(For Donall) Inside, Outside
Sometimes I'm old on the outside
and young on the inside.
Sometimes I'm young on the outside
and old on the inside.
Sometimes I'm young
but on the old side
Sometimes I'm old
but on the young side
Sometimes I'm on the outside
looking inside
Sometimes I'm on the inside
looking outside
Always I'm young when you're
inside me.
poem by Janice Windle
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(Poems from Haunted Houses) Moonlight in Ardival
The tiger does not sleep tonight
it hangs in the moonlight
like a curse on the stairs
the cobras unwind
from the labours of their day
supporting the ornate spittoons
the herons and the falcons
wink their glass eyes -
“I see no ships” -
the turkey carpet stretches
[...] Read more
poem by Janice Windle
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(Growing Pains) 12. Tennis in Bournemouth
Eyed by pigeons and the tall windows
of elegant cream mansions
she and he enter the court.
Father and daughter, mentor and child,
racquets swinging.
Left outside, I contribute
the only way I know.
From a damp bench, peering through
the barrier of wire,
I draw them.
Years later, I see that I have drawn
the netting round the court
intricately, lovingly,
like a prisoner viewing
the exercise yard.
poem by Janice Windle
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(For Dónall) Arrival
You're waiting
under the Arrivals board
in your flying black mac
(or magician's gown...
it's an academic distinction...)
your silver coils of curls
flowing from your worried frown.
And when the train at last
rocks and rolls me up to Platform Ten,
I'm running then, and running fast,
upstream of tired faces in grey suits
and I'm colliding with your warmth,
meeting your soft mouth
with my own eager kiss
and knowing that all day
we both have longed for this.
poem by Janice Windle
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(For Dónall) Parting
We kiss, we kiss,
deep
in the heart of London,
deep
underneath Piccadilly Circus.
Doubly far above us,
Cupid poses, silly boy,
his arrow quite irrelevant
to the love we share.
We kiss, we kiss,
under Piccadilly there.
Gentle, longing kisses
without pain, for we’re aware
while trains will carry us our separate ways,
through tiled ratrun tunnels,
our minds and bodies never do forget
or lose the loving memories of touch
that we have planted each on each,
until this parting’s in our past.
poem by Janice Windle
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(Poems from Haunted Houses) The Go-Between
Under the stern gaze of the summer moon
my big sister, Juliet to Romeo,
Cathy to her Heathcliff,
slid each night on the porch's sloping roof
down to Lovers' heaven
below our bedroom window.
Little sister hugged the secret
into her midnight pillow,
waited for the tap of stones on glass
then flitted like a ghost to unlock doors
and let big sister in
from her illicit play.
Now that romance has flowered,
yielded fruit and withered all away,
I wonder, does a ghostly
tapping on the glass
disturb the dreams of sleepers in that room
whenever moonlight silvers trees and grass.
poem by Janice Windle
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(For Dónall) A Summer Day - To Dónall on his Birthday
It was a summer's day when we first met
the memories are clear - I won't forget -
traffic noise, new faces, beer and sweat -
that summer day when you and I first met.
The kilt you wore - it played its part that summer day
your naked knee on mine, I felt your strength and knew
though we sat down as strangers, my compass was reset
I could not bear to say goodbye to you.
That summer day we met, a year ago
in love we lay, in love we have remained
together we are free and both do know
in loving touch our love will be maintained.
We met amid banality and yet
we kissed and changed our courses - compasses reset
the memories are clear – I never will forget
that summer’s day when you and I first met.
poem by Janice Windle
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(My Mother) Retirement Plans
“When I grow old, ” said my mother, “I’ll change my life.
I’ll rent a garret on the Left Bank of the Seine
in Paris, give up being a mother and a wife,
spend my days painting, drink red wine all night,
my friends will be artists - maybe I’ll write.
“But what about Dad? ” I objected.
My mother reflected.
“He’ll be okay, ” she said.
“He’ll buy a djellabi, sandals, a scarab
and live in the desert, along with the Arabs.
He’s learning the lingo at evening class.
He’ll go over to Gaza” – I thought, what a gas!
I’d spend April in Paris, winter with Dad –
there was going to be some fun to be had!
I hoped that my parents’ dreams all would come true –
but after all that they just moved down to Bude!
poem by Janice Windle
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(Memory Chest) Salvaging the Past
How surprised the sea-chest must have been
when it left the sea
began voyaging with me.
No more travelling in the creak of the hold,
bringing home trinkets
from Sorrento and Port Said
Instead
the trunk set out on my Rake's Progress through
West London's bedsits and flatshares,
painted white in my minimalist period,
covered with a kilim in my exotic Ealing phase,
acquired the status of the Holy Ark
when my childhood's relics, unearthed
from my parents' attic,
found no other home than this dark space,
doubly dark, it rested under my own roof
when for three decades my life I
threw down an anchor, moored
[...] Read more
poem by Janice Windle
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(Growing Pains) Blue
Blue was his colour, he always said. Went with his ice-blue Michael Caine eyes.
Midnight blue velvet suit, in the seventies, their twenties. (She stroking nightly its nap as they sat on her hard two-seater sofa, until he exposed the smooth contrast of the skin beneath.)
His wedding suit a sky-blue linen creation. (Her parents late to the ceremony, she, tearstained at the flower-decked registry office table, hearing her mother breathe, ”Isn’t he beautiful”)
Cerulean and cobalt shirts in the eighties (pure cotton, hell to iron, but hell, she was still in love.)
Prussian blue golf shoes and an ultramarine Armani fleece in the nineties, as far as she could recall.
He bought her a cloud-blue Honda car to do the shopping in, just before she decided to head off into the blue.
In it, she struck out on a polychrome adventure, alone, drove towards the lurid sunset to look for gold at the end of her rainbow.
When they met again, she saw that at some point his eyes had faded to grey, along with their hair.
Blue was still his colour.
poem by Janice Windle
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