day 28 and 29

Here's my day 28 poem


Through this weekend
(remembering London)

My 11-year –old
had to put on my socks
and tie the laces of my running shoes
my back too sore to bend that far.
The box of chocolates I smashed
on the floor of the youth hostel
and couldn’t give to friends we visited
but used instead as a bribe only I
could reach on top of the wardrobe.

Horizontal rain,
and the central line delayed
because of a body on the tracks.
Always somebody needed the loo
waiting outside the toilets
at St James’s Park
the brass band played
and Londoner’s lazed in deck-chairs
or on the grass half dressed
and I wished for a little
of that idyll.



and here's today's poem

Eight

Eight years and the guilt
if it hadn’t been for nine-eleven
and the outbreak of bird flu,
if I hadn’t had twins
the kind that scream all the
way to the shopping centre
the kind that run in opposite directions
if I’d got passports organized sooner,
if he’d wanted to come too,
if I wasn’t feeling safe
in the groove of my routines
it might not have taken 8 years
and the guilt.