda Singleton

7

Parental Haiku

Marion Tracy, Dilys Wood, Jenna Plewes,

Vicki Morley, Joan McGavin, Lynda O’Neill

Echoes

no longer with us

no words of apology

far away like rain

What shall we forgive?

Sharp things we probably said?

Soft things we didn’t?

if it’s worth doing

you must do it perfectly

is what he said

her burnt rock cakes were

boulders the boys I brought home

had to engulf

pressing my nose in

to Mummy’s aproned stomach:

her hand pats my back

Mum cooked divine stews

his Mozart filled the house

echoes through my days

The Final Count

Mum was prickly pear

Dad was toffee apple crunch

the child still hungry

where was he, my dad,

with his other two daughters

over the water

dressing Dad, I tug

and his milky blue eyes say

you’re being unkind

unknown September

clouds gather over the hill

stay be a father

your plates washed apart

we could never kiss or hug

then you went again

every disaster

adventure death avoids him

as too challenging

I dreamed of you so

young again face in the sky

myself two feet tall

Anne Stewart, Kay Cotton, Susan Jane Sims,

Mavis Howard, Elizabeth Birchall, Maggy Markworthy, Louise Green

8

Belinda Singleton (1 & 2), Annie Maclean, Carol Beadle,

Daphne Gloag, Anne Boileau, Alyss Dye, Daphne Milne

Making it Up

Mother wove stories

stranger than fiction was real –

my childhood as myth

my father’s constant pipe

like sepia old photos

coloured childhood brown

silver birches sway

summer breezes carry you

both are robins now

you left two daughters

seven straggly rose bushes

one unfinished book

along the sea’s edge

we shared footprints but he died

alone far from sea

my day out from school

you cast flies on the water

I fish lonely thoughts

from thrones in the sky

you peer ever down on me

still criticising

give thanks for parents

dead as meat at last I am

free from both of you

Growing Up

there were two branches

split the tree down the middle

one rotten one strong

from Dad, my swearing

from Mum, my untidiness

from both, wordless love

every weekend Mum

took us out we remember

the outings with Dad

I was always sick

before we reached the road’s end

he wouldn’t listen

called himself next best

my ironical father

but he was so wrong

you were there, but not

hiding behind the paper

lost in your armchair

now I see, Daddy,

you had Asperger’s syndrome

sorry I blamed you

Elizabeth Rapp, Kaye Lee, Jill Abram, Denni Turp,

Joan Sheridan Smith, Kathleen M Quinlan, Jean Watkins

9

Departures

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means.

Mary Oliver, “Daisies”, Why I wake Early

I mean them to be well managed but don’t

manage it. I mean my gestures to be clear,

with only one interpretation – and that,

the one I want – the handshake, kiss or hug

right for the person concerned, made smooth

with just the best words to be said, for leaving.

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

I’ll master the art. I live in hope, reconciled

to the thought of how long it may take,

the practice I’ll need to get there,

how it might, in the end, not work out

the way I’d like. You know the feeling, perhaps,

you stranger, friend or relative of mine.

Through time, perhaps, we will learn everything

there is to know about letting go,

going away from someone – even if

that someone’s unpredictable,

sidesteps, starts to speak, to interrupt

our long-thought-through words of farewell,

unconcerned, it seems, with what it is we feel

there is to learn: what the world is, for example –

a gauche, ungainly stranger to whom

we’re strongly drawn, or someone older

who might be your grandmother, holding up

a hand, declaring herself strictly Victorian,

as she puts herself beyond the circle

of your arms, wills them to go away empty,

leaves you puzzled by where love is and what it means.

Joan McGavin (second prize)

Peter

Away from home, I think of you,

tending the garden in my place

yet once again – it’s nothing new.

Away from home I think of you,

invariably kind and true.

I see your rosy smiling face.

Away from home I think of you,

tending the garden in my place.

Joan Sheridan Smith

Hospital (Specular)

They took you off in the machine

and left me alone in A and E.

It had been a busy Saturday night,

and now it was quiet; 1 a.m.

The young woman came to sweep.

I smiled. She smiled. No English, she said,

and she left me alone in the room.

And she left me alone in the room.

I smiled. She smiled. No English she said,

the young woman come to sweep.

And now it was quiet; 1 a.m.

It had been a busy Saturday night.

They left me alone in A and E.

They took you off in the machine

Mavis Howard

10

Ste Radegonde’s Well

i.m. Matthew Wall

The spring appeared in answer to their prayers

for a lake, and fish, according to the legend.

In gratitude, this chapel, built foursquare

its chancel open to the water’s edge.

The altar stands outside where reed and speedwell

bend in marsh winds, brightening dull sedge.

At the same hour they toll the Highgate bell

we place a wreath of summer flowers for him

wait out the minute’s silence by the well

and offer only birdsong for a hymn

with choirs of crickets in the meadow grass.

