Her Rock of Belief

It was her firm belief
that dreams are not
hallucinations,
you are not severed
from reality, drawn
into a world of fantasy.

What happens is:
the vital part,
of what we call
the psyche
leaves the body
to renew itself
in that same spirit life
it left to lodge in you.

What we call dreams
are post cards
from a soul on furlough
inviting us
to share in its renewal.

Then she began
the bad dreams:
doing bad things
sniffing coke and the like,
going with blokes
who were sick in the head
and getting in fights.
In her dreams
she became
a sort
of anti-person
to herself.
The negative image.

So what should she think?
That her rock of belief
was a handful of sand?
Or this was herself,
the she she should be?
A negatives is
the source is it not?

Too much to ask.
She succumbed
to the doubt
and was taken away.

Credentials for a poet

A friend of mine,
a poet of ability,
finds concrete images
to represent his poems,
imagines favourite
and current works
as solid objects,
and in his mind
arranges them
like furniture
around the house.

He pictures then
the house engulfed in flames.

How many objects
will he hope to save,
given that
the risk to him
increases with each one?
(And just as interestingly,
I would have thought:
which ones?)
But no, for him
the question is: how many?

He'd try to rescue
two or three.
Enough, he thinks,
to give him the credentials
that a poet needs.

The Execution Block

First woodwork lesson in my new school.
Mr Woodiwiss - apt name! - is asking
What would you would like to make?
An execution block, I say.

(The block is for my Uncle Bill.)

Reputation would suggest
sir should roar displeasure,
vault the bench perhaps,
throw something my direction.

Instead
he does not even take exception,
sits talking ways and means with me.

A word of explanation:
why an execution block for Uncle Bill?

To help him with his Christmas role:
The Lord High Executioner of Turkeys on the lawn.

And he comes THIS close to using it
(My thumb and forefinger
all but touch. I hold them up.)

Dark night. The only light
streams from the bathroom window.
The turkey's neck is on the block,
the hatchet raised
the light goes out.

The pitch-dark night
turns lighter shades of blue
as Uncle's language spills into it.

But Uncle Bill's performance
compensates
for sir's
more disappointing one.

a prophet is not without honour...

The above image was provided as prompt by Magpie Tales

She had foretold
the world would end,
set out the chairs
for all her followers.

They'd sat there
through the night,
alert in prayer
high on the hill

for the best view,
the clearest sound.
The cataclysm
passed them by.

Far out in space
another planet
witnessed it.
Earth remained unscathed.

The flesh was weak.
When morning dawned
the empty chairs
spoke faithlessness.

So now she's stumped:
how to return
the chairs by noon,
fulfil her other promise?

Three poems without Titles

1
Imagine a plant
something like a sweet pea
but much more delicate
sending out feelers
to grasp at things
(all manner of things)
to hold on to...

His poetry was like that.
Intricate. Fragile.
And with so many reference points
you'd need a machete
to loosen its grip.

Beyond my understanding,
I nevertheless
could feel the weight
of what I was missing.

2
Our favourite restaurant
we've called in for lunch
purely on impulse.

Sitting in the bar area
having a pre-lunch drink
we look over the menus.

There are two:
the one the waitress brings
and a blackboard on the wall.

The blackboard on the wall
shows today's specials.
There are quite a few.

A waitress comes
climbs up to the board
and rubs out the beef dish.

Except she doesn't
the beef dish is obstinate.
Beef remains on the menu.

The waitress climbs down
and disappears
returns with a bottle of solvent.

She climbs up
pours solvent over her duster
and rubs and scrubs again.

Soon the beef dish is reduced
to a pale shadow
of its former self.

She climbs down
looks at her handiwork
and disappears.

Would it not have been easier
when bringing the other menu
to tell diners the beef is off?

(Just an idle thought,
no occasion for great art.
Sorry to have misled you.)

3
The rose bushes,
that in summer bore blooms
large as a tea plate,
now in November
are covered in netsukes.
...
Here for Netsukes

The Good and Bad Spirit

Everything happened around I was five
everything came to the boil
the house like a beehive
first I got ill, was hospitalised
then a new brother arrived.

Big disappointment,
me dreaming a sister -
not to pull hair, as some thought,
but play with her dolls.
(Back then a doll was taboo for a boy -
well, it was if you lived with your gran.)

