Spades Apart - Trudie Shannon

Apparently social distance is
Two metres
Or six foot six inches in old money.
But I utilise a common object.
A spade,
As in the garden tool
That we dig holes, trenches and graves with.
The whole spade of course
From hand worn, wooden handle and weather worn shaft
To the curved metal blade.
It is useful to have something tangible
If a little unwieldy to carry around.
However the upside is that
When one does carry around a garden spade
Be it on the road or in a shop
Others naturally keep their distance.

Trudie Shannon

Image : Pixabay - MabelAmber

Christmas 2020 - Trudie Shannon

Mary was pregnant.
She didn’t know
The how, the why or the when
Until the angel came and told her the news.
His mask was a bit askew
And she could have sworn that a bit of beard was poking out
Seemed unlikely but..
So you’re having a baby he said
His voice was muffled as all voices are
Through fabric.
She thought he said baby but hoped he hadn’t
I mean she and Joseph hadn’t, …..you know
I mean what with covid and all that
They’d barely been able to be in the same room
Their dwellings were tiny hardly regulation two metres.
It’s all very holy the angel said
This Virgin birth stuff and you’re the chosen one.
Mary somehow didn’t feel special just shocked
And half wished Hannah was in her shoes
She wasn’t fond of Hannah.
When the time came
She was straddled across some donkey’s back
Seasick with swaying and longing for a bed.
When they got to that place, a lousy stable for the birth of a God
She felt both outraged and couldn’t care less.
All those exercises, deep breathing Hah!
With a mask on!
But she did it.
She grimaced and groaned and birthed her son
And laid him in the cow’s manger, swaddled and masked
She’d made sure that in her layette
She’d stitched a dozen tiny masks but
She felt irked knowing her baby would not know his mother’s smile.
Then the shepherds all turned up, headdresses swathed about their faces
Bearing a couple of ewes and a lamb
And then the kings too, each one sporting a bejewelled mask.
And such  timely gifts
A two metre rule, a miniature jewelled mask
And a bottle of hand sanitiser scented with frankincense.
Mary was exhausted, rested her heavy head on Joseph’s shoulder
She could tell it was Joseph, he smelled of wood
The shepherds smelled of sheep
And the Kings just smelled mighty rich.
The baby mewed in his manger
Mary lifted him and raised his mask and he suckled
And it was Christmas
And the angel on high sang oh so loud his Gloria’s to the world
Mask free and sporting a luxuriant beard.

Trudie Shannon

Image : after Pixabay - CCXpistiavos

Armistice Day, France - Trudie Shannon

Armistice Day
And the café is two thirds empty.
Vacant seats that evoke images
Of men unknown
Who drank coffee, made love, fathered children
Teased their siblings, loved their fathers, idolised their mothers.
Unknown and faceless here and now
Yet these empty seats exude their presence somehow.
Their voices infiltrate the conversation and the music,
Their invisible footprints leave muddy trails upon the floor
And the dank smell of their unwashed bodies and uniforms
Permeates the air and outside there is a
Staccato rhythm to the silence.
It is not raining.
It is not nighttime
But there are ghosts, drifting hopeful
Around these empty tables, these vacant chairs.
And suddenly in isolation, tears cascade into my cup.

Trudie Shannon

Tinnitus - Trudie Shannon

It’s always raining in my head
Sometimes there are cross-winds
And often interminable white noise,
Static that comes before and after storms.
Always raining, from light hissing drizzle
To persistent shards pounding the windows of my eyes.
Sometimes when the night is weighty with silence
I hear the globules of rain flaunt descant and harmony as
They drift around the contours of my skull in vivid orchestration
Often the wind rises exponentially
Obliterating my hope for potential creativity.
Yes, it’s always raining in my head.
Within the landscape of my cranium I have the auditory pulses
Of every season
Soft April showers
The cascade of summer flood
Autumnal gales
And Winter snow’s vibrato hiss.
Always, always raining in my head
With static, that interminable white noise
That comes before and after storms.

