EMAIL INDIGO DREAMS
KNOWING THE DARK
These poems are a two-handed celebration, of moments of wildfire and of the quiet persistences that underpin a life. Though the dark is ‘known’, most movingly in the elegy sought down the winding paths of a well-wrought sestina, Jo Heather has an eye for the subtler colours that can outwit the dark, whether it is the “pure saffron silver-stain” she finds in the windows of ‘All Saints, Tanner Street’, where a York leather merchant, “a plain man, down to earth, with a bulgy nose”, is “preserved not in leather but in light”, or a friend’s timeworn beauty, found again
in the breath / given by wild bluebells, so light / no-one can describe it.
Roger Garfitt
Poets inhabit their own regions, whatever world they live in. Jo Heather is one such, whether attacking weeds in her overbrambled garden, or making chutney or regretting an affair, she is absorbed in the sensual world in a remarkable way. Her flowers have a Plath like intensity, “Infinite poppies, burn for me!”. Knowing the dark is only half the story. Don’t be half hearted, advises her lover. Ecstasy has its price and summer doesn’t last but poetry has its own seasons. Her poems are witty, sexy, evocative, bristling with vitality and incandescent language and wry observation. Her wisdom is dearly bought but she hasn’t lost glamour with experience. She would put to shame any winter.
S.J. Litherland
EVERYDAY
china, primrose Coleport, rimmed
with gold, its sparkle lost to time, this cup
waits in the kitchen cupboard saucerless.
Needed for cracking dubious eggs in first,
to scissor mint and parsley in or store
leftover lamb fat that we’ll never use;
no longer, with Ceylon or Lady Grey,
held up, admired for its fragility.
My cup has lasted more than forty years,
known me as long as memory, went with me
from life to later life, unpacked and packed
with passport, Shakespeare, Chanel No.5;
stays to remind me of another self
shelved now in darkness. Rarely seen or held.
IN ORBIT 1961
That was the high summer of travelling alone:
at seventeen straight-jacketed by sameness
I launched myself into the unknown
on my O-level German and my white stilettos.
I found the cross-channel world not much odder
than wearing a different uniform might be.
But astride my penfriend’s brother’s BMW
I learned in a flash a universal language.
Our lofty Head Girl was on the boat going home.
We discussed amazing news: satellites, space.
And I found myself no longer overawed
by her Oxford scholarship, her perfect French.
I’M NO GOOD AT THREESOMES
I like friends one to one
So there’s no doubt I have his or her whole attention
And he or she has all of mine.
Annoyingly I often find
I’m tête-à-tête in Chapters Bistro with, say, Christine
when Jan or Jean
Sees us through the window and joins in.
I like them all, a lot, Jan, Jean, Christine
But, foregoing a gossip, I leave inexcusably soon.
When I was fourteen
I had two best friends, sloe-eyed Mary and sparkly Anne.
We used to pass the boys’ school, dawdling our bikes down
Victoria Park Road in the lime-green afternoon.
One day they pedalled top-speed from the bike-sheds, left me
outstripped, alone.
I caught them up under the lime trees with two boys. Head high,
rode on.
AT ALL SAINTS, TANNER STREET
For S.W.
We have read the will of Nicholas Blackburn,
Merchant of York died 1432,
an ordinary man, exceptional. Who loved glass,
Margaret his wife, All Saints and the people of York.
And making money – leather for harness, buckets, boots –
and spending it wisely for life and afterlife.
He sent to Flanders for costly glass,
to the glory of God and to fend off the smell
of mortality. And look, look: here it is, still
after six centuries, holding the light;
even his son might have thought it
money well-spent. And see embodied
Nicholas’s spirit faithful here, the truth
of his colours – pure saffron silver-stain,
flash-ruby brighter than wine or blood – see
the Virgin Mary’s fragile face; and Nicholas
a plain man, down to earth, with a bulgy nose,
preserved not in leather but in light.
No oil-painting, Sophie says. But a man
of his world who did good and prospered.
One year he was mayor: in the king’s service
provisioned the army far from home. See him
rewarded, in armour and robes of state
Admiral of the Fleet, on that window there.
A LOVER’S COMPLAINT
Not hearing from you, frantic: are you in?
Or out? Or dead? Are your days too colourful
to need me, summer gone and a kaleidoscope
of vital things to do – poetry-classes,
meetings, concerts, study-leave? Succour
to your children, lightening your life, I will
allow you space for, to other lovers
I will not. Where are you? Now for days
no flashing on my fax machine; no
little criss-cross letter on my mobile phone
announces you exist. I’ve sent a hurricane
of messages for you, but I must try
just one more time: I dial, glance out and see
the bruise-black sky is rainbow-bridged.