Ste Radegonde’s prayer is carved beside the spring.

The ferryman of souls* waits by the path

his wooden boat grown lichened, grey with age

he holds a hand out for all those who pass

the time has come for you to leave the stage.

Go with him, gentle man, take home your wage.

Louise Green

* Le Passeur des Ames, a sculpture by Michel Aksent,

Ste Radegonde’s Chapel, Meilhards.

When you Left

you took the boxes I had waited

three years for you to unpack;

you took your old suits – the ones that hadn’t fit

in decades but were too expensive to give away;

you took the account book where you tallied every penny,

divided expenses at the end of every month;

you took your precise instructions for changing a lightbulb,

your insistence that I wash the dishes twice and hand-dry.

You left

muddy footprints across the floor, bare hooks on the wall and

the nastiest note imaginable taped to the bathroom mirror.

Kathleen M Quinlan

The stay of your secure

firm dry embrace

11

Orbiting the Sun

And there it was hanging in the dark

as I opened the door, lighting the years

of its journey round the sun, lighting

the years carved from time.

What happens, he said once, when a comet

goes near the sun? Might it disintegrate,

or else vanish into darkness? Lose

the possibility of light?

Now when I open the door, interrogating

the dark he’s become a part of, I ask questions

of my comet. Does it show signs of dimming,

or will it shine strongly

on years full of circumstance, of shapes

captured from time? How many orbits will it make,

coaxing moments from darkness, before it loses

the possibilities of time?

Meanwhile it is still making a difference to the dark.

Daphne Gloag

The Memory Ghost of her Garment

Her trace remains.

The finest shell of gauze is caught.

It hangs becalmed.

The tension held across each stitch

outlines her final exhalation.

Faint perfume floats on faded blue.

If this dress was stroked or touched

it might dissolve to drifts of dust.

Did she evaporate?

Or leave alone?

Did she stride out from her untied gown?

Her etheric body lies between

violin screams and depths of breaths.

Her trace remains. Her substance gone.

Annie Maclean

Departure

You’re a pink dot

on the Caledonian Sleeper

which slinks

into the tunnel

taking you back

to The House.

Cold cauliflower cheese

with toast, before the frozen

moment

I find your phone

lying under my

dressing table.

Will I? Won’t I?

I scroll through minutes –

new routes for pylons

in The Highlands,

quotas for crustaceans,

sugar tax proposals.

I discover what I feared

and toss your phone/caber

into the rubbish chute.

Vicki Morley

It is appropriate that I sing The Song of the Feet

12

Worth a Thousand Words

We find feathers lying in so many different places,

lost by chance or injury from tails and wings,

and we can easily identify which bird has left such traces.

However, though we stop to hear the way it sings,

it’s less the song and more the sight that helps us know.

We seem to pick up more and best from seeing things.

We must accept that there is evidence to show

that vision mostly helps us understand,

that eyes do more to make our knowledge grow.

Of course, for poets, this is not the way we planned

that others recognise created beauty and ideas,

for while poems sell for pennies, paintings make a grand.

It seems that we have picked the wrong careers

where all that’s guaranteed is poverty and tears.

Denni Turp (first prize)

Too Fast Too Swung

By the stream, rich goblets of gold.

I held a buttercup under your chin.

Then I lifted you up into the swing

that hangs from the snake-barked maple.

I pushed, you pumped, we had lift off,

leaving the ground behind until

the swing flew up too high, you cried

Enough, get down! Enough, get down!

I caught the ropes, plucked you off,

held you tight against my chest.

Thumping heart, open mouth,

silent until your lungs let rip

in a primal howl

then gasping, sobbed

Too much, too high,

too fast, too swung!

My hugging brought you back to earth

from that brief flight to the universe

and you were my daughter and I her mother

and I was my mother and you were me

and I was your granny and you were you

and her and me and they and we.

By the stream, rich goblets of gold.

Anne Boileau

13

Katharine

I have your words but no pictures

Of that giddy girl who danced away

Dull days in a whirl – Kit, Mary, Cis,

Giggling and gossiping your way

Down redbrick terraced streets.

I know your Grantham well – Town Hall,

Library, your church. But did you dance

In a civic space or a tin church hall

Where the priest admired your hat –

‘Suits you, child. It covers your face.’?

That young girl was dutiful, you said –

Home by ten, but danced so well you won a prize. Just love

Surely not with Dad, whose soul fallin’ in the pollen…

You felt lacked any joy, his waltz

Pedestrian and marriage all prose

And poverty. That, I knew!

That young woman was beautiful, the studio portrait says.

Centre-parted hair drawn back, fine cheekbones,

Thoughtful eyes – the face and poise

Of a ballerina in repose.