Then when it had all settled down -
a year or two maybe -
I saw this mad doll. In a world of her own.
A whole Doll's Hospital window
all to herself. Rescued, she'd been,
from a fire, I think.
Her rib cage smashed. And hands and feet.
But I couldn't forget her face.

Older than me, Danny, my friend,
explained it: a leer. (He knew
about leers from his dad.)
How could she leer?
And why was she leering at me?
I saw it at night. And by day,
if I closed my eyes, it was there.

I must have talked about her
'till my friend went nuts.
Built an imaginary friend round her.
Perhaps he'd had enough.
That's maybe why he turned up
with a rival. A replacement doll.

Thrown out by his sister.
Smashed hands and feet. And broken cheek.
Not smashed quite in the way the first had been,
but near as I would get.
(Was he the doll's assailant?)

Alas, she did not leer
but worth the horse-drawn hearse and conker.
She almost measured up.
Enough for me to swap them gladly.

She'll leer, said Danny. Give her time.
She'll pass it on. All that
was done to her, she'll do to you.
She weaves thought webs
to trap her prey, he said. The strands
come from her eyes. (He'd heard
of women doing things like that to men.)

Her web began to form around my fear -
and yes, at times I caught a leer.
No way, though, would I part with her,
for fear wove webs of strong desire.

Yet after I had dropped dad's hammer on my toe,
come off my bicycle and grazed both hands,
and met with other bumps and bruises,
I did begin to wonder: was he right?

I never did discover
what sort of spirit was she.
Good or bad?
Or simply badly treated?
But for a year, maybe,
she had this hold on me.
Her damaged hands
more powerful than a wand could be.
Her spells more difficult to understand
than ancient abracadabra.

We hid her in the coal shed
so I could not well complain
that there were times her magic came out black.

But there were spells of purest white.
The night the lightning struck the weeping willow tree.
Two willow trees there were.
The one that was our camp.
And the one that was the enemy's.
Her face was in the lightning flash -
and so our rivals' camp was struck.

I am entering this poem for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Friday Challenge.

rapping up the crisis

Who's at fault, who's at fault?
Too little money in the vault.
It's all a game,
but who's to blame?
Stack 'em high and sell 'em short.

Money goes round and round the till
'till some fat hammer-head makes a kill.
That's the perception,
that's the deception -
now where's the guy whose got the prescription?

Come with me, let's hit the street,
hit the street and feel the beat,
feel the beat and get the heat.
The whole damned world's in hock to who?
I'm in debt and so are you.

Let us go then; quick, quick, slow,
the dance of life sets flesh aglow.
Who's the villain, we would know.
I tell you friend, it gives no joy
to hear it's neither man nor boy!

Don't blame the suit in the High Street branch.
He's not the one who took the chance,
he didn't lead us in this dance.
The one you want is miles away.
You're fast asleep when he makes his play.

It's not the fellow who shook your hand,
arranged your loan for a hundred grand;
he's not the one who did you down,
he didn't make the nation frown.
We're talking shades in a shanty town,

a shanty town of high-rise bliss,
luxury pads and avarice.
Someone there has caused this piss -
not the fellow we all have seen seen,
but a shadowy ghost in front of a screen.

Now, down to him, we're over taxed,
and still the government's too relaxed,
too relaxed while a nation rages
at city pets, outrageous wages
and stacks of venomous mortgages.

They sell their debts as they think they must,
knowing what's sold will hit the dust,
then lay out bets in funny money
that the mortgage buyers will all go bust -
but the cash is ours, so how's that funny?

Who's missed out, who's missed out?
They're the ones that my song's about:
the ten per cent in the social pit,
the five and a half who don't quite fit,
the one per cent who just might quit.

The richest rich then make their pitch,
the poorest poor are shown the door,
the gulf between them widens more.
The richest rise like birds of prey,
high on the thermals, hogging the day.

My voices tell me democracy
(and only it) is the way for man -
no place here for a backup plan!
The government's mired in complacency,
and all we've got is to bear the can.

Three great Cs once made a start
at changing the world - or, better, the heart.
Each in its turn would prove a flop,
offering nothing but regular sop -
Guess them from the names I'll drop.

I'll mention Keynes and Marx and Christ -
all of them masters of the heist -
but none of the Cs has failed as guide;
they kind of simply aint been tried,
their basic tenets all denied.

