Hydrangeas

     i.m. Lynne Wilson 1956-2015
 
I show her where they turn
to shades of blue –
 
The soil’s acidic. She says she has
the same flowers in her garden.
 
The name escapes her, melting
on the snow-lined branches
 
of her mind where winter rages
out of sight. Here it’s early summer
 
and she’s searching, searching
for the very word –
 
Beautiful, she smiles as she recalls
the loveliness of flowers,
 
Beautiful, despite the early frost.
 

Vivienne Tregenza

published in the prize-winners’ anthology In the Cinnamon Corners,
Cinnamon Press, 2016

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L’Arbre du Paradis

     i.m. Séraphine de Senlis (admitted to Clermont Asylum 1932)
 
Someone came today. Perhaps my mother
heard me call and led me by the hand
to another part of this strange land
of silent white, where ghosts and other
creatures move around in trances; they bother
neither to engage in conversation nor pretend
to love this life where no-one dances, nothing mends
and all is buried, stifled, smothered.
 
Yes, someone came today and moved me
to a room, wide-windowed, near a tree
that speaks to me in whispers. Have I
arrived in Paradise? This new world
sings with colour. The bright leaves sigh
in shades of green. I watch their fists unfurl.
 

Vivienne Tregenza

published in Ambit, No. 219, 2015

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Siesta

A triptych mirror in a corner
of the room, reveals a rectangle
of sky. Dark furnishings. A child
resting with her mother, holding
her quiet gaze. Not quite
touching, their love is shaped
by the space between them.
Here at the heart of the matter
is a place she could live:
a watery world, all edges blurred,
cradled in sunlight.
Here she could watch
flickering pieces of gold
shatter and remake themselves.
 

Vivienne Tregenza

published in Ambit, No. 219, 2015

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Water Bearer

     for Colin, 5 Feb 1960 -     )
 
Not considering the heat,
the weight of water –
I asked you and you bore it
 
like a rugby ball, green and mottled
carried in the crook of your arm
as you dodged the market sellers –
 
a thousand jostling eyes glinting
in the white glare of noon; a sea
of turquoise scarves shimmering in the dazzle.
 
Sweat-drenched, you lugged it
heavy as a boulder
up the hill to the dolmus
 
where you balanced your precious cargo
like a child on your lap.
                   You came to me
 
bearing gifts of fruit; figs, cherries
and this water melon –
hard as an ordeal, soft as flesh.
 

Vivienne Tregenza

commended in The Frogmore Prize, 2014; published in The Frogmore Papers, No. 84

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