writing

Sainsburys – long marble counters with men in crisp white aprons
To measure and wrap the tea and butter,
To weigh the broken biscuits and
Cut the bacon with the whir of the spinning blade
Pay at the cashier’s window, the bill
Winging it’s way by pneumatic tube

A bicycle shop, unlit and dirty
Dark behind the grubby finger marked windows
Inside like a pile up at a vintage bike rally
Used and new parts in heaps at the mercy of memory
Old Harry, oil stained fingers and streaked cheeks
Sat behind the counter with a mug of thick sweet tea.

Going to the corner shop to get a penny for empty pop bottles
Collected from another shop’s backyard down the street.
Stealing an extended play record, but it was just the sleeve.
Buying cigarettes from the station kiosk, in ones and twos or
On pocket money day, a packet of four Domino
Or Black Jack liquorice chews, four a penny.

Those were the days, my friend.
That did, of course,
Come to an end.

12th August 2020

The long hot days lead me to go
and view the garden long unkept,
the uncut grass, the bushes grow
unpruned, unshaped, where weeds have crept.

I sit beside the shimmering pond
beneath the shading cherry tree,
recalling memories so fond,
your picture resting on my knee.

This garden was your love and life,
the passion of your final years.
But now, my dear departed wife,
should be the vale of all my tears.

Still, Spring is here, the flowers grow,
the fresh dug bed is doing fair.
The shrubs I planted should forgo
the cats inclined to dig right there.

You loved the garden more than I,
it filled your every wakening hour.
In fairness I could not deny
your permanent and final bower.

Terry Wassall
26th April 2020

Moments of motion
Changes of direction.
Some turning points are obvious,
Immediate.

But many go unobserved,
Disregarded minor deviations, small shifts
That accumulate and compound over the years
All tending in the same direction.

A mounting surge of myriad small things
Wavelets in the current
Eddies in the flow
A mounting pressure.

Then a dam bursts
A tidal wave of change
Sweeps you to a new destiny, a different fate.

The first drink can end
In the life of an alcoholic
Schoolboy shoplifting can lead
To a life of crime.
Or the boardroom.
A passion for football can end
In rioting on the terraces

The discovery of books can lead to
Dreaming of another life, another world
And leaving home.

Turning points happen on the cusp of possibility
Many futures dimly foreshadowed
One hardens into reality
One door opens, thousands more swing shut
But that door opens onto many corridors
With many more doors.

Life is a succession of the meeting and parting of ways
Of everyday decisions and acts
Most trivial, routine, but some hostages to fortune.
Only hindsight will reveal which was which.
A series of happenstance and circumstance
Possibilities flower, a thousand blooms.
All will wither and die, but one.

That one will propagate
Become a thousand new possibilities
And so the meetings and partings
The eddies and swirls of life go on
Leading to yet another turning point
Fortunate is the person that can see them coming
And ride the wave.

I think I’m done here.
I’ve seen the things I wanted to see
I’ve done the things I wanted to do.
At least, I am reconciled to
Not seeing or doing more.

I’ve broken some hearts,
I think. No one has told me so.
I’ve lived some fantasies,
A threesome, an escape
Running through back gardens
Leaping suburban fences.
Fast cars, fast women,
Slow nights in seedy cocktail bars.

I’ve been made happy and given happiness.
I’ve tried marriage and the relief of celibacy.
I have given and received the healing force of adultery.
For some, a life enhancing liberation,
A beneficial reordering of things.

I could tell you about my life,
To me quite ordinary but perhaps
To others, quite exotic.
But to record it is to seek immortality,
and fail.

Many have already forgotten me
Through death or disinterest.
All memory of me will pass
Disappointingly quickly
But I will be beyond disappointment.

No regrets, no could have done,
Could have been,
No what ifs.
I have been, I have done.
Is the world a better place?
No. But that was never my plan.

I came from a random arrangement of dust
Lived a life without care or conscience
And to that dust I will return,

A dispersion of atoms of no consequence,
drifting and percolating again through the world
Destined to become part of something, or somebody, else
Perhaps become, briefly, consequential again.

So, my patient friend,
Swing your glistening scythe,
Speed me on my way.

Terry Wassall

All the world’s a stage, said the Stratford Bard
And we, my friends, are merely the players
Dramatis personae, life’s foot soldiers
We write and are written, given our parts
We play the characters and speak their lines.

The drama of the stage has two faces
The twin masks, comedy and tragedy,
Happiness and sadness, laughter and pain.
But the drama of life has many masks,
The masks we hide behind to play our roles.

From inner space we gaze as life unfolds
Watching from behind our masks, and hiding
Our true selves, doubts and insecurities.
Each one alone knows who and what they are
Each wears a mask that shields them from the world.

Player and character are not the same
The clown’s grinning mask hides the broken heart
The harsh, barked, order hides the fearful man
The roles we play hide who we really are
Crouched out of sight behind our public masks.

So as we watch masked others play their roles
We know that someone else peers from behind,
Their true and private selves hidden from view
We play our role as they play theirs but we
All know this show is but a masquerade.

So what if there’s no one behind the mask?
The player is the role, the character
Is the player? Could that be true of us?
Is there a true and private self behind
Our mask? Or the mask what we really are?

We learn to play a part as if on stage
The role we play becomes an iron cage.
The mask no longer hides authentic self
Between the mask and who I am, no gulf.

The mask becomes the mould that sets in stone
The lives we live and thought were ours alone.

I venture out for my permitted walk.
A tentative glance to the left and right.
Dog walker to the right, all clear to the left.
Decision of direction made, I set off.

Other decisions have already been made,
my world mapped as a patchwork of no-go areas
and permissible paths. Avoid the park, narrow ginnels,
the canal tow path, wide berth to shops and bus stops.

I tread the urban pavements and back streets,
never more than a mile or two from home,
avoiding other humans as if walking through
a leper colony, or crowds of importuning beggars.

My route zig-zags across the empty roads,
To overtake or get past others in my way.
Often a hesitation. Are they crossing? Who’ll move first?
Often a smile, sometimes a wave, a murmured thank you.

As the weeks have passed, mild embarrassment
has given way to a sympathetic recognition.
We’re all in this together, all in the same boat
on a journey of unknown length to an unknown place.

To a future that no doubt will contain echoes of the old ways,
but some lingering habits and lessons of our journey.
In the meantime, we must adjust to a world where
any one of our fellow travellers could be our killer.