So where shall we look to find the vision?
Where unearth a sense of mission?
What can now excite us all,
unite us all
in the next demanding call?

First Real Snow

Best Christmas present ever: deep, deep snow.
A whiter white than I had ever seen,
but out of reach, beyond the window glass,
and not available to feet and hands.
I'm five years old and full of wonder: how
might it feel against the skin? As fluffy
as it looks? As smooth? And how would I react?

I see the people come and go with it.
I see it piled on shoulders, woolly hats
and scarves. I see deep footprints where they've walked.
Among them are my parents, come to visit.
They come into the ward still dressed in snow.

When they are here, they're everything I want,
but when they're not, I want the snow. Just now
they are at home, and snow falls heavily.
What good a Christmas present that I cannot use?

But now a transformation: nurses come;
they're carrying huge bowls of snow which they
distribute round the ward. Soon they are helping
us to mould snow into cannon balls.
For hours - it seems - we hurl them back and forth,
targeting each other, 'till the ward's awash.

When parents come, the bedclothes are still wet.
Great cries of anguish fill the battle field.
The dead and dying - of pneumonia
and such like wounds - have had recovery
set back by unknown periods of time.
But nurses somehow manage to persuade
them that the fight was therapy for us!

I am entering this poem for the Poets United "Winter" challenge.

human perspectives

I got the idea watching children play imaginative games,
watching as they chalked their scenes across the square.
Arranged their artefacts like tokens on a game board...
It was the way to start a canvas for my next dystopian view.

I stand it on the easel with myself arranged before,
the light behind me - where the devil's s'posed to be.
My shadow falling on its spotlessness, I wash it in.
The shadow now is permanent, a sort of watermark for me.

They used to say at art school, 'Put something of yourself
into each work - or give it up'. Well this is what I do!
I am the ghost behind the image, a sort of quality control.
And even when the layers build or thick impastos cover me,

when only I remember that I'm there, it puts the brake on me.
My hidden form still gives a human scale to what I do.
I am the ghost that haunts the image, keeps perspectives true -
or maybe, with more truth, the children are the quality control.

As Dante would have done.

Here's a dream to dream sometime
when you are looking for a dream to dream.

You are a sculptor who sculpts words,
then builds them into poems.
You're making ready your next book,
one hundred pages long. The title
poem is the only one. It takes up
pages two and three, but fills the book.

How does a two-page poem fill a book?
Well, that's the sort of poem that you write.
Recall: you'll be composing it in dream;
that being so, each word, each line will share
the mythic power to which a dream is heir.

Your poem will have all the subtle powers
that Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan
would have possessed had he but scratched it down
before the man from Porlock came along.

Set your sleeping mind against all rhetoric.
Hard, stony consonants like Dante used
are what you should be carving from your rock.
Their weight and influence will fill the book -
would fill a shelf of books of empty pages.

Waking, lose no time in setting down;
be sure to transcribe word for word -
no editing, redrafting as you go.
Change not a jot or tittle from the dream.

Then when the work is done,
turn to any empty page
and find the poem still engaging you.

In Brompton Cemetery

It was that time of day
when shadows are most apt
to play their roguish tricks.
We took the short cut
through the burial ground
beside the oratory. Stones
took on a new significance.
The monuments
loomed up at us
like stage sets
and their ivy drapes
looked sinister
in that half light.
I thought for certain
we would hear an owl,
but no sound came
except for gentle
rustles in the wind
and footsteps - soft
for lack of anyone around.
What did seem changed
from how they looked by day:
the tombs, small houses
for the dead, complete
with gardens, railings,
iron gates and doors -
and windows, glass,
but thick with grime
and spiders webs
we thought were made
of string. We dared not
peer inside - although
my friend maintained
he'd looked and seen
a skeleton laid there.
I thought not then
and think not now.

Then close beside
the catacombs
a monument
to outdo all the rest,
and just beyond
another house - and now
we could not miss,
much less explain away;
framed in the window,
back-lit by the moon,
two heads: the furthest
from us, plain as plain
could be, a wolf's;
the nearer one a bird
of some sort, black beaked,
head framed in feathers
black as the blackest
window glass we'd seen.
"Egyptian figures?" asked
my friend, excitement
mounting with the fear.
We'd stopped. Not noticed
that we had, but there
we were, hard-rooted
to the spot, for at that
very moment both
the heads had moved.
A moment later they
were walking down the path
towards us as we gaped.
The bird a woman in a long
black dress, the wolf
a man. They stopped and kissed -
black beak and long wolf fur
and all - and then moved on
along another path
towards the moon.
Two ex-reflections
risen into solid form.

