See branch oh cherry blossom ripe
Below Payne’s haunted sky of grey
In mornings rain dripped clouds on high
The pink now wetted held to bough.

Love Mary x

The days come faltering now
My worn out shoes bear stone
In shades of grass they walk
No more the butterflies talk.

Love Mary x

Under the blanket on a warm afternoon
With a faded sunshade over our heads
Mother and I would lie waiting for rain
And talk of her mother, with big blue eyes
Who died in childbirth when thirty-five
Leaving two little girls, Emily and Rose
And a tiny son who lived but two days
Always an absence for my sweet mother
But always a beautiful presence for me.

Love Mary **

I come from sunlight,
      The sweeping of leaves,
      South London streets,
      Lurburnum seeds;
      Hot semolina,
      A spoonful of jam,
      Hands full of gooseberries,
      That's who I am.

      I come from rose petals,
      The sound of the fairs,
      The smell of candyfloss
      Mist in the air;
      I come from warmth,
      My parents hands,
      Outings to parks,
      Both small and grand.

     I come from knowledge,
     True and false,
     From nursery rhymes,
     And stories and pictures of God;
     I come from gentleness,
     A quiet afternoon,
     From visions of loveliness,
     Sewn on a spool.

    I come from two worlds,
    With different ways,
    A threaded pearl necklace,
    And sensible soles
    A mother and father,
    I think I knew,
    I came and I wandered,
    I looked at the view.

       By Mary **

I just buy things
It takes space up in my mind
From meteorites
To flying kites
Chewy bites
Lemonade slice
Book on poets
How to sew it.
Marzipan friends
It never ends
I just buy things.
Why?

Love Mary x

Love Mary x

Everything just becomes things
Things to put on the shelf
Things to put in the shed
Things to take to bed
Pictures on your wall
Mats on the floor
Clothes in the cupboard
Jewellery boxes to store
When what we need is
None of these
But to be loved
And adored.
That’s all
But costs more
Than Everything.

Love Mary **

Streatham's White Garden lies between a walled Old English garden and a small orchard in the Rookery, once the grounds of a large house dating back to 1786, and now an historic Grade II listed public garden. The elegant double borders, backed by trees and climbers and edged with lawn, echo each other down the length of the garden, with white benches marking each end. Still the only white garden in any of London's public parks, the White Garden pre-dates Vita Sackville-West's famous grey, green and white garden at Sissinghurst by at least 30 years.

Local volunteers under the leadership of Kew-trained designer Alison Alexander and project co-ordinator Charlotte Dove (both working for the Friends of Streatham Common, who successfully raised funding for the project from the Heritage Lottery Fund) carried out the recent restoration. The restoration was based on archival research and visits to other historic gardens, and is faithful to the spirit of the Arts and Crafts-inspired Edwardian original. Many of the plants in the new design have been chosen for their historical associations, including shasta daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum), ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), and a white cultivar of the old-fashioned English rose, Rosa spinosissima – all plants that would have been as familiar to the leading lights of the movement, such as William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, as they were to the Edwardian gardeners who planted up the original garden.

This is a serene place, much loved by visitors. But serenity is not the whole story – determination also plays a role in the history of this garden. Streatham residents fought a public campaign to rescue the Rookery grounds (the house itself was demolished in 1912) from the wave of suburban housebuilding that reached a peak in the years before the First World War. The gardens were laid out by Major Philip Maud of London County Council (LCC), and opened in 1913.

The concerns surrounding cramped urban living conditions that gave rise to the public parks movement in the nineteenth century remain a reality today. Open spaces are a necessary release valve: an escape from the pressures of city life, and proven to have a positive effect on mental and physical health. It is no coincidence that the LCC designs for other public gardens designed in the period (including the Old English garden in nearby Brockwell Park) were also influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement: it was a style ideally suited to the purpose, being itself a reaction to the negative impact of industrialization, and an expression of nostalgia for an idyllic imagined past.

Despite the pressures of the city, horticulture has long been part of this area's heritage, and for much of last century it thrived: amateur and professional gardeners alike participated in fruit and flower shows organised by newly-formed clubs and societies, well-maintained civic parks delighted visitors and residents, allotments flourished, and local nurserymen like John Peed of West Norwood produced lavish catalogues of the latest horticultural discoveries.

