Music to Make Me Weep

One CD in my collection
played only at Yuletide,
for no more than a week,
brings me to tears
for all the Winter Festivals
gone past in 
since I was twenty.

Music to make me weep.

The disc only came to me
a quarter of a century ago, 
but it pulls all the memories
from the twenty plus years before,
the tears flow blurring vision
through which I see
like yesterday the Yuletide
I became engaged 
to my first husband,
and then the Christmases
we shared for a year
over a quarter of a century.

Music to make me weep.

The scene changes 
to the first Yule after
I met my second husband,
shared three thousand miles a
apart on the phone all
Christmas Day the same meal, 
and the same video after,
and the first one we were
together a year later
after his two young daughters
moved this at time to Ireland,
after the ten years in England and Orkney,
then the Yule alone,
after he left me for another.

Music to make me weep.

Finally,
six years ago in Bath,
the three cats and I 
with the man who became
husband three,
a big house in the city
and in then the years since
after the big house
to our place in the country,
a home to share
a life to cherish
a time of gratitude.

Music to make me weep.

This CD has taken me
through three lifetimes 
since I became an adult,
in such different places
all of which the music
slips into my memory holding
tenderly the remembrances
of joy and gladness, 
gingerly those of loss and pain;
for this is the power of music,  
to elicit emotion,
to recall events,
to jostle free recollections
of times and people
past and gone,
present and here,
into the future and yet to be
this CD will take me through
those Yuletides as well.

Music to make me weep.


The CD is Celtic Christmas II: A Windham Hill Collection

Remembering the Future

I was once told:
Remembering the past is easy,
it’s remembering the future
that’s difficult.

Those words have
haunted and challenged
me for many years now,
during which time
I have struggled
to come 
to terms with
the gift of triple vision – 
of seeing the now,
but always in the light
and in the shadow
of the then and the yet.

There is no
written guide 
passed down,
passed along, 
merely
stumbling along as best
as possible
hoping this technique
is adequate, 
knowing that it is not.

How is it
that I arrive 
at these places
of semi-understanding,
quasi-comprehension
out of my depth,
facing the breadth
of clear perception and
shaded sight,
opening 
like a giant maw
of uncertainty before me?

Questions 
unanswerable,
barely asked
as I move beyond
the mist held past
and toward
the fog shrouded future.

The Lammas Fire

The Lammas fire now
will ever hold
the energy and memory
of my Wyntre Cat.

It was so appropriate
that on day of Lammas last year,
and done all unknowing
by those at the pet crematorium,
a fire was lit for you
to free the final ties
that might still have bound you
to this life
though you had five days
earlier you bravely
sauntered through
the Pearly Catflap
and met your catcestors
who led you to their feasting hall.

The Lammas fire now
will ever hold
the energy and memory
of my Wyntre Cat.

On the anniversary
of your crossing over
Purfling Cat spent part of the day
snoozing in the spot outside
where you died in peace,
though she was not there
and could not have known
by any marker of our understanding,
a tribute though, I wonder,
which gave me comfort
that long sunny afternoon.

The Lammas fire now
will ever hold
the energy and memory
of my Wyntre Cat.

I have more than once
shed tears for missing you,
your murmming, merranging and neowwing
the loss of which has left
a strange silence in our lives,
which your two sisters
have not seen fit to fill,
as I give thanks
for the eleven years
you graced my life
and gave me your companionship.

The Lammas fire now
will ever hold
the energy and memory
of my Wyntre Cat.

 

So . . .

So . . .
Why is it so difficult to remember the days
before they all began to blur together,
the days before the lockdown,
the days before mandated isolations,
the days before we would not go
out to the beach,
out to the nature reserve,
out to lunch,
out to be with friends?

So . . .
Why is it so difficult to remember the days
when we took freedom of movement for granted,
when we took going to the shop unmasked for grated,
when we took being anywhere at any time for granted?

So . . .
Is this some sort of mental or psychological mechanism
to shield us from the challenges
caused by the abridgement to movement,
caused by the rampant running of an indiscriminate virus,
caused by the wondering what life will look like in the future,
or if it is even possible to imagine future any longer
the way it had been before
the knowledge that Covid-19 will not be the only contagion,
the knowledge that our fruits and vegetables harbour microplastics,
the knowledge that our planet is virtually beyond redemption?

So . . .
I sit and ponder
what it used to be like when so much of this was out there,
but I just didn’t realise how bad some of it was,
and that it is getting worse.

So, it was you – Covid-19

I felt you coming,
months ago long before anyone
dared name you,
before anyone had a hint
of your existence,
but then I did not recognise you,
could not name you,
until now.

You slid here
on Brexit’s slipstream
unnoticed and undetected,
perhaps longer than
we will ever know,
until it was too late.

The threat of you,
or you kin,
is always with us,
waiting for the opportunity,
a careless or deliberate action,
not a few have issued warnings
over the years that fell
on deaf ears
and onto eyes blinded
by insensitivity and greed.

How do I know all this now?
I scrolled back in my memory
for experiences presaging occurrences,
major events or incidents
that caused radical alteration
on a large scale,
and going back nineteen years ago
I came to the summer before 9/11.

Here I struck paydirt,
for in reviewing the impressions
and feelings of those unsettling months,
I realised that event most closely
fitted a thing so big and world altering,
and the relief I felt in naming what I knew,
after the shock wore off.

It seems mistakenly,
I thought the dis-ease I had felt
since last autumn was all about
the scrambled energy
present here concerning
the island on which I live
severing ties with its largest neighbour,
about the effects of the
unaccountable arrogant and self-righteous
appeals to former greatness,
evoking by implication if not utterance
the time we ruled the seas
and much more land on every continent,
that we would be greater on our own.

As it turned out,
I was only partially right,
for though those ideas and energies
were surely present they were not enough,
because when the time of parting came
ever closer week by week,
the apprehension grew,
restless, anxious, fretful
energies swirled around me,
doom, fear, panic
for Brexit to be the only cause –
and how in all this I missed
the looming spectre of death
I do not know, except,
it was woven amongst the other
sensations carefully hidden.

All this changed a few days ago,
I knew then it was you,
a wraith stealing in under
the larger shadow
of our insular concerns;
perhaps, in part my confusion
came because the same issues prevail
in your wake as in the wake of Brexit:
food and border security,
international and institutional cooperation,
movement of goods and people,
loss of jobs and livelihoods –
though not the thousands of deaths,
no, they are yours alone.

Would it have helped
if I had known sooner it was you coming,
though there would have been nothing
I could do to stop you,
for was never in my power
to prevent you
breaking on these shores
any more that I could halt
the sealing of those same shores
from Europe and its misapprehended dangers,
which are nothing compared
to the dangers you brought here?

In all of this there are lessons
I have learned to apply in the future,
and there will be futures like these
for those of us who survived this time,
when individuals and governments
will make misguided choices and decisions,
for surely there will be other
pandemics, viruses and existential threats,
when other energies will crash over me,
portending death and danger,
when I trust I will remember from this time
I need to dig deeper and look farther,
to perhaps understand sooner,
what I know and thus find a way
to prepare myself and hope
I will not again be overwhelmed.

May the cures for Brexit and you
not be worse the dis-ease and disease
you both have already caused me and others,
stealing a half a year of my life,
though thankfully not ending it,
leaving me the rest of it to be
lived out in a world reshaped and unfamiliar.