The Attics of the Dead

I've got stalled on this year's NaPoWriMo, I think because I'm still really tired following Rosemary's book launch on Thursday.  So I've dug up this old one from last year's poetry writing month.

This is an attempt to capture the mood and strangeness of a real recurring dream I used to have.  Where I'd be wandering the attics of some building which in real life didn't have any, and there would be and shelves and shelves of interesting boxes.  Not that in the dream I every got to open any of the boxes...

There's a reference to my Granddad in this, and that is how come this poem is "of the dead".  His and Nana's house was a common location for the dream, although not the only place it could be set.

All my grandparents are dead now.  You can never go back, can you...

---

---

The attics of the dead


I no longer dream the attics of the dead
but I recall the qualities of dust
and light and wooden shelving where I pass
my unshod sleep feet silent on the boards.
There are always more: more boards, more boxes,

suitcases, cabinets and old wardrobes...
more attics.  Up some turning stair, or through
a low door: a further shelfscape; hatches
in the ceiling through which unpainted ladders
climb higher still to attics which by rights

should be much smaller than the floor below.
They're not, of course, there's always more and I
will wander rarely distracted by a beam
of skylight cutting through or a corridor
window through which I peer to see forever

roofs and tiles and access ways and never
a hint of any world below.  Through windows
sometimes I will glimpse another distant pane
of glass though which, enticing,  I'll see the backs
of other shelves all filled with such exciting

packages, but which I know I'll never reach.
There isn't any lesson for this place to teach,
I am not lost, or trapped; I'm just aware
that granddad knows of every item there,
but still, somehow, my exploration
does not posses an end.

NoPoWriMo - 2017- April 5th - Our correspondent interviews the famously private poet

Our correspondent interviews the famously private poet


Question: You have before said, which is to say
that people quote you expressing the idea
and you've elaborated on other occasions
that this idea, or conception, I should say

has seemed to have a life, a meaning beyond
its origin.  Would you comment on that?  But first...
Question: In your work, as received by the audience
there often seems to be an almost pause

a moment of collection before expression
where as a reader one is forced to look
for alternative interpretation.  How
do you imagine all that we imagine

sitting as we are so... figuratively
remote from you there with the pen...?  Which makes
me recall!  I have to ask, when ideas strike
-- sorry, this is a different question --

as an idea is dawning in your mind,
what do you gasp of it at first?  A shadow
a mere imagining with every part
to be filled in, or is it more Athena

all springing fully formed with rhymes and scansion
already there in place?  But I see we're out
of time and I wanted to ask about your book!
Never mind, I have enjoyed, it's been my privilege.

NaPoWriMo - 2017 - April 4th - A blue star rises, and who of us can say

From this prompt about the Enigma Variations -- although as ever not directly from that...  I came the long way around.


A blue star rises, and who of us can say

out by the horizon, electric blue ink
a sky uniquely annotated dawning
its own way and who of us can say
what a day like this may mean

one pale, bluish star, low in the brightening sky
I watch you stir your tea I watch
you watch my eyes we're drawing nearer
covertly, through a fall of hair

a blue star might rise unprecedented
just there in its own way on a day
with the horizon not so far away
you tie your hair back firmly with a string

out by the horizon
I greet you properly, a public display
what passes as normal, we're unaliened
and our funny ways strange no more

a blue star rises and all unmanned,
unwomanned, freshly peopled...
we walk out hands held
into the new world, bravely