As government funding for green spaces has decreased, however, gardens like the Rookery have suffered from reductions in maintenance budgets: as late as the 1970s, seven gardeners were dedicated to the Rookery alone, but today only two contractors are based there. Once again local residents have responded, developing community groups, volunteer-led projects and local fundraising, and working closely with the Lambeth Parks Service. One such community group, the Streatham Common Co-operative (SCCoop), aims to take on the gardens and increase the number of gardeners. Applications for outside funding have been productive: most of the plants for the White Garden restoration were purchased with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, with the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association providing a grant for new white roses. But resources are finite, and – in the best tradition of ecological planting – the new plants for the White Garden have been chosen to suit the prevailing conditions, and to flourish with minimal maintenance. Gardens have always thrived on both innovation and tradition, and the restoration of the White Garden at Streatham Rookery is a tribute to those who are prepared to find new ways of looking after treasured open spaces.

Love Mary ***

The white garden was a cascade of purity
In the Summer months.
Against a background of red brick high walls
Surrounding the right side of this ornamental
Repton designed geometrically ordered song.
Resting together with the freedom of wildness
So to experiences nature in all its loveliness
Dropping pennies in the old wishing well,
Circling the gothic fountain of Cupid’s love,
Until, at last, the slatted wooden gate opens
Surrounded by hanging large leafed ivy
Into the forest where I must go and you
Must stay.

Love Mary x

Darling daughter, Victoria, I think we both know
That staying away from each other was the best.
For the suffering I have to bear is not for you to
Witness and rather joy sit in your lap and be near.

I have no regrets and privacy is a necessity now
So I might slip away leaving a glimpse of sweet
Memories and a bundle of cardboard boxes for the
Children when it comes to opening time.

Bring beautiful Arlo to see the garden I made
And dad has another grandchild to cuddle.
Sad for the time we never had but glad of what
We did together over the years .Bye Bye Birdie .

Love Mum Grandma ***

It be happenchance that two personalities find
In one another an asymmetrical mirrored mind
Brought together in space and time, bending
Reality so far that the book of knowledges closes.


No prediction could have guessed such a loving
Couplet, nor devoured a nectar so cunningly sweet.
For at its core, unobtainable without the other, lies
A tale of unimaginable cradling where terror abides.

Love Mary  x

Hello swans with your brown signets
On the near edges where the weeds blend
And the green meets the trusted stoney bed
You frighten a little with those huge wings
The strength to **** if fear struck an orange eye.

The ducks and drakes trailing fluffy ducklings
So linger daring the hands of bread and biscuits
A continuity of return until fat and bloated, stop.
Their tail feathers sharing a twitching line march
As they swim back to the safety of the reed beds.

Love Mary

Take me to the Rookery with its many paths
A tea house selling refreshments in pretty glass
Three striped lollies covered in chocolate beads
Biscuits and sandwich are all that we need.

The garden was set out, in brick oblong beds
Raised from the ground and divided by hedge
Many bush roses, of the older kind, smelling of
Cold cream and sweet camomile.

There was a terrace with steps leading down
To a sunken garden where the roses reclined
Hanging over arbours, pink , white and cream
And other perennials added to the scene.

This place a haven at the top of Streatham hill
Does anybody know it, it might be there still?
My daddy took me often on a Sunday afternoon
To ramble in the sunshine, and play at my will.


Love Mary x

In the ashes of division hope ignited
Unity decided a new fate, in its wake.
My father lived in Chester Road,
Off Ladbrook Grove, eight children
In a tenament flat back to back.

The poverty of the forties are
Now palatial palaces, white pillared.
My father joined the army to escape
To marry and move to Streatham,
South London, to an Edwardian terrace.

Notting Hill, the divided community
Chelsea and Kensington let it happen.
My grandmother moved to a new town
And this year we all watched on TV
Grenfell burn as an inferno in the dark.

Love Mary

How far do you have to go to get to the end of the world ?
A questioned I asked, with such naivety, when I was a child .
Of course I was thinking about distance, not space and time.
Neither of the travelling one has to do in ones mind to survive.

My mother told me the world was round and not flat
And I imagined walking its circumference in endless circles,
But how to cross all the blue dividing the land into shapes.
And if I got a ***** could I dig through to Australia and
How long would it take me and could it really be done?
Questions of physicality and gravity, the planets and moon.

