AUNT ALICE AND THE MARSHMALLOW FLOWERS

Dear Aunt Alice,

Somewhere, in other worldly places, you must surely know that I have inherited your perfect signet ring. Initials AJ carved in pretty curving script. I have been wearing your ring from the moment I received it from your niece Mary, because she thinks I am an aunt worthy enough to be in your mould. I thought of taking it off before a jaunt into London to keep it safe, but decided I wanted to take you with me since I suspect the last time you tripped around London as a young woman was, perhaps, a hundred years ago.

Liverpool Station was freezing cold, but once we were in London proper - Oxford Street proper - I warmed up. No snow to offer you this Christmas, but the lights! An assortment of charities paid towards these giant leaping angel figures. Beautiful for the crush of humans below to behold.

Shopping commenced. I'm not sure you would have approved of my purchases, but they were safe enough - a cosy camel turtle neck sweater, a leather bag and a pair of sunglasses. All on sale! Mind you, the prices, even on sale, would probably shock you. To ease the shock, my sister Angelina ordered cronuts and hot chocolate from a famous bakery called Dominique Ansel. Now this would have impressed you - a marshmallow cut like a crown was dropped into steaming hot chocolate, instantly blooming into a flower...

Later, on Great Marlborough Street, we stood outside Liberty and admired the Tudor Revival frontage. Did you know the timber was built from the ship HMS Hindustan? Or that in 1885, Liberty brought forty two villagers from India to stage a living village of Indian artisans? These handy facts are available from an extraordinary web of information us global villagers dive in and out of 'online'. I wonder what you would have made of Wikipedia? Here is something Wikipedia doesn't know: my father had three of his watercolours exhibited and sold by Liberty in the 1970s. Wikipedia you may have been on the fence about, but my father you would have loved.

I did feel a trifle faint in Liberty - so many people! - so was glad first to plop onto an inviting bed in Anthropologie, and then to mesh our way from Carnaby and Kingly Streets towards a Japanese restaurant, which also served my favourite Korean dishes, and to my delight, a delicious plum wine. For a nineteenth century Englishwoman, I suspect your gastronomic tastes possibly didn't stretch to the Orient, but maybe Mary will surprise me and tell me you loved experimenting with the new!

I got muttered at by a stranger for temporarily blocking the entrance to the tube - did I mention this was the day of the human crush? At these moments I am very much the hokey local from a tiny Cambridge village. By the time our train was hurrying us home, we were shattered and ready to slide, submerge and otherwise disappear into sleep. I hope you enjoyed the day out. Today is the last day of the year 2016. Soon 2017 will be upon us. 2016 has been a truly difficult year, for most of us, not least your beloved Mary. If you possess any magic, wield away. We need some magic. I can only be sure of one thing in the new year - I will continue to be the most loving and creative aunt it is possible to be. Keep your spirit beside me!

With love,
Your new friend-in-auntyhood across the century,
Shaista

Photos courtesy Debra Edward

SELF-PORTRAIT

First the hair

before it falls,

taffy, black molasses.

Then the skin,

fever-flush pink,

marshmallow cheeks,

(steroid-filled).

Wait, I forgot the eyes,

(I don’t see too well, these days)

obscured by tubes and blebs

and blood.

And then the mouth

that eats poetry

and cake

and spills happiness by the barrel.

The body ballet depends on the day:

sometimes a corpse,

and other times, a salmon

leaping, dolphin hooting

medley.

Slumped on the desk, scribing,

tucked up in bed, scribing,

hooked to the needles,

falling down the manholes,

scribing.

I find my eyes again,

scribing.

There you are,

light.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2014

Took this at the hospital just before one of my many myriad procedures.
This is how I see sometimes. Bit blurry, bit double visiony...

And this is how my mother sees me. Under her hands, I become whole. 

(Another interpretation of a dverse poets prompt…)

WEAVING FOR CAMELOT

There she weaves by night and day…

She has heard a whisper say

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be

And so she weaveth steadily…

"I am half-sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I am half-sick of shadows too… Twenty years this month, since I last spent Christmas in India, where cotton wool replaced the snow on the fir tree outside our bedroom window (we could only ever reach the first layers of branches, so the tree always looked extremely strange and wonderful). This Christmas I don't want to think about commerce and duty, only the memory of the Red Cross choir who would come to sing for each house on our street, and for the candles lit and mangers built in every department of the hospital where my father consulted. Simpler times, authentic times - Santa was fun but not the essence. Jesus was, and so was light and hope...

Image from The Mag: Autumn on the River, 1889, John Singer Sargent

GRACE

In this fading light
while the crickets sing,

A chant rings out
aboriginal, whole -

Keeping tune with the rhythm
of the humming gong -

Of the bell that brings me
home.


© Shaista Tayabali
Bergerac, 2012

How can it be that I have gone and come? I left on my in breath, and I have arrived on my out breath. How can it be that only this morning I was on Plum Village soil and whisking my skirt along with a frisky French white butterfly, and now I step into the doorway of my little house in the garden and a white butterfly pranced around at my feet, flirting outrageously near my cheek before sidling off to you. Watch out for him!

The girl that I was belongs to ether now. In her place, something firm has grown roots and spread branches, from which fall green curtains of mists and memories.

So much to share. Will it suffice to say it was perfect, from the first person I met waiting outside the airport with the name Padma, meaning Lotus? To emphasise the depth of her name, a tattoo of a lotus adorned her right foot. My beautiful blue room was named Mulberry, and had a hot water shower! The unexpected thrill! The loveliest of roommates, from Israel, Canada and Romania, and the heartbeat of compassion that wove its thread around every one of the thousand retreatants.

I have arrived. I am home. But from the moment I arrived in Plum Village I was home too. Some of the time I was sick, but I was tended to carefully by strangers who were not strangers. A cup of hot tea in the morning, made by a loving new friend while you are still snuggled under the duvet - now tell me, does it get better than that?!

Friend, don't forget

Friend, don't forget, I am always in your footsteps,

I, won't forget, I am always in your footsteps

 

Sunset, where English trains

roll slowly by like

patient caterpillars

on country soil,

I am travelling forward.

Here, where the winds

howl low

through patient conifers

that wave at me,

I see beyond the leaden sky

to the green spires of Prague

to watery whispers of Venice

to flowers tended carefully

on window sills in Graz.

 And I am walking, toes between sand,

red rust sand, and open fence

through curlicues of Cambodian dreams

crossing borders, homes and streams
to remind you

Friend, don't forget, I am always in your footsteps,

I, won't forget, I am always in your footsteps.

- Shaista Tayabali, 2010

My first picture is of a child whose name I do not know, whose life I do not know, whose eyes I cannot see, but who already inspires my poetry. Happy Diwali to the little lights that are our children everywhere.

photograph by Rizwan