I don’t know what I am (redacted word)
some comic (redacted word) this is
Playing with words for some (redacted word)
Unbidden, unseen, unknown.
I am (redacted word).
jeckford
Professional
I am a mid-life sandwich
You can see me coming.
A weighed-down superhuman,
worn out at the edges.
I’d like to call myself a pensioner,
with freedoms whilst still healthy,
to live more riotously,
to explore
but duty pulls me.
My wide portfolio profession of different roles.
My unshakeable responsibility.
It’s not funny.
Bedroom Closet
To get my head straight
in the right place
to think
I am closeted away
in a cool dark bedroom,
wrapped in embroidered sheets.
I write each thought
deliberate,
my pretty distractions
placed firmly in the wardrobe.
Hawthorn at Paddington Meadows
It’s August still
and yet the field edges are
unseasonably alight.
Great stands of hawthorn hedges,
the most ancient in all of Cheshire,
loaded so heavily with scarlet fruit
bend over you,
into the wet wildflower meadows
created in the crook of the River Mersey,
the boundary river.
Author: ©️Jane Eckford
2nd September 2023
What is love?
What is love?
What is love if not the adoring gaze of a Swiss cow gazing at you across mountain meadows.
Personal Characteristics
An elk is the loudest of all deer,
Glass lightbulbs contain gas and are fragile.
Buckets are biblically old in design and sometimes leaky,
Carports offer protection from the weather.
Elbows facilitate surreptitious nudging.
All carry characteristics of grannies.
Author: ©️Jane Eckford
2nd September 2023
Eulogies – after Sylvan Esso ‘Funeral Singers’
Acoustic guitar stings and taps
leading into louder dance
A light female voice, breathless,
the words indecipherable
though I listen closely
only half understanding
snatches of song.
‘doesn’t take a job in the night
return to me
all my friends are
half-gone birds, keeping time,
are words, are magnets’.
Who will sing for me?
What is my song?
Who will sing the sense of my life?
Do you see me in spirit?
I have loved and have been loved.
They await me.
An idling place
The empty swing
invites all-comers
to sit awhile
to dangle, legs and dreams.
I stand and gently rock
the empty swing
warmed by the end of summer
in fields of afterglow.
Sunflowers with heavy heads of seed
turn their upward gaze towards
the empty swing
which twists with every breeze.
Love has moved me
on beyond the flaming golden field
A hand in hand departure; farewell
the empty swing.
author: ©️Jane Eckford
2nd September 2023
Jigsaw
The earth was flat when he last looked
sitting at the kitchen table,
concentrating hard,
with wooden pieces strewn haphazardly
across a red checked tablecloth.
Europe had disintegrated into pieces
with eastern wars erupting;
troubles breaking worlds apart
flood and famine
tornadoes, hurricanes, disease,
Omnivorous firestorms displacing everyone
And all living things
running now to the very edge
of this earthly plain
to find the oceans cascading,
in great floods escaping,
down the table legs.
Crime Scene
Victims wash up against the shore
from upturned boats
making summer passage
on quieter tides.
The dead are blamed,
perpetrators of their own demise,
whilst the reasons for their leaving
lie unquestioned, uninvestigated.
Who would leave their home and family?
No-one’s asking.
Author: Jane Eckford
2nd September 2023