Mom poems
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When I Close My Eyes
© Ivan Donn Carswell
When I close my eyes I cannot reconstruct your face
but the three-dimensional solidity or you
bursts through the tissues of my skin,
transmogrified by a tactile binary fusion.
We, The Living
© Ivan Donn Carswell
There were moments when we rose above despair
borne by strength of spirit in your name,
but tragedy remained in darkened shadow's
gloom beneath your widow's eyes.
Twenty Four Hour Embrace
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Awakening
in the twenty four hour embrace of a few moments sleep,
where half a lifetime eludes dreams;
and feeling you were cheated
by too much gin and lack of sleep
in these unconsummated fumblings.
To Henrietta Lyn
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We're going to miss you little girl, you leave an aching space
way out of all proportion to your size. Tomorrow we must face the day
without your lavish greeting - without your urgent bark to wake us up
and say, "Let me out of here, the sun is up, I want to play."
This Window is
© Ivan Donn Carswell
This window is confidence,
documenting proceedings,
capturing moments,
cleansing views
On the Bill Which Was Passed in England For Regulating the Slave-Trade
© Helen Maria Williams
The hollow winds of night no more
In wild, unequal cadence pour,
The Waipakihi
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Access Road Fifteen they named it
this anonymous road to the Waipakihi
where its brawling water becomes Tongariro.
A moments journey across a horizon
anchored in haze-ridden Taupomoana
distanced, but jewelled in my thoughts.
Tales in the beginning
© Ivan Donn Carswell
In the beginning that was all there was,
a new forged social unity of the self aware
in a community of need, a bare structure
to belie the complexities to come,
but it was where the tales all must have begun.
Desires that you can only tame to know
© Ivan Donn Carswell
"Zipless sex" one cynic called
this festival of fornication,
this celebration of new-found sexual strength
and urbane honesty, of sex for sex as sex alone
None is spared your handsome smile
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The mystery of a smile that glows within your eyes
and is framed in an innocent countenance
passes not unheeded.
Those transient's hallway smiles and greetings offered through your door
My enemy my friend
© Ivan Donn Carswell
My enemy my friend
whom I know without compromise,
when I listened to the
deconstructions avowed of you
It seldom snowed - Part II
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It seldom snowed in Camp they said, on the mountains, yes,
and in the Styx, aka zone six. Thats where we were afoot
in alpine grass, garbed to test our winter skills,
tramp the craggy hills and camp a night or two,
It is an abhorrent thing
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It is an abhorrent thing, this incarceration of your vulnerability,
profoundly cruel in the way you were beaten
to your knees, blithely unaware it was a battle lost
for your health and wellbeing. It was dreadful to witness
In these quiet moments
© Ivan Donn Carswell
In these quiet moments before the night
softens the mountains of the South
and deflates the clouds
that float beneath their peaks,
I Mark Your Courage
© Ivan Donn Carswell
I had no profound feelings of shock or surprise
to those matter-of-fact revelations
which spelled the end of this chapter of your life.
It was, as you put it, too late for recriminations,
and the horrendous realities could be no worse
for having faced them.
I cannot let the moment pass
© Ivan Donn Carswell
I cannot let the moment pass without a weary greeting,
or retard the recent past where shadows still are fleeting,
Id sabotage the future by just staring in a mirror
and never let the glimmer pass and try to hold my image fast
The Mountain Heart's-Ease
© Francis Bret Harte
By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting,
By furrowed glade and dell,
To feverish men thy calm, sweet face uplifting,
Thou stayest them to tell
Prince Yousuf And The Alcayde
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
A Moorish Ballad
IN Grenada reigned Mohammed,
Sixth who bore the name was he;
But the rightful king, Prince Yousuf,
Touched my family
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Even from afar came shouts of recognition
joyful voices rang across the years disdained and
faces of our childhood unforgot fit instantly familiar names;
voices still the same despite the extra grey, the extra lines,
Futurelessness
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Time to count the torrid cost of careless words inflicted on
your battered dignity, time to close the ugly face that chanted
out invective foul and shattered amity, time to quell
the fervid rush of feckless wrath which weighs
against the bloodied loss this manic madness brusque
and hot has flung across the face of sanity.
