Happy Writing

Here's a poem about the question I often ask myself.  

Happy Writing
 
Why don’t I write on happy stuff
instead of being inspired by grief
or when times are really rough?
I could describe a lovely leaf
 
or sunsets making my heart burst.
Why is my utmost misery
the spur for writing my best verse
and posting it for all to see?
 
Why did I write two good prose pieces
on funerals, grief and poetry,
published in national magazines?
Why nothing else for folks to see?
 
Well, here is one and you can tell
it’s not much good, although it rhymes,
so lack of poems can only spell
the advent of much happier times.

Unstable

Unstable

UN-stabul as Mum used to say it
in her own invented
language and pronunciation
like raddy-otta-meez.
And why not.
 
“English also spoken here”
Dad said there should be a sign
on the front door
when they were first married
but he became bilingual.
 
So today I know I am living
through a time when things are
un-stabul for me,  unstabul
without my mum and my dad
and my Mike
 
who saw “breaded plaice” as
bearded plaice, which it fast
became with parents, carers
and now still me. 
They never met
 
but on the phone discussed how
a single grain of rice was a rouce:
Mum thought not but
Mike was adamant
about his invention.
 
My new house-to-be is full of labradors
and other tradesmen.
The architrave fades into less significance
compared to the builder, Jason, and
all his argonauts
 
and I am tossed around in an unstable
world, missing all three of them
feeling out of touch with my
linguistic roots and routes
through the maze of decisions
 
being uprooted myself just enough
so I am now unstable
ready to be blown down in the wind
or washed away in a rainstorm
or undermined by something small.

Leslie Wynne Prescot

28/05/1927 - 16/10/2020

Anthea Warwick Prescot

07/07/1928 - 28/11/2020

Mike Hitchens

07/12/1943 - 11/07/2023