Tuesday Poem

 

Snapshots from Paris

1.

Full moon

and on the street

an argument in a different language

but its sounds the same:

you don’t you don’t you don’t.

A dog barks sharp

and high because that old peeping tom moon

has swum through his window.

2.

That moment – crossing the bridge where the Seine divides;

Notre Dame, the tourist boats, a bride’s dress

making a flurry of light on grey stones

and opposite the shock of orange shutters

shading eighteenth century windows.

3.

Outside the gates of the theatre

a small campsite grows slowly  ̶  from one tent

to three, a cardboard cave and

a Rottweiler who doesn’t seem to like

where he’s washed up in this city.

I give my change to the women with children –

as short-leashed as the dogs on these foreign streets.

4.

Monks and nuns cross the rue Geoffrey d’Asniers

sandaled feet humble on the cobbles

while at the Memoriale de Shoah

a tourist guide waits as her flock

stare at the unfinished list of the dead.

5.

Today I saw a new husband tenderly gather up

his wife’s wedding dress as though it were all the children

they would have and he had to carry them to safety.

6.

Seeing the photos on Facebook, kids will ask their parents,

but did you know her?

It was just the way they were so small,

do you remember, darling?

Notre Dame loomed behind them.

She took her stilettos off and walked in thongs

from one photo to the next. Her dress glittered

and she did, spilling over his arms.

Were we like that

do you remember?

 Catherine Bateson, August 2013.

 Check out the Tuesday Poem blogspot - this week with a witty, affectionate snapshot of the changing world we live in, 'Where' by Paula Morris, edited by Renate Liang. Do scroll down and see Renate Liang's own poem, 'From Where' sounding a darker counterpoint to the same question. 

From the Tuesday poem hub you can crisscross the world of Tuesday poems and you don't even need a map!

Tuesday Poem - from a work in progress

The electric wires are like disorderly hexagrams against the sky. No calm mountain over river, but a tangle of futures running roughly parallel before looping together on a tree or pole, falling to the ground or hanging perilously close to pedestrian heads. Western pedestrians heads. Sometimes my life feels like that – a raveled knot of humming tension or a stretched trick wire. But then I walk into a room lit-up with Nina singing, ‘Ne me quitte pas’, her voice all French heartbreak. A pink plastic lotus lantern hangs on one wire. My heart is like this. 

Catherine Bateson, May, 2013

This was written after my trip to Vietnam - Hanoi, to be more specific. I loved Vietnam - and I will return, I'm sure. 

Now that you've shared a little of that journey with me, come over to the Tuesday Poem blog by clicking here and share some other journeys.  There's a really interesting poem fragment as the hub poem this week - it's a beautifully imagined list poem by Robin Hyde, a New Zealand poet who died in 1939 and was curated by Janis Freegard. From the hub, you can read other Tuesday poems and thus push your week off to a lyrical beginning. 

Seven days to go - then off to Paris. I still can't quite believe it....I'm hoping to go back to WordPress before then as I think it's a more elegant format but I do need some good spam protection before I return there. I'll keep you posted on how all that goes!