Growing into ones twenties, questions become more metaphysical
About the meaning and purpose of our lives, the way we conduct
Ourselves, relationships with others and most of all falling in love
And that takes most of our middle years’ of thinking, so  when we fall upon late middle age with declining health, questions change.


In search of kindness we look to others, our neighbours, the community, the health service, a local church, reference books,
The internet to find answers to many unanswered questions.
And there on paper are numerous suggestion, diets , ideas but
Nowhere is there any real help, love or care.

Our questions become primeval, and when there are no answers
To desperation we ask WHY!  Realising how naivety led us along
An unprepared path and how happily we basked in that joy not
Knowing the real truth of how all our questions would be left
Empty. And now I need to know how best to die and no one knows.

Love Mary x

Turning towards the left
My ponytail followed me
With a flick catching the sun
I liked flicking my hair
Feeling it brush my shoulders
And presence of a tied bow
Circular plastic clips
Holding the whispy bits
Often on a Sunday.

Love Mary ***

In trying not to hate
I determined my fate
For people knew
I was kind and true
But they did abuse
The few.

And the wind
Will tell the birds,
The birds the bees,
The bees the flowers,
The flowers the people
Who carry the flowers
When I die because of
Lies.

Love Mary x

We live in a territorial state
Where doctor’s receptionist
Wear chainmail and carry axes
To save guard their sovereigns
From interference.

Responses  sound like an offensive
Battling against imprisonment
I am polite, ask kindly
Tread lightly.

I am a poor, weak patient
I pay for your services
We are unequal as I am ill
You are healthy and fit.

What has happened
To make you so unkind
Disrespectful, blind
Your turn will come .

Love Mary .

Second daughter you were so kind
When your baby sister was around
How can I capture thee
No words are lovely enough to be.

Love Mummy x

In the window frame there is room for you and me
The garden always overgrown still a child’s delight
Pushing wheels along uncemented paths of grass
Those blowing clocks filling the sky with your breath
And I watch you, for hours, golden rounded limbs
Moving the air, swirling dresses, petticoats, a dolly
In spotted blue and a new mother growing into
Herself.
I watch silky chestnut hair, float, pulled by the wind
Over red knitted cardigan and an upturned nose in a
Smile as you see me there at the window of love.

Love Mummy xxxx

Flap, flap two black wings staggered
On two yellow clawed feet after stormy
Weather and the tufts of cats fur left
Like a white collar on emerald green.

Inside the cardboard box with soft lining
And scraps of bread, cheese and water
On a little polythene transparent oblong
There was chirping to be heard from within.

On varnish floor he skids and skates about
Putting newspaper down his legs got strong
After a few days of feeding he began to fly
Just a little spinning around the front room.

Bright eyed with yellow beak eating worms
He was nearly ready to be allowed outside
To find his strength and freedom with others
Tearily he was carried to park and released.

A few days later , looking in our garden tree
We saw him sitting on a leafy branch chirping
And singing a thank you song of gratitude for
A life he may never have lived without our help.

Love Mary ***

Let’s go high up as black dotted wings
Tempering the wind in search of home
Where no longer there is day and night
And together we float in the silver light.

Days of sorrow vanish in sunshine’s haze
The white cliffs throwing us their spray
In a goodbye gesture where the waves stay
And we’re leaving, out above the ocean today.

Love Mary x

Poor little lies
Why do you start
Getting in the way
Of truth’s beauty
Sitting in people’s mouths
Sticking to teeth
Eating away at freedoms
You are loved irresponsible
And used increasingly
Breaking trust
Destroying integrity
Poor little lies
Can’t always hide.

Love Mary x

I remember the hatefulness
Resting between corridors
Watching as doors opened
Waiting to pounce, suddenly,
On someone with mousey hair
Who was studious and square.

The undercurrents ran like
Tram lines, intersecting,
Infecting others with mockery
The pulling of hair, kick on shin
I feared break with its milk stains
And so many broken bottles.

My good looks saved me the bully
As I was seen as an asset to be used
A symmetrical form unnoticed
As I hurried past the stair wells
Hoping today it would remain quiet
Today, I think of Margaret Atwood .

I caught you round the waist
The buckle of your coat in my hand
Blonde curls tasting of the wind
And a love so deep within.

