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It sometimes takes several months after editing [again with the marvellous help of poet Jo Brandon] and preparing a new collection before I find any ‘sap’ or energy to write anything.  It took an hour sitting on a bench in the historic square of Andulasian city, Antequera, near a statue of two old blokes sitting on a bench [like a visual echo] for me to want to write something.  Conscious of the approach of my seventy-sixth birthday in March, I was able to find some words to describe my feelings about this momentous event, no longer seventy but in sight of eighty.

These two poems were written on my mobile phone.  They are ‘unpasteurised’, written just as they came.  Perhaps in my next post I can talk about the editing process and how it works for me.  But for now all I feel is celebration after waking up from a writerly hibernation.

Town Square

Outside the church in the old town square
Mother and children at spinning tops play, 
I sit in a stone bench and sniff the air
Oiled with the oranges that scent the day. 
I may as well be a graven statue here,
A heron standing witness in the reeds,
The children’s laughter that knows no fear
And I contemplate my life and needs
And the intriguing why and how.
While youngsters play a Victorian game,
I am a background character now,
The shadowy one without a name.
But do I need to overthink, explain 
This simple postcard scene here in Spain?

Age

Age can be measured by what we lose,
Our youthful strength, and all those we care for.
Until it’s as if at once we realise
We have become old and can’t ignore
The slow depredations of this winter,
Where we creak and groan like old trees
That split and break and splinter
To the pistol crack of ancient knees.
For I am compelled to say it aloud,
I am old, bloody old to be quite clear,
There’s no recovery, no sun through cloud
Though days can feel as warm and dear.
What can I say, what have I achieved
I was here, I breathed and indeed I lived.