I am submitting this for this week's Gooseberry Garden challenge and also for this week's Magpie Tales Challenge.

The Poetry Reading

The oven was hung with icicles,
the toaster was singing a song,
while a plant and a pie were playing I-Spy.
The kitchen was totally mad.

Such was the vision of one young man,
a runner-up in the 5-8 category.

Not a verse from his poem,
just four odd lines pulled at random
from "Kitchen" - a totally hilarious offering.

He sits to thunderous applause.
Thoroughly well deserved.

Follow that!
My turn to read.

I down the rest of the Chablis.
(The rest of my glass, that is),
pick up the type-script,
stand,
cough,
grab the right elbow which is off doing a jig.

Everyone thinks it's nerves, of course.
Which it isn't.
It's a tremor I have.
Filial...
Alright then. It's a tremor exaggerated by nerves!

I read three lines (and a bit).
A door bags open.
The Old Woman of the Sea enters.
Shuffles to the rear.
Sits.

The papers in my hand flap like flags in a high wind.
Why am I even reading this?
I know the damn thing, word perfect.
Am I afraid my mind will go blank?
That must be it.
But why so many nerves?
I'm well used to speaking in public.
Too much Chablis?

I can't see the damn lines to read them, anyway.
I bet they can't even hear me at the back...
not above the flapping of these papers.
I chuck the script.

All the entries are on display around the room.
I read them earlier.
Didn't do a lot to boost my confidence,
seeing what I'm up against.

Do professional poets
have to earn their living this way?

There's always someone
worse off than yourself!

Somehow I croak my way to the end.
Sit.
Reach for another glass of Chablis.

The Rainbow Boy

Josh had a thing about, a love of, rainbows.
Josh was simple. Everyone knew that.
"That's why he has this thing, it's all to do
with colours," they said, knowingly - as if
there might be something else in rainbows,
something hidden, that they couldn't see. Each day
Josh painted rainbows.

He knew the names and sequence of the hues,
but saw no need to stick to them.
He'd paint with either brush or fingers, mostly.
Just sometimes he'd use a knife. A single 
colour on occasions. Mostly two or three
or all of them. Whatever colours made 
him feel "electric" or "switched on" that day.

He painted, he would say, the rainbows
in his head, not those up in the sky.
Once he painted one all black - that being
how he felt that day, his 'lectric "sparking
out" on him. His "bows" were always wild arcs
swept across the page. Sometimes two or three
in the same frame, sometimes vertical
and sometimes crossing one another. Weird
at times, and always only them. Nothing
else to spoil the view. 

                        And then
the doctor said that Josh had "moments".
Join the club. And don't we all!
The secrets that we almost grasp, 
know we are inches short of them 
but cannot quite see what we know... 
the hidden things that make us gasp... 
the place we thought we'd entered  
but were a shade away. 
Josh had a moment like one of ours,
a brush with the "thing" of his dreams:
a rainbow whose secret he had heard.
His science teacher triggered it.
He told the class:-
We can prove the Big Bang by the rainbow, 
the where and the why and the when. 
The secret of all that has happened 
is locked in the flimsiest thing. 
Josh responded with a salvo of rainbows,
twenty one full rainbows, closed into globes
like a child's glass marbles with coloured straw rings.
At the centre a blob of violet,
then rings of blue, blue-green and all
the colours out to red. His fondness was
for purple - a mixture that of radiation
from both ends. Bows broke the rules therefore.
There were two-coloured ones: maroon and red,
one white and yellow. 
              
                     So too, the bands were smudged,
as always in his paintings. This time though,
with movement blur, their tails curled back
towards the centre of the page.
The globes were flying out beyond the frame.

And folk began to see his simpleness
as something different, not simply something less.

I have entered this poem for the dVerse Poets colour prompt

A Waste of Words

Think of a tap left running to waste.
All that water,
thousands of gallons
running to waste.

A priceless resource.

How much more tragic are
words the world over running to waste
in the normal course of achieving nothing?
A priceless resource.