Elizabeth Birchall

Foxtrot

After the dance she puts away her dancing shoes

and the long red dress he likes so much

He loves dancing she’s learned to love it too

his body against hers the slide of silk on skin

He steals away early from work

they dance in the illicit afternoons

all the windows open sunlight flickering

across their bodies like an old-time movie

most of all they love to foxtrot

the elegant glide bodies moving as one

After the dance she puts away the dancing shoes

and the red silk frock he likes to wear.

Daphne Milne

Ham Salad in the Front Room

She removes her dentures;

so pink, so white on the Sunday cloth,

covered by Auntie Maud with

a doily and a whisper.

Agonises over a sweet sherry,

fears the fumes of sin will betray her,

bring judgement on the ward

where she’s lived so long.

Released for a family tea

with wedding present china,

her strange mumbles are a monotone

over Mum’s famed coffee sponge.

In the album,

above her trailing bouquet,

between dour bridesmaids,

her fine features are fearful,

perhaps explain why

my Dad once said their sex life was

problematical.

Religious mania, I was told years later.

Seven, terrified as she held out

Granddad’s photo for my kiss that day,

what was wrong with Grandma?

I put it down to missing him or

some other adult mystery.

Lynda O’Neill

14

3AM

I’m moonless as tonight’s sky, helpless

as a rabbit’s blind and furless kits

and in my body’s cave misgivings hang

from the walls like folded wings. To combat

thumping pain and racing fear, I picture

a Matisse-red room with French windows,

potted palms and a half-naked woman

lounging on a sofa, then the yellow surprise

of the first drifts of daffodils trumpeting

spring to morose February this morning.

It doesn’t work and the silence is implacable

as the dark – I wish it purred like the cat settling

her warm self into the curve of my spine

to sleep but the black cat has long gone.

A tremble in the air – and there are my friends,

shadowy at first beyond my bed. Their outlines

Ghazal: It Means Soup

When you have leftovers, it means soup.

Mix it, heat it, and enjoy, it means soup.

Restaurant’s a word packed with promise

from Alexandria to Boston, it means soup.

Look in The Good Food Guide

brush those pizza boxes aside, it means soup.

Memories of swimming in the lido,

very good for your libido, it means soup.

When you’re at breakfast feeling hollow,

guess what you’ll have tomorrow, it means soup.

Let souper a soup-maker

close my ghazal, it means soup.

Vicki Morley, née Souper (third prize)

slowly fill out with muted colours and now

they’re facing each other in two rows

as if for a formal dance. They reach out,

join hands across the divide. I gaze

at their arms which seem to form the ribs

of a boat, the kind ancient kings were buried in

but this is no death ship – it’s a hammock

they’ve created for me. The moment I lie down

it takes my body’s burden. No one speaks

but touch has its own language. I let go

of distress and feel such lightness of being

I could lift off into the blue like a damselfly.

Myra Schneider

in collection, Persephone in Finsbury Park,

2016, Second Light Publications

Light! More light! The shadows deepen.

15

A Marriage Poem

for Beattie and Dave

I want your marriage to be

as timeless as the Pyramid of Djoser,

as defiant as Custer’s Last Stand,

as together as Apollo’s two flags

stuck in moon-dust up there, as happy

as if you were long-lived Giant Turtles,

or – perhaps you never heard of this? –

as chuffed as Ming, the Deep Sea Clam, who lived

five-hundred and seven years in Icelandic waters,

cocking his clogs in 2006…

I want your marriage to be

as solid as an All Blacks scrum,

capped as often as Richie McCaw,

as intuitive as Mesut Ozil,

as tenacious as Novak Djokovic

as surprising (in a good way)

as Ian Botham in the 1981 Test Series

when he made three-hundred and ninety-nine runs

and took thirty-four wickets,

though no-one thought it could be done.

I want your marriage to be

as tough as Mrs Thatcher’s handbag,

as celebratory as The Queen’s Ninetieth Birthday,

as healthy as five fruits a day,

as packed with vitamins as a pint of Guinness,

as cheerful as a colony of Adelie Penguins,

as solid as Solidarity,

as resilient as Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards,

who qualified for the ’88 Winter Olympics

while living, free of charge, in a Finnish mental hospital.

I want your marriage to be

all the joys you pretend not to remember:

your first walk on a beach without nappies;

getting a Gold Star from teacher;

braving out surprising body-hair;

saying you don’t have a headache

from drinking Vodka and Peach Juice Cocktails;

saying Happy Birthday a week late to a dear parent –

yes, I want your union to be

everything you both are, and aspire to be, and more.

CHEERS!

Dilys Wood

a matter of perspective

16

The house was quiet and the world was calm

photos

Anne Stewart Denni Turp

Arriving… from pinwheel to budded branch

Arrived! The stay of your secure firm dry embrace

So, how was it for you? It is appropriate that I sing The Song of the Feet

I can wait… Light! More light! The shadows deepen.

Just love fallin’ in the pollen… The house was quiet and the world was calm.

a matter of perspective The stragglers leave. The iron gates close.

The stragglers leave. The iron gates close.