Trudie Shannon

Glass - Trudie Shannon

Just glass, clear, unfrosted glass stands between them
Them, being strangers, one to the other.
It is raining, the sky loud and heavy.
One walks with a plodding dog, its head down and she in its wake.
And the other stands hopeful behind the glass,
The glass awash with rivulets of running water
She stands in a hallway, a seat beside her.
She can see the road, the low walled apron of grass
And beyond the grass the stunted trees, beyond them
The dilapidated greenhouses and beyond those
The ever alluring horizon,
Though it is barely visible today, the mizzling rain holding it to ransom.
She sees the figure walking past, hood up with a small dog
And automatically raises her hand to the glass,
Just clear, unfrosted, unblemished glass
Save for water patterns ever changing upon its slick surface..
She raises her hand, one human being to another
In peripheral vision the hooded woman
Catches a glimpse of red behind the glass and turns her head.
She raises her hand much like an automaton and
Instantly there is eye contact and duality of smiles
Revealing the invisible woman behind the glass to herself.
And the woman with the dog walks on
The dog plodding and she in its wake
And the rain runs mad down the clear unfrosted glass
And the stranger in the red cardigan sits in the chair
And gazes at the road and the low walled apron of grass
And the stunted trees and the dilapidated greenhouses
And the alluring gem of the seas horizon.

Trudie Shannon

Do Days Have Names Anymore? - Trudie Shannon

I wonder do days have names anymore
Or are we left to loll in Sundays.
Each twenty four hours rolls sedately into the next
No markers, no appointments, start times, finishing times
Buses, boats, trains or planes, to catch,
No irate fuming in traffic queues
No circling frantically for parking places,
No screaming at kids to get out of bed, eat breakfast
Get in the car.
Just a seemingly endless stream of hours all piled together.
Time to breathe, time to think, time to appreciate.
Our hearts are beginning to pulse to a gentler rhythm,
The fluidity of day followed by night, followed by day.
We rise to the dawn and go to rest
To the setting sun.
For now, we can discard all clocks
And if we are in need of markers, names
To own and pass the time
There is of course
Today
At least for most of us.

For there are those who continue to rise each day, exhausted
And work all hours to care and nurse the sick unflinchingly selfless.
There are those who daily, care for the elderly, the needy, the isolated
There are those who make their way to the factory floors
To prepare food and pack it away into tins and boxes
And there are those who drive the lorries to collect the food
And distribute it far and wide
And there are the dockers who load the ships
And there are crews who voyage to bring the goods to port
And there are those who staff the supermarkets, the pharmacies, the post offices
And there are those who clean the streets and the hospital wards
Every one, every single one heroic
Who rise to the same dawn same as most of us
Yet their days are filled to capacity to bring life, nourishment, love
and solace to others.

I wonder do days have names anymore
For now, we can discard all clocks
And if we are in need of markers, names
To own and pass the time
There is of course
Today and
We need to be thankful and remember
That we are the fortunate ones

Trudie Shannon

The Queue March 24th 2020 - Trudie Shannon

We stand in a line, then zig zag our way slowly towards the doors.
The sun is shining and shadows seem to grow longer with waiting
But patience grows too and voices mingle with easy contentment
Happy that, thank goodness, it’s not raining.
The sky is a cloudless blue, where crows and jackdaws,
Chiffchaffs and sparrows cavort and chatter.
And way up on high above us all
A skylark sings joyously.
The queue moves oh so slowly towards the doors
A young couple test out dance steps
An old man leans against a bollard
A woman reassures a vulnerable person that all will be well.
Conversations between strangers start to unfold
Smiles are exchanged and every tilt of the head conveys kindness.
We stand in a line, then zig zag our way slowly towards the doors.
Two by two as in Noah’s Ark we enter the emporium
Greeted by masked staff who explain their roles as assistants
Everyone is careful to keep the required distance
There is no push and shove, no selfish overloading
We just stand in a line and wait our turn.
The sun is shining
And way up high the skylark is still singing.

Trudie Shannon

I Pick Up The Phone - Trudie Shannon

I pick up the phone.
I dial your number.
And I wait for the message
That says the real you
Will call me later.
I don’t leave my name.
I don’t leave my number.
The real you has already left me.
Later
I pick up the phone.
I dial your number.
And I wait, knowing that if
The real you picked up the phone
I’d hang up.
In the meantime
I just wait in hope
Of the answerphone
Which tells me in your real voice
That if I’d like to
You will call me later.
A trite game.

Trudie Shannon

Pirates - Trudie Shannon

The pirates have disembarked,
Have left their decks swabbed clean
And their treasure hidden.
Disguised as tourists
They amble lazy around the streets
Given away only by the thud of a wooden leg
Or the clink of a cutlass
Hidden in a shopping bag.

