Forget-Me-Not ~ Carran
Forget-Me-Not
Carran Waterfield
In Coventry, halfway to Dorset:
I am walking up the path with mum,
in hysterics remembering when her teeth fell out from laughing so much on the way back from work…
just usherettes staggering with laughter after getting the bus home after the matinee.
We are walking up the path to her flat,
her stick prodding Dandelions because she can’t weed anymore,
intoxicated like that day coming home on the bus on the way back from work…
just usherettes staggering with laughter after getting the bus home after the matinee.
“Forget-Me-Nots,” she points with her stick.
“I won’t Mum.”
We burst again.
Two days later in Dorset:
Today’s matinee is a performance of trees.
I choose the ugliest, the one with the “been through the mill” look about it,
all churned up and inside out of it.
I like the “pull-your-leg-up” she is giving me in her limby winky way,
legs everywhere like Schiele’s woman spreading her genitals all over the shop.
There’s something about being gnawed and gnarled,
with your guts spilling out for all the children you’ve borne.
There’s something weather worn and resilient in this particular
nearly-a-corpsed one
on this particularly
wet day at Coney’s Castle where the Beeches are showing off to the Belles in Blue,
all lined up like tiller girls ready for curtain up.
Not my Beech.
She’s a bit past it.
But’s she’s trying very hard still.
She mutters, “It’s raining and they look a bit flat that chorus line of whipper-snappers,
just turning up in the last two weeks with celebrity on their minds.
I’ve been here for donkeys…
I was once a colt like them”.
Suddenly out of the blue, a rural creature puts in an appearance.
An audience member!
Or, potential participatory-co-witness-spectator, just passing through
beefing up his part as he keens for the loss of his favourite Belle Blue Show
now a near disaster.
And this season he’s especially miffed for his mates
whom he’s brought over for the Sunday dinner pre-show or post-show depending on the fucking rain.
With the rain…the rain and “it’s just such a shame,” he politely howls.
The swear word is mine, since he’s treading on my patch
while I am performing like mad in an interior kind of way:
imitating for 10,
taking in the emotion and feeling for 10,
taking on the sense of the character and being for 10,
and doing what the hell I like for another 10
while Natasha on the bank
witness-watches me with the Ayervedic lifestyle wisdom I read about
from a tip off on ‘Sounds True’ which made me buy it on a whim,
the book, I mean,
not the wisdom.
Now I boil my water.
Back on the Beech catwalk I am struck by the return of a stick prop in my fist,
an echo of mum’s Dandelion killer,
the leg-up chorusing her ‘I’m not dead yet’ refrain again.
Then I realise it’s just me watching the Belles of Blue from the point of view of a Beech and not a Yew.
Yew accepts death
because it lives forever,
well for thousands.
Beech, maybe not,
Birch, definitely not.
Back to the exercise:
In close-up micro-pulling-back-look
using macro with my eyes,
there’s bloody thousands of the blue things
showing off,
showing up,
acting out ,
acting up.
Young and springy, spriteful, wingy things taking centre stage:
upstaging me on my ‘catwalk turn’ up the garden path with my mum in hand.
“Can I have just one last look in?”
Me, the gawky leggy one all gnarled up and battered in on the ramparts of Coney’s Castle,
working hard against the forces of the wind
and the raving rebels whose reports will slaughter me
while the belles of blue tip tap and tap tit all over me:
cutting me up,
counting me out,
writing me off.
Breathe.
Look.
I have forgotten my own belles,
my own little patch of blues…
all wet and tattered
but still there
still there
still there…
just more raggedly spaced than those I jealously spy
from my standing point of view
on the ledge,
my roots going down while one single branch goes up.
Back in Coventry halfway to Southport:
After lunch
and a small white wine at The Greyhound,
me and mum carry on slowly
up the Tulipy-Dandelionless–Forget-Me-Not pathway
towards the moving staircase
that can turn corners.
Mum ascends
while I hum the roundabout theme from ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’.
She rounds the corner on her own revolving stage
waving, smiling,
joining in with the joke.
And I say like my child-self,
“Do it again.”
Not now, it’s too much.
