Category: family

Fireside secrets

Listen girl keep looking you’d say

Watch that fire flicker with dreams

See pictures of life cross it

And swallow the future whole.

Tell yourself you can see and you will

Shadows of orange flame become futures

Worlds of opportunity open to you

If you only believe they are.

I’m not talking magic or hocus pocus

My words are meant to convey

The simple life you can make

If you should need to escape.

The rat runs here no more comfort

Than the days when I was small

Well, in some ways it is but really

I’m only saying why have the same

When you could have it all?

Written about conversations with my nana as a child

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

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Hitching a lift

It’s heavy work when you’re a kid

Carrying all this bread on trays

So I hitched a lift

On a passing trolley bus

And slipped

In one end out the other

I saw my mother striding out

Face went white to red

You stupid lad she said

As she’s slapping me on the head

Then she kisses me and wipes it

Like she’s never done it

It was like skating on the road

And I don’t see the problem

After all I never dropped any bread

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

One room

It’s all there in this room everything

Almost all we have

The kids sleep in their beds happy

Clueless as to what I worry about

Thank God.

Look at my lad fast growing and so full

Of the hope children have

What can I tell him?

Things that aren’t relevant to them now?

Some things never change

Did I listen to my Dad as a kid

Don’t make me laugh

I love the auld feller

But we’re not much like each other

Well we both have a laugh and a pint

Maybe it’s why we get on

And then there’s my mother

She erupts like a volcano at times

Though the wife says I do as well

I can’t see I’m quite the same

But people laugh when I say that

Next to me is the wife and I say

Thank God

Where I’d be without her I don’t know

And the little one she’s watching me

Through cot bars and I’ll hear a giggle

If I so much as look before she launches

Over the top aimed at my belly

And then we’ll both be in trouble!

Really I want her to stay in bed warm

This is so damned cold the nets are stuck

Frozen there like they’ll snap if I touch

This spot by the window is freezing

But it’s my place to take keep them warm

Don’t tell them it hurts to breathe when I wake

A cigarette is what the doctor said

Would help me to breathe except now

They say I have to stop

Smoking or breathing?

Might be both if I keep feeling this bad

And I look around the room we need to escape

Four bodies in here is too much

It eases me to see our little family

We may not have a lot you see?

But we have each other and enough

We make sure of that ,only just

Thank God.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2018

Some of us…

Some of us she said as her lecture began to take shape

We asked for nothing and never asked for  (tsk tsk) escape,

Now do you see, your life is designed to mirror well, me 

Why can’t you allow and just let things lie, let them be? 

Ignore them said the horrified girl, but why would I do such a thing

It can only resentment grow and hopelessness bring 

If I give out my honesty and expect in return, 

That all things will pass no hatred to churn 

Then isn’t that safer, healthier for him and for me 

To know our feelings show truth make us free? 

Her perplexity grows as the older woman in her face laughed 

Stupid girl that’s like listening for songs on a draught! 

I tell you ignore all that’s wrong and it will just go, disappear 

As the light in your eyes goes you stop having tears 

If there’s none to shed your heart cannot cry

Give up on dreams now ,let them fade and die 

So don’t think of solitude, time or breathing space 

This world won’t tolerate you thinking at that pace 

Years carried on the girl spoke to her own children clearly

My daughter hold onto your dreams and hold onto them dearly 

For if you give up on yourself you give permission to another 

To take your thoughts tightly in their hands and let them smother 

Maybe not intentionally but don’t with yourself be mean 

If you do it is a yardstick for all to clearly see.
Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry2015

Beauty

Shining in your eyes a lively spark of humour dances

A flame you try to hide behind words that contain cultivated steel 

It was tended slowly, carefully learned lessons glow.

You try not to show beauty for that means vulnerability and you were taught 

Never show your weaknesses for they will be exploited  

And you will learn the hard way

So you say little or too much trying to build a perfect shield

Choosing your confidantes with extreme care 

Told to smile, be agreeable to just dance on strings prettily little puppet 

Your eyes show flinty grey with lightning sparks of anger 

Chewing them up with words they don’t understand 

With wisdom they dismiss because they think it’s not nice 

Do you care?

Not one jot 

And it’s all I can do to allow myself to be the brave woman you were

The beautiful, brave, dangerous woman who is only herself.
Ailsa

©AilsaCawleyPoetry 2015

Seeing your face

I see you in my dreams and wake with you gone
Feel your breath close by my face
Hear phrases you utter unexpectedly
So much so that I look for you
Sometimes
Convinced I will see you
Though I don’t
Whirling round as you were there at the corners of my vision
But never quick enough never damned quick enough
To catch you properly
Before
You scooted away again like a child playing hide and seek
One day
I’ll be faster or you’ll be slower
And it won’t just be in my dreams but you’ll be
There
Close enough to touch
And I will be seeing your face
One day.

Ailsa
©AilsaCawley Poetry 2015

Heat of light.

#nationalpoetryday 2015

I thought it would be pure emptiness
When you went to the otherworld
But I went into your room
Just a momentary pause in the day
And I felt it,  filling me from feet up
Warm, glowing white light
The purest light a love can offer
And I am forever blessed
In dark days I can dig deep
For the candle you placed there
I shall be forever grateful for it.
Thankyou for the white pure love light

Ailsa

And I will look for you

I will walk the beaches very soon, wild and windy as they are

Watch the waves as they crash the pier into quiet submission

Remember the stories of when you were a boy free as a bird

Look at the sun as it drops below the horizon as always

And I will look for you

I will wander the lands I feel your presence beating like a heartbeat

Where the thrumming of the earth burbles like your laughter

And the wind whips around me holding me steadily

Hear stories of adventure you told all from your own mind

I will look for you

Listening and learning your words by heart and tears flowing down

In peaceful solitude I can only think of you

Your voice spoken in dreams or by angels and others

I get used to you not being here, now

I know someday you’ll come to collect me and I have to be patient

Until then, I can do nothing other

Than keep on looking for you

How to mistake your feelings

It’s not a difficult thing to get wrong the feelings game
I could have said I had no connection to you
So very easily
This time last year
Now my heart and head have agreed on something
That doesn’t happen so very often
Suddenly I realised I’d been building a castle of a man
Someone I wanted to see from being a child
Who you are really
Who my head tried to make you
And they are different
Not remotely similar to any notion I had
You were so remote I invented you
Like an imaginary friend
Who I couldn’t measure up to
I have realised I don’t have any measuring up to do
And I can’t and won’t try
Because we both did it you see
Built sand castles and stuck the other atop
Now?
The sea has parted the sand and we are so….
Different,  opposite
I accept the terms of the future
That each of us may know the other
Like an acquaintance
Too late for more, family,  friendship even
I care,  you care
And it has to be left there
I now feel peace towards you.

Ailsa