Trudie Shannon

Another Woman - Trudie Shannon

She approaches me, wobbling a little
Upon her high stiletto heels.
Her face has been painted as though
She wears another’s portrait upon the surface of her skin.
Her eyebrows arc like adulterated rainbows
Their lids a convolution of colour.
Her hair is dyed chic, sculpted to the contours of her cheeks
Her lips are engorged with botox
And aflame with fire red.
She approaches me
The older, indistinct, grey haired woman at a cafe table.
We are strangers but it seems she is drawn to me
On request, she takes a seat beside me
And offers me her name
And I gift her with mine.
She speaks haltingly as if a butterfly
Were trapped in her mouth
And says
I would be authentic, be who I am fearlessly
But I am too scared to be seen and
She hangs her head in inverted shame.
I order her a cup of coffee
Ask her to look at me
And when she does, I smile
And look directly into her eyes.

Trudie Shannon

An Old Wives Tale? - Trudie Shannon

She tells me that for those with fragile hearts
It is best to stay indoors
When the cold wind blows hard.
She says it’s medically proven.
There are testimonies.
She says it’s wise to keep feet warm and slipper shod,
Wiser to merely observe through tight shut windows,
While the wind runs wild
Lifting hats off heads and tiles off roofs.
Wrenching branches from ancient trees
Casting giant waves to crash mightily
Upon unprotected shores.
She tells me this as we stand together,
Watching through her tight shut windows,
As flurries of leaves skitter and swirl
And birds fly backwards going forwards.
I see that her feet are encased in warm slippers,
And her hand rests lightly upon her breast
Where her fingertips can just feel the metal disc of her pacemaker.

Trudie Shannon

Three Kittens - Trudie Shannon

She is a farmer’s wife, she is a farmer
She drowned the kittens
She said, it had to be done.
She said, It broke my heart
She said, I put them in a sack
She said, I plunged the sack snap, like that, into the bucket
She said, I had no choice
I was on my own.

It seemed barbaric to me
And I really didn’t want to listen or to hear.

I leave the farm and the farmer’s wife.

Now I reflect and consider,
How many small bodies has the sea swallowed
As the Syrian refugees flee their war?

It’s barbaric
But it seems we shed more tears over kittens.

Trudie Shannon

Homage? - Trudie Shannon

How strange that throughout time
Man has built edifices, temples, churches
In homage to his Gods.
When surely the greatest homage must be
To protect and respect all of creation.
For nothing man creates can ever compare
To the innate beauty and absolute wonder of the earth itself.

Trudie Shannon

Stories - Trudie Shannon

The lads on the ferry are raucous, loud
Laughing, talking, shouting
Strings of ‘friendly’ obscenities about
Cars, women, drink
Hang-overs, conquests and pile-ups
Wearing the clothes they slept in
The same that saw them all spruced up
Smelling of aftershave and exuding pheromones
Out on the pull last night.
They dominate the space
Rude, coarse and harmless
Bouncing stories between themselves
Each one racing to out-do the others.
Other passengers, sigh and look heavenward
Saying nothing but oozing disapproval
Features contorted into frowns until …
One lad says
I can’t wait to get home, sleep in my own bed,
Mum’s cooking tea
There’s a pause and a universal sigh of assent.
The other passengers turn to each other
And share a covert smile.

Trudie Shannon

The Cry - Trudie Shannon

The mist has thickened into impenetrable fog
But the sea swirls, sucks and swells just the same.
Fog draped rocks are become invisible or disguised.
Light gleams are suffused with water
Cannot pierce the shadowy shrouds.
All sound is muffled
Until a familiar haunted call from atop it’s rock pinnacle.
The foghorn’s cry carries like dust on a desert wind
Puncturing each water droplet,
Startling roosting birds, sending mice scurrying,
Arousing me from fitful sleep and fearful dreams of floundering ships.
Its muted echo tumbles around me
And I breathe more easily in its embrace,
Island born, island bound to the sea
And the rocks and the cliffs
And the foghorn, that static saviour reticent in sunshine.

