Jacqui Thewless Poems

birthdays loom

from the places they keep secret among years
...

First, early frost
strikes with dawn-sulphur
and melts by nine.
...

Perhaps you, too, become
reclusive, the element of choice
seemingly invisible -
...

A fine rain falls as the two of us stand quietly on the path before going indoors. Joan is pointing to the snowdrops: I’m listening to the lively sounds of birds singing inside the hedge, when, all at once, we hear a single, startlingly deep, loud, rook’s croak.
Joan turns, quickly, points up into the sky, her arm behind my head: Look! There he is! Can you see him? I follow her directing finger, peer across the distance to the branches of the giant fig that grows by the barn - another croak! – but I can’t discover the source. Look! He’s moved! Joan’s sense of everything in this landscape is almost uncanny: ubiquitous, laser-like, sensitive, precise.

We spend the day by the fire; chatting, reading. She lets me fall asleep, and when I wake I’m astonished to find her standing in silence at my elbow. On looking round, the bay branches are already scratching at a black window. While Joan cooks supper, I stand on the wide doorstep leaning on the closed front door. The dark is almost absolute, except for the strangely mesmeric slow winking of solar lights, lining the garden path.
...

Where the present church stands now, legend has it that St Deiniol built a simple hermitage on this brow of the hill in the 6th Century. The much developed structure has once more become a home for birds and, no doubt, other small creatures who find access to the ruin. Ivies grow where they will upon the roof and walls, and, all around the building, wild flowers - such as double-headed daffodils, snowdrops and Wood anemones - grow in careless freedom in the spring. Saplings have seeded themselves. Thick brambles yield abundant fruit in summer. Walking on from here, you can look through a break in the hedgerow, downwards onto Pembroke town; and, conversely, from the old town walls or from the railway platform, you can see the tall church spire as a feature on the southern horizon.
I make my own way to this site each spring. It’s said that there was once a holy well here – where now the lofty spire rises from the place.

drink hangs from a rope
...

on this grey morning
a bowl of sea-silver-winks
and trees holding shores;
...

Christmas approaches.

Every star-struck sense
...

At my age, I am often surprised. I count this willingness to wonder about changes as one of the blessings which came naturally when I tumbled ‘over the hill’.
As in many villages and small towns, the Pembroke Post Office is an important place, far more personally so than any other institution. From here, folk deliver hand-written letters and parcelled gifts to friends and family who live so far away. There is a curious solemnity about the ritual weighing of packets at the threshold of the Post Office counter, and in the liturgy of questions as to their appointed ‘class’ and value. Oddly, I’ve never seen two of the three persons who sit behind the counter anywhere else in the town. If I were a child, I might believe that they lived and worked under house arrest! Maurice is the exception.

Maurice’s local is ‘The Waterman’s Arms’, a fine old pub at the far end of the bridge across Pembroke millpond, which has outdoor seating from which you can watch the swans pass or congregate - or see otters, if you are lucky. Inside, on weekend nights, I’ve seen Maurice ‘let down his hair’, propping up the bar with pints and conversation. Tie-less, in mufti, he loses his influential air: one of the rest of us on this side of the barman’s counter. On Monday mornings, however, his long face framed by a neatly parted hairstyle which features a short, thin, straight, fine fringe, Maurice represents all that is enduring about one of the oldest British social institutions. His droll, dark, voice and melancholy features, the laconic tilt of his head and shrugged shoulders which answer to questions as to the scale of his hangover, are as familiar as the sight of one’s own right hand curved round a pen.
...

over Uluru
I can almost hear the sun's
new boomerang of light
...