I switch on the T.V. news.
Someone talks to a microphone
speaking in Russian, Chinese -
Ancient Egyptian, for all I know.
But wait... someone translates.
Two taps together, but just out of step.
Running to waste.
Important debate.
Delivery slow.
Text dry and technical.
Like a chef who insists his diners should watch
as the Brussels are topped,
potatoes are peeled...
then serves them up raw.

These times must rank
among the most exciting ever
serious ever
frightening ever
fatal perhaps. And yet
we render them boring.

How is that done?
Why does it all run to waste?
In parliament they talk for hours
to rows of empty seats.

News readers don't like reading
reporters all but hate reporting.
What they like is atmosphere
and experts who can talk.
For atmosphere
they'll shout their news above an angry crowd
or talk beside a runway
with jet planes taking off
or chat among the traffic
on a busy urban street
in the middle of a storm.

On video phones
they mouth like drowning fish
until it freezes,
when they speak
like poor ventriloquists.

What happened to the days
when they simply read the news?

for a poem I have long admired

(read it here)

Damn and blast it, he was right:
I'm with the kid;
I'll not go gentle
into his good night.

No, when they come to close the day
I'll burn and rave, be downright rude
at any proffered platitude,
and not accept the death of light.

Who is it says that night is right?
that dark must always
conquer day
throughout life's length and breadth and height?

Who is it says, no matter what
life throws at us
we make no fuss;
accept it all with undue grace?

No, when the light is fading fast
I'll kick and scream,
harangue and curse my useless god -
and find the fear of Him at last.

Except... solicitude (just that)
for friends and family around
might force a smile, allow no sound -
and keep the bottled rage within.

But then again,
I'm still not sure
another light wont break upon
a darker and more distant shore...

Siren Voice

From gently singing in her sleep, she wakes.
She of the siren voice slides out of bed
and makes her way to her small bathroom space.
Low. Slope of ceiling. There
with nowhere for the head,
she bows, as all must bow, unless,
as she does now, 
the skylight is unlatched. Pushed up into the night.

Head in cool night air,
the naked body slightly shivering,
she stands, part in, part out, to brush her teeth.
Arrayed before her: sea and naked rocks,
she tilts her head, looks up towards the stars.
At their most beautiful.
                        She pauses her ablutions,
hits the perfect note - high C of legend -
has shattered tumblers in her time
and wonders
           vaguely
                  can she shatter stars?

The note fragments the song, her voice
and voice box now are instruments,
her art an abstract sound...

And now a stream of perfect notes.
She hears the echoes coming back,
hears what we don't hear: harmonics
gathering like birds on wires.

She hears the cosmos tremble
                            at the sheer audacity
of what she tries -
                   or thinks she does.
Such deep and vibrant sounds -
then bends again
                resuming her ablutions.
Rinses.
Glances back
            up once more and out into the night
looks up towards the stars.
One star seems brighter than
    and larger than before. 
    Grows as she looks.
The light awhile too bright,
                            she hides her eyes.
The sea erupts as water spout.
There's violence.
Then when she looks
                   is calm again.

Has she a voice to lure stars to the rocks?
A song to suck a satellite
out of the ether,
out of the very cosmos that is sky
reflecting back her voice?
(For is that not the very thing 
the satellite is meant to 
Do? Do?  Do?  Do?  Do?  Do?  Do?  Do? 

Great News : and Let's Dance!

Unbelievable news yesterday: those good folk at Poets United have chosen my blog as their Blog of the Week! Difficult to express how immensely pleased and grateful I am - not to say surprised! Do pop along and suport them if you have a moment.

Last Sunday Kerry at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads challenged us to produce a poem in Waltz Wave Form. This requires lines of 1,2,1,2,3,2,1.2.3.4.3,2,1,2,3,2,1,2,1 Having not got around to it until last evening - so much excitement in my life of late - I have now come up with this.

A
puff of
breath
and there
is rhythm
in my
soul
and I
am dancing
with the wind for
company.
Come dance
my
lover,
dance for joy.
When life
seems
ending
Dance!

Halloween Debrief : (How was it for you?)

I had my bag of goodies for the ghoulies,
ghosts, hobgoblins and the rest. The door bell sounds,
I answer it, see no one for a moment.
From total gloom a voice booms: Trick or treat!.
An adult voice, I realise. Into the light,
the man who calls each month - a local lottery
to help our hospice - grins sheepishly.
It seems I've chosen the wrong night!
he says. I've had to run the gauntlet just a bit!

