STRANGE CREATURES
John Levy and Rupert Loydell
1. A POEM I'VE BEEN WORKING ON
I just looked for them. I don't go out
and walk before it gets hot, usually
stay in and feed the dogs. Fortunately,
the piano can't tell me if it loves me.
I believe in a God who created herself,
and never got very good or encouraging.
I had a split-second of wondering and
was tempted to steal the eagle story.
My piano teacher is a professor with
feeble will power in the dance department.
I smile, thinking of you and Sue in Venice,
like that 'Rupert' sounds a bit like 'rabbit'.
2. I KEEP WORKING ON NOTHING
Or does God keep working on me?
Sometimes I think God created nothing
before feeding the dogs. God
does not consider herself the dogs' teacher.
For a split-second she wanted to name
whoever her next child would be
Rabbit, but decided if it were a son
she'd name him Rupert.
She thought that inside herself he had felt
like a boy. Especially that day at the Devon zoo
when he kicked, inside her, as the golden eagle,
behind bars floated up from the tree.
3. THE NEXT ONE, FOLLOWING THE LAST
The gist, I looked for it. And I don’t wane
when I get lost. I stay, feed the stanzas.
The stanzas who never tell me
they love themselves.
I believe in goldfish, they’re very good
and encouraging. They moved during the last split-
second; spurred on by their thoughts, the stories
they tell themselves, they swim.
My piano teacher teaches, swimmingly,
patiently; I don’t feel like his