FINDING OUT
My survivor son lives
a long way off.
Today the weather map predicts
it will be raining where he is.
Here, cool April sun,
a day for being
outside, hyperactive.
I have hacked branches, and planted
the springy young lavenders: I will take
better care of these. I have sliced out
dandelions and bittercress. And puzzled
over the sudden ground elder:
a dragon’s teeth seeded
through the underworld.
Today my survivor son has travelled
– hand in hand with his beautiful friend –
to the difficult place
where he will joke, she will try to smile,
as careful people slide him,
shadowed, radioactive,
into the light.
BLACK SACK
In a garden once I made leaf mould,
stuffed in the mounded oak and sycamore leaves
weighting the lawns of summers’ ending.
Dark and sweet it takes a while;
years shouldn’t surprise you.
Jo Heather was born in South Africa with Irish, Scottish and West Country antecedents . The family returned to settle in Devon, where she grew up. English Literature at Leeds and Social Administration at LSE led to a career in Mental Health Social Work in Middlesbrough where she moved when she married.
She took early retirement on health grounds in 2000 following the bereavement which triggered her poetry writing. She now lives with her husband on the edge of the North York Moors.
She is a member of various poetry groups including Hall Garth Poets in Middlesbrough. ‘Organizes’ a Summer School tutored hitherto by Mandy Sutter and based on the Hall Garth group but open to all comers; readers and supporters have included Chris Considine, S.J .Litherland, Gill McEvoy, Gordon Hodgeon, Marilyn Longstaff.
Jo is a regular attender at Roger Garfitt’s master classes at Madingley, and has attended
Arvon/ Ty Newydd courses over the years.
Also 3 courses of Poetry School seminars with Tamar Yoseloff 2001/3, and Anthony Dunn 2004/5
Jo has been on the editorial board of Mudfog Press since 2005
Publications
Gold, Mudfog Press 2001 revised and reprinted 2007
Poems in Anthologies: Smelter Mudfog Press 2003 and Ink on Paper Mima/ Mudfog 2008
I AM SOMEWHERE ELSE
A sombre day for us, we are at odds, two
ungainly giants reaching out on a white beach in sunshine.
Hunt Cliff saws into air, a shark’s huge tooth.
We once met a stranger high on that edge:
she looked into your eyes and she flew.
I write on sand, ‘Whatever dies was not mix’t equally.’
Are you the only man who hasn’t read John Donne,
who couldn’t kill a gnat, who’ll lift me up?
Safe in the town we choose a silvery ring
twining with knots that don’t quite tally.
NOT THINKING ABOUT WORK
Ellen Grayson sailed into my head today
out of the blue, one of the exasperating;
not exactly Alzheimer’s, worse in a way.
Her sister too far off despaired
and the home help staunch Sheila said
it was No Good, other ladies needed her too.
The house was freezing, all the money slid
through Ellen’s fingers, on fags, on taxis,
on Smarties for her bulging spaniel.
Burn marks appeared on sofas and she grew thin,
frequently got lost but always turned up
smiling with a good excuse; refused to give in.
And then her dog died. Ellen wept.
I said, ‘Ellen you’ll be quite all right in care,
it’s your turn now, you’ve worked hard all your life.’
On the Stockton buses forty years;
with her tipped-back hat and her mock-cross glare
I could see her swing on that shiny pole,
She said, ‘Work, dear? Never so hard as you:
all that writing!’ But she agreed at last,
the dog clutched to her in his urn, she’d go.
And loved it, flirting with the men all day
fag-cadging, reminiscing, annoying the staff –
‘Ooh your Ellen,’ they laughed at me down the phone.
I hated the power I had; all the same, I hope
that when I too am old and difficult
and my husbands are consecutively dead,
and my friends are weary and my children
in despair, there’ll be people
to waft me away to where they know I’ll like it.
And years on, I’ll come sailing into someone’s head
out of the blue with a following wind, smiling.
SIDE-ROOM, GENERAL HOSPITAL BURNS UNIT
I think now I must have been mad
to stop the car on the way and cross,
taking my life in my hands, to gather
wild flowers from the far verge, to hope
for some healing magic in their innocence.
Even the sweetest, the mignonette,
couldn’t staunch the dustbin smell
from her flayed body, unimaginable
under the high white sheet, although her face
still smiled and talked about getting well.
Picture Ophelia, how her pale dress
swells over her; the caress of floated petals,
dog-roses, honeysuckle, speedwell, vetch,
useless to her as to my friend who chose
petrol, matches, a calyx of flame.
A nurse whisked away my frail armful
to where everything dying is finally
out of sight and scentless.
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