A skeleton, just six or seven, I would guess,
starts up the path, then noticing my caller - who
is more than average tall - turns tail and runs
back to his mum, and is not seen again.
They were my only callers all last night.

My Small House by the Sea

I live in a small house by the sea
and have been trying recently
to let the attic room
from which at low tide there's a view
of black stumps, the remains
of ancient forest trees that grew
before the sea came in.

To date I've had three people
come to see the room. The first,
a man, was none too clean. He chewed
a lot of gum, and what he couldn't chew
he stuck beneath the peak of a new
Kill me, Baby, Kill me! baseball cap.
He rattled on about a lot the council ought to do:
Get rid of those unsightly stumps, for one!
They spoil the view. Like stubble
on a fellah's chin, they are!
He wasn't serious. Would never have
considered living here.

Then came a woman. Portly. Fifty-ish, I'd say.
She gushed about the view. The ancient forest.
That's romantic, that! she'd say -
And kinda weird! She'd take the room.

And last of all, a vicar came
and looked it over with great care.
I chatted on about the ancient forest -
like you do! But all the time he knew:
That's why I want the room, he said.
It took a while for me to realise
that he was blind. He spoke
as though he saw the stumps for sure.

The odd thing was: they'd all had dreams
about the ancient forest, and the dreams
had led them, each one, to my room -
and not to beat about the bush... to me.

The Tale of Maudlin Jones and Bloodless Jack

This is the tale of Maudlin Jones
who loved a girl who was nowt but bones,
a lass who had died a century back,
who had jilted him for Bloodless Jack.

I tell of the night Jones rose from his grave
with never so much as a shower or shave.
What could he do to the bones of a man
who had turned him into an also-ran?

Bloodless Jack he met at her tomb
in a clash of bones like the knell of doom.
A butt to the head and kicks to the shins:
the last man standing's the one who wins!

For an hour they whirled like a Catherine wheel,
all brute force, not an ounce of skill,
'till the bones of each were a bric-a-brac:
one half Jones and the other Jack.

One was sporting Jack's head and breast,
whilst the bones of Jones comprised the rest.
The other stood tall with what remained -
and neither could say what he'd lost or gained,

but the half of each that was Maudlin Jones
was still in love with Mary's bones
and swore with an oath that could curdle blood
that he'd take her yet, would the graveyard stud.

Bloodless it seemed, at heart was a prude
and three in a bed seemed downright rude.
But Maudlin's bones would leap with joy
to learn from Mary they'd had a boy.

Well, they would have leaped, but dragging round
the bones of Jack, they felt earth-bound.
And nothing that Mary could do would free
the bones of Jones for eternity.

Now Maudlin Jones was a bit of a toff,
though the bones of Jack were a real turn-off,
but this was the night of Halloween
when the undead rise to join the scene.

They rose in their thousands to fill the skies
and mingle their screams with unearthly cries,
but none were as scary - no, not the whole pack -
as Maudlin Jones and Bloodless Jack.

Though all who wandered abroad that night
were shocked to see the bones ignite,
see skeletons carried on rivers of blood
and witches and vampires drowned in the flood,

for the rivers of blood had burst their banks,
engulfing the phalanx of bonyshanks,
and Mary, still between the two,
could hardly have known what the hell to do.

Then the loving trio were lifted high
on a giant wave that was sweeping by,
and dumped like flotsum on top of a dune
where they carried on by the light of the moon

until in that dim, romantic light
she saw what must rank as the ghastliest sight -
enough to trigger two cardiacs:
the bones of Jones were rejecting Jack's.

How wild is love when it doesn't care
that half of its lover isn't there!
How wild, when missing face and breast,
it can turn to the half that lacks the rest!

Two halves of one lover - Jones renewed?
No, self-assembly's awfully crude.
Not recommended for bones and such -
and Mary felt she was out of touch...

Two halves of a loaf... she thought to herself.
One for now and one on the shelf...
Alas for her plans, the night was long
and wolves and mummies did her wrong,

consumed them all, not a grain remained
when the sun returned, when the moon had waned.
And only the bairn of Maudlin Jones
remained to comfort its mother's bones.