Now that I rise at the ungodly hour of 6.10 am because public transport does not allow my partner to get to work for 7.00 am and I have to act as a grudging taxi service - it means that I get to the pool for my daily swim just at the time that it opens to the public. Indeed, once or twice I have been, engine running, waiting at the gate for it to be opened! It also means that I have 'done' my daily exercise by just after 8.00 am and the rest of the day, therefore, is mine and open to do interesting and creative things.
Some of those things should be poetry, and, although the gap of time between this post and the last is large, I have (honestly) been filling it with writing, I simply have not been posting. And if you think that is some sort of "saving lie" then you could be partially correct.
However, here is a poem. Freshly written and partially edited, it is at least ready to be laid to one side allowing it to mature, so that I can come to it later and read it with fresh eyes! That, at least, is the theory.
After my swim, I go to the cafe that adjoins the pool and have a tortilla bocadillo and a cup of tea. And I take out my little notebook and make notes. Usually these are mundane to the point of weariness, but occasionally they contain a kernel of something that gradually mutates into a poem.
The seat that I usually claim in the cafe is not my usual summer seat that is in one particular spot outside. In less clement times I take a seat facing the large floor to ceiling windows giving a view of the car park and the building work beyond. this view also takes in the pathway to the door of the centre and, at the time that I am usually sitting there, I am able to witness the steady stream of parents who try (and usually fail) to find a parking space to deposit their children so that they can go to the British School of Barcelona (the BSB) that is next to the pool.
As with any Tesco's car park, you can tell a lot about people when they are presented with the need for a parking space that is not there, or at least not where they want it to be.
You can also tell a lot by the way that the deposited children leave the car and begin their walk to school. As I do not know these people, it is easy to make sweeping assumptions about their attitudes and their home backgrounds. It is very tempting to pontificate (at least in the privacy of your notebook) about what a scruffily dressed, slow-stepping, head down to mobile phone, earphones plugged in, no coat wearing, not backward looking child leaving a large people carrying Mercedes might represent! And, yes, I am aware that it might well say more about me than about the 'victimes' of my observation!
This poem, however, was provoked by a child's smile as he accompanied his mum. It was the sort of smile that said that all was well with his world and that indeed, it was the best possible or all possible worlds and that he was well prepared to go and cultivate his garden!
Added to the observation of the child was the serendipity of hearing part of a a podcast from Classic FM by Tony Blackadder (his real surname will come to me) that mentioned a musician I had heard of and someone of the same name who I hadn't. Within 24 hours I had visited an excellent exhibition in the Caixa Forum in Barcelona "Toulouse Lautrec and the spirit of Montmartre" that had a poster for a musical production of the composer that I had heard about the day before. From that it was an easy step in my mind to remember times when a new piece of information had been given to one of my classes only to have the kids stop me and say that, amazingly, they had heard the word or idea or whatever spoken by someone on the television or on the radio or heard another teacher use it or whatever. What they took as coincidence I recognized as the normal process of highlighting something so that you become sensitive to its repetition - a repetition that you have previously ignored!
Anyway, here is the poem, in its partially edited form. I expect it to change before it makes it to a book, but I am pleased with the shape that it has taken so far.
As I always say (and always mean) I welcome any thoughts or responses - good, bad or indifferent!
Daily run
Hand held firmly in his mother’s hand,
the blond-haired boy is smiling
on his way to school.
Why does he smile?
Most children, mobile-eyed,
traipse sullenly
towards day-time captivity.
But he? He smiles.
How often did I do the same
along the minutes’ walk from
Dogfield Street to Whitchurch Road and
Gladstone Infants/Junior
School?
I tolerated school,
accepting process
as a means to something
that the years of schooling were a ticket for,
for me, for years & years & years
of schooling more.
But now, with time to muse,
I like to tell myself that smile
on that boy’s face is one
anticipating something new
on offer, or at least could be,
from each fresh part of the curriculum.
The hackneyed, clichéd, everyday -
all are reborn in growing minds.
In all our minds? Not
so?
Three days ago I heard a programme clip;
caught, by chance, a surname that I knew –
but given name Gustave, not Marc-Antoine.
Another man, a different
time, composer too.
Within a day: a poster on an exhibition wall;
“Louise” a ‘roman
musical’ four acts (with five tableaux)
Charpentier, the
same Gustave I’d heard about the day before!
How many times when dealing with vocab. in class
I’d have the kids excitedly tell me next time
that they had heard “that word you talked about”
Amazed at the ‘coincidence’.
What we don’t know, we may not sense,
until a word, a gesture, thought
shows up a this &
that or these & those
as things together, not apart.
So we, like that young child, should smile
expecting unexpected truth.