And the credits roll upwards
while time
passes
downwards.
Carran Waterfield
In Coventry, halfway to Dorset:
I am walking up the path with mum,
in hysterics remembering when her teeth fell out from laughing so much on the way back from work…
just usherettes staggering with laughter after getting the bus home after the matinee.
We are walking up the path to her flat,
her stick prodding Dandelions because she can’t weed anymore,
intoxicated like that day coming home on the bus on the way back from work…
just usherettes staggering with laughter after getting the bus home after the matinee.
“Forget-Me-Nots,” she points with her stick.
“I won’t Mum.”
We burst again.
Two days later in Dorset:
Today’s matinee is a performance of trees.
I choose the ugliest, the one with the “been through the mill” look about it,
all churned up and inside out of it.
I like the “pull-your-leg-up” she is giving me in her limby winky way,
legs everywhere like Schiele’s woman spreading her genitals all over the shop.
There’s something about being gnawed and gnarled,
with your guts spilling out for all the children you’ve borne.
There’s something weather worn and resilient in this particular
nearly-a-corpsed one
on this particularly
wet day at Coney’s Castle where the Beeches are showing off to the Belles in Blue,
all lined up like tiller girls ready for curtain up.
Not my Beech.
She’s a bit past it.
But’s she’s trying very hard still.
She mutters, “It’s raining and they look a bit flat that chorus line of whipper-snappers,
just turning up in the last two weeks with celebrity on their minds.
I’ve been here for donkeys…
I was once a colt like them”.
Suddenly out of the blue, a rural creature puts in an appearance.
An audience member!
Or, potential participatory-co-witness-spectator, just passing through
beefing up his part as he keens for the loss of his favourite Belle Blue Show
now a near disaster.
And this season he’s especially miffed for his mates
whom he’s brought over for the Sunday dinner pre-show or post-show depending on the fucking rain.
With the rain…the rain and “it’s just such a shame,” he politely howls.
The swear word is mine, since he’s treading on my patch
while I am performing like mad in an interior kind of way:
imitating for 10,
taking in the emotion and feeling for 10,
taking on the sense of the character and being for 10,
and doing what the hell I like for another 10
while Natasha on the bank
witness-watches me with the Ayervedic lifestyle wisdom I read about
from a tip off on ‘Sounds True’ which made me buy it on a whim,
the book, I mean,
not the wisdom.
Now I boil my water.
Back on the Beech catwalk I am struck by the return of a stick prop in my fist,
an echo of mum’s Dandelion killer,
the leg-up chorusing her ‘I’m not dead yet’ refrain again.
Then I realise it’s just me watching the Belles of Blue from the point of view of a Beech and not a Yew.
Yew accepts death
because it lives forever,
well for thousands.
Beech, maybe not,
Birch, definitely not.
Back to the exercise:
In close-up micro-pulling-back-look
using macro with my eyes,
there’s bloody thousands of the blue things
showing off,
showing up,
acting out ,
acting up.
Young and springy, spriteful, wingy things taking centre stage:
upstaging me on my ‘catwalk turn’ up the garden path with my mum in hand.
“Can I have just one last look in?”
Me, the gawky leggy one all gnarled up and battered in on the ramparts of Coney’s Castle,
working hard against the forces of the wind
and the raving rebels whose reports will slaughter me
while the belles of blue tip tap and tap tit all over me:
cutting me up,
counting me out,
writing me off.
Breathe.
Look.
I have forgotten my own belles,
my own little patch of blues…
all wet and tattered
but still there
still there
still there…
just more raggedly spaced than those I jealously spy
from my standing point of view
on the ledge,
my roots going down while one single branch goes up.
Back in Coventry halfway to Southport:
After lunch
and a small white wine at The Greyhound,
me and mum carry on slowly
up the Tulipy-Dandelionless–Forget-Me-Not pathway
towards the moving staircase
that can turn corners.
Mum ascends
while I hum the roundabout theme from ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’.
She rounds the corner on her own revolving stage
waving, smiling,
joining in with the joke.
And I say like my child-self,
“Do it again.”
Not now, it’s too much.
And the credits roll upwards
while time
passes
downwards.