Two poems about Mary Palmer
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For Mary
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by Jay Ramsay
Lawned paths above a sparkling clear river
overhanging branches: this is where you are now
and where you can wander as far as you want
with no one else around.
All quiet healing green.
Dear friend without a body
as youthful and alive as you ever were
with your trim hot figure, only four days gone –
and suddenly as we talk, you tell me
something so electrifyingly true
it lodges and fizzes inside my belly …
but lie still as I might
I can't quite hold the words you say
as I fall asleep again
and maybe
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only the awakening itself matters
dissolving inside, from where your dream is real
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safe as you are now as if among those trees
we gazed out into beyond the glass
the lawns leading to depth upon depth of green
and to this dream inside a dream.
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18 June 2009
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For Mary Palmer
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by Yvonne Orengo
(a former student of Mary's)
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You move
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between
us gently
birdlike,
watch our silent scratching
heads
bent, intent
scraping for
words
like
fragrant seeds, you treasure
our
hatched offerings, ungainly strides,
pick
between the dust small jewels
and place
them, delicate as a breeze,
in full
sun
you smile
wistful curious
your own
bold passions hidden
breaking on
Iona’s far shores
like torn
flesh, gashed pages of
light and
shadow, scored by senses
wild,
unbroken dreams
splinters
of faith and fury
you sing
windswept
landscapes
red and silver
and gold
amber
leaves on birch
silken
forests of hanging larch
curtained
by mists, a piebald mare
nostrils
steaming, stamps her hooves
the frosted
earth
echoes on
the wind
your
burnished lament
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June 2009
