Holding In The Moors in my Hands Feels Great

The delivery driver took ages to find my parcel, and I couldn't help him, because I couldn't remember ordering anything by mail (which makes a change), when suddenly he alighted on a medium sized box of some weight. When I opened it, there were my pristine, new and shiny author copies of In the Moors! Reading the words on the pages of a paperback book made my achievement feel properly authentic and all the hard work (blood! sweat!) worthwhile.

Now I'm well on with the sequel to In the Moors and I'm trying not to make the same, silly mistakes I made the first time round. Most of these mistakes are the very things that every published author warns against; they're the things I constantly tell my students not to do. 

Mid August

I wrote this poem a while ago, when it was a very hot day!

It's about a time I was pregnant in a very hot summer.

But it's really about the way we sometimes have 

memories of events that we regard as 'not  retrievable'

things the we can never feel, see or do again

in exactly the same way as the first time.

In fact; is there every anything better than a first time?

After Branwen and Joe had been with us, we drove them
back to Swansea and stayed the day at
Tir Coch, where we were able
to enjoy the company of the Lee's
Taliesin, Amelia, Jonathan
and baby Seren.
Here we are playing with Branwen's father's old
Dinky cars.

AUGUST BURNT BRIGHT

Every dawn, the sun

Arrived like a child at       play. 

People whined over heat rashes, eyestrain, 

While, with sumo tread, 

My face a boiled beet,

My body pocked like grapefruit,

I peeled my big-girl bra and

Formed a starfish on the bedspread

A whale 

Dripping sweat like torture. 

In a dream, the curtains stirred. 

A lightness tripped in the room, a swirl of air 

Sulphur like poppies in my nostrils. 

Cartwheeling in his heated pool

Round and tight, a drum of child.

Waiting for the miracle.

Fat drops passed the window

Falling stars glistening with sunlight

As they hit the ashphalt.

This room of plum and orange walls.

This child rolling within me.

The air on my skin like Arctic feathers.

We played Harry Potter; here we are trying, then
failing, to get onto Platform 9 and 3/4s

Hold the memory in glass;

I am Gileroy Lockhart at his book signing in Diagon Alley;
good practice for later?

The unrepeatable ecstasy

Of a shudder as August burnt bright. 

Sweet Seren, the star

Two days later, and Britta was staying with us! She's
come from Switzerland for a lovely long stay, working her
way around Britain and enjoying old friends and Druid camps