Trudie Shannon

Bread - Trudie Shannon

Today I mixed flour yeast, salt, water and a little oil
With my fingers, into a dough in a glass bowl.
Like a magician preparing transformation magic,
So that once established in its oiled tin, my dough would rise
As delicately as a child’s breast rises on every intake of breath.
I covered the tin with a cloth and left it.
With my house empty, the air quiet and still
I ventured that the yeast would work its mystifying miracle better.
Those pockets of carbon dioxide emerging like butterflies from their pupa
Into the winter’s day,
The day contracted by the travelling sun,
A day as short as a gasp of surprise, light barely present.
Night shades lurking silently, the curbed hours through.
When I returned home, significant time had passed
And the opalescent moon had risen majestically to court Venus.

Under the cloth, I saw the curvaceous mound of risen bread,
No stellar acolyte, but somehow
In its microcosmic way similarly beautiful.

Trudie Shannon

Earth Spirit - Trudie Shannon

I let the water fall
Through sunshine and onto cloud.
I let the water fall
Through rainbow and into sound.
I am the rhythm.
I am the soul.
My dreams cascade
My vital waters flow
Into harvests,
Into ground.
I am straight and lithe in growing wheat
I am the life in each bird's wing as it takes flight.
I let the water fall
Let glistening pearls rest
Upon leaf and twig, flesh and fur.
I let the wind call through the grasses
Crossing meadows, traversing forests,
Rippling waters, rivers and seas.
I await, for my seasons fruit to fall
Enriching all,
The soil, the earth, my Self.
I let the water fall
Through sunshine and onto cloud

Trudie Shannon

Boots 1916 - Trudie Shannon

My boots are invisible.
I cannot see where my torso ends and my thighs begin.
I cannot see my trouser legs, or my legs within
I am become a shapeless form encased in cloying mud.
I cannot feel the cloth that clothes my skin.
I cannot feel the skin beneath the cloth
I cannot feel a bloody thing.
My boots are invisible.
And the gun in my hands is slick with blood,
My blood and bloody rain.
And I cannot see where my torso ends and my thighs begin
I cannot see ought but this sea of mud
And its tide of body parts.
And it’s so quiet, so deathly quiet.
My boots are become invisible roots
And the bloom of my youth a poppy.

Trudie Shannon

A Mother’s Hips - Trudie Shannon

Small children
Have legs, that
By right, embrace
A woman’s hips.
Women, by right
Have hips
That are
Safe places
For small children.

Trudie Shannon

Bunkers - Trudie Shannon

We played Germans and British,
We played in bunkers
Those concrete edifices built to last forever
With the thick rusting wires and heavy doors.
We had three within spitting distance of each other.
All within the parameters of our play.
One, filled with water, one, to us merely a tunnel to run the gauntlet
The third, a rite of passage.

For the first our challenges were few.
The construction itself was all but invisible,
Sunken down into the earth and covered in grass.
Save for steps leading down into it,
You wouldn’t have guessed it was there.
The game, to run across the roof, leap from it
Over the lip and gap onto the grass verge beside the road
Avoiding the abyss of the descending concrete steps.
Scary the first few times, but I was a tomboy
As good as my brother and his mates.
Run hard, run fast heart pounding and leap for life
Land victorious, easy.
Soon it was so easy anyone could do it
If you knew where to jump from.
Kevin didn’t, he jumped scared in the wrong place
And fell onto the steps, his leg twisted and broken beneath him.

The second, like the first was sunken down into the earth
Covered though, in thick bracken and brambles.
As explorers we were triumphant in our discovery.
It was bleak, and damp, we pushed our way in
Discovering the dark, narrow passage
Running the bunker width at the back.
We dared each other not to run but
To step one by one into the treacle black
To tread slowly the gauntlet of ghosts and skeletons
German helmets, guns and grenades
The passage so narrow and the floor littered
With all this debris, all invisible save in our imaginations.

The third, atop a rise in the vinery that gave vista
To a swathe of the sea and rocky coastline.
Was accessible, visible and we had permission to play in it.
The boys brought wood and in one of the small bare rooms
Constructed a platform to be our ‘bed’
We would sleep in it!
Gathered together later with blankets and the odd candle stub
We ate up the air with our whispering
We spent the night in the airless cube, hot and scared.
I did not kiss Martyn or maybe I did kiss Martyn
Because this was the bunker of transition from kids
To pre-teens where games required more
Than leaping into space
Or walking through the dark when you just wanted to run and run and run.

We played Germans and British
We played in bunkers
Those concrete monstrosities built to last forever.

Trudie Shannon

"Bunkers" is currently on display in the Guernsey Market Building as part of the "Reflections On Occupation" exhibition.