Love Mum ***

Prattlebag  and Whistle were two tom cats
One was all stripy the other was all black
They were part of a trio born in late May
The girly sold first with a bright yellow bow.

The two lads were playful the curtains did pull
Dethreaded the settee but habitat have them still
Uprooted the rose bushes with those front paws
Trampled the daffodils so they dance no more.

But when in the evening the clouds come down
And darkness falls in their grassy playground
Through the cat -flap, come quickly, the kitty cats
Placing themselves down to sleep on the mat.

For my grandchildren
Love Grandma **

We wait for you under an umbrella of love
Collected are your needs, neatly in a box
Surrounding you we look forward to the day
When we shall see your face, stroke your head
Arlo, stay safe little one in the waters of time
Knowing Grandma has you always in mind .

Love Grandma to Arlo ***

I dropped from your memory
Like a book of desire
The pages scatter the beach
And the words wash away.

No longer the nightingale sings
Or roses brush the doorstep
Unwelcome enters the rooms
As I slowly wither and die .

Love Mary ***

I use to feel love would never die
That people were kind and never lied
Things always got better if you tried
And goodness lay at the heart of the
World.
But
Now I know
Love only sustains so much
And lies a commonplace touch
Trying only works for an army
Whilst evil fills many souls
Now I know.

Love Mary x

Two eyes appeared from under a broadrimmed hat.
They looked around with astonishment.

In a schoolroom, far off in the distance, a boy was
Busy making a wooden bowl.
The teacher unaccustomed to such slowness
Requested a completion date.
“I am not slow thought the boy, just working
Away until I get it right.”
He met the teacher’s gaze with an expression
Of opacity and a sense of bewilderment.

On another day, at a later date, this same boy
Was found in his metalwork class applying
Cylinders of gases to his small creation, quietly,
Hoping for a connection before he was blown
To smithereans. Two blue eyes concentrated as
The jets of flames hissed into space.
Too long the gases flowed.
The master rose, the boy shook and his eyes
Widened.

In a playground, sometime earlier,
A small boy could be seen playing without a coat.
Gossiping women spoke of this unnatural act,
This exception to the fold. The boy stared back
Hearing their words with his eyes.

Decades later when his hair had turned from
Brown to grey but his eyes were still blue
And wide apart, he painted a little ***
Sitting on a pale surface, gazing into nothingness.
This painting took him a long time.
He had to get it right, the tones , the lines,
The connections.

After he finished ‘Little ***’, he sat down
And stared into the two blue blobs set wide
Apart on its surface and he thought, “this is
Me, the boy, the man, the painter, of wide
Apart, unnameable moments.”

The Beginning.

Love Mary ***

Bear came to do my garden today
It had got into rather a mess,
Sticky Jenny and dandelions,
Rotten roots and garlic shoots
Got poor Bear betwixed;
Hot and sweating, really fretting
Bear began to cry,
Why was it that I thought gardening
From painting let me hide.
But off he went along the fence
Pulling out the weeds
Found some bulbs that did not smell
Dug  them up, as fast, as well
Now they're  back in a different spot
Three short stems in an empty plot;
Made me laugh just to see
How silly that Woolly Bear can be.


Love Mary
Thank you to Ian my Gardener

A star sat on my eiderdown to dwell
And in delight it opened up its spell.

Love Mary

Wife : ‘I have a serious inflammatory condition’.
Husband:  ‘I think you want to stop bullying people,
It gets on their nerves’.

Love Mary **

Who are we these people who sit with words
And an audience of silent poetic spectators
Day after day we need to write to be heard
For there is no where else that these words
Can be said, read, understood.

Our country, and habitat matter not
For we are like invisible spirits
Sending out messages
Philosophical statements
Because politics has failed
There is no representative
For the majority.

Our words a last plunge
For freedom
In a world of autocracy.
So we dive deep
Swim out against the waves
Floating in waters of truce
Hoping that we can
Make a difference
However small
To enlighten,
Comfort
And share
The best we can find
Of our humanity.

Love Mary xxxx

If I could, above anything
I would paint the world
Flake white
But it would soon
Get *****.

Love Mary x

integrity
ɪnˈtɛɡrɪti/Submit
noun
1.
the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
"a gentleman of complete integrity"
synonyms: honesty, uprightness, probity, rectitude, honour, honourableness, upstandingness, good character, principle(s), ethics, morals, righteousness, morality, nobility, high-mindedness, right-mindedness, noble-mindedness, virtue, decency, fairness, scrupulousness, sincerity, truthfulness, trustworthiness
"I never doubted his integrity"
2.
the state of being whole and undivided.
"upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty"
synonyms: unity, unification, wholeness, coherence, cohesion, undividedness, togetherness, solidarity, coalition
"internal racial unrest threatened the integrity of the federation"


honesty
ˈɒnɪsti/Submit
noun
1.
the quality of being honest.
"they spoke with convincing honesty about their fears"
synonyms: moral correctness, uprightness, honourableness, honour, integrity, morals, morality, ethics, principle, (high) principles, nobility, righteousness, rectitude, right-mindedness, upstandingness; More
2.
a European plant with purple or white flowers and round, flat, translucent seed pods which are used for indoor flower arrangements.


Thank you English Dictionary
Love Mary

No longer frilly
Abandoned buttons and bows
Took to wearing breeches
And baseball shoes.

Now she’s having a baby
What will that do
Change our young Lily
Into two.

Love Grandma ***

He bent now low on folded flanks
With ***** and rake at near side hand
The wrench from earth he pulled as man
Of last years shooting stem to bin.

Love Mary x

Sometimes out of the throbbing chaos
A voice speaks with compassion
And for a short while
One is lifted
Above the clouds
To where the blue
Is crystal clear
And the sun
A circle
Of returning
Appreciation.

Love Mary x

Speech came easily that day
The day before it happened
Gaiety lay on his shoulder
Shimmering September sun
They had hoped she would
But neither mentioned
So he never definitely knew
And never would
For he drowned
****** under by
Dangerous currents
Just off coast
After attending
A friend’s funeral.
Beatrice is now
Twenty or more
She can but dream
Of the father
She never met.

Love Mary

Redoing the stitches
Did not mend the wound.

Love Mary x

She went in search of truth
As if it would be given up easily
For what it is worth
It does not succumb to questioning
But is bedfellow to lies
Which breeds on its passion.

And she watched them melt
Into each other’s arms
And all the tears she cried
Filled only a silver tea cup.

Love Mary x

If I read anymore of your poems
I shall merge.

Love Mary x

She stood at the window
Hoping for rain
The sleeves of the cotton dress
Loose
And her shoes muddy.

‘Why’, she thought,
Sitting down at last
Did the world have to be so
Forgettable
Loose strands of grass.

Love Mary

Maybe after the grass is cut
Things will get better.

Love Mary **

The little bubble girl
Sat on the kerb
With her clay pipe
And took a breath
Deep in her chest
And blew
And blew
And blew.


And across the sky
The bubbles fly
Bright dancing globes
Reflecting light
A lovely sight
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye.

Love Mary x

When the truth is withheld
The world feels cold
Frostbite in the soul
Tiredness old.


Love Mary

To give up hope is a woeful thing
It leaves the mind an empty skin
With nothing to go around
And pointless visiting.

Love Mary x

When you hear the first seagull
You know you are going to live
That a land awaits your calling
And humanity stood you strong.

Both good and bad a humanitarian
Responds from that place beyond
Where heart is moved into action
A courage braver than life’s song.

So others may continue their joys
In a freedom given back to them
Not in the hope of victories
But the glory of returning Peace.

Love Mary x

Gentle little bird
Always in grey
Like an old soft toy
I’ll take you in a box
Plop you down
In a special spot
Where there are trees
And bumble bees
A bottle of water
And sandwich too.
Gentle little bird
You were heard.

Love Mary x

I remember all those places
Where I felt you loved me
Sometimes quietly with
Insignificance
As an ordinary day began
At the beginning of spring.

I remember my passion for you
And how you loved it
Over and over again
Joining our sweet bodies
United in our bed
And the after sleep of cats.

I remember your reading to me
In soft tones the story I loved
Sitting closeness in the heart
Feeling your hair on my face
Watching the pages turn
Always an unfolding touch.

I remember you loving me
The way I wanted to be loved
In all the places that I needed
With every part of your being
This was a great love
Never taken for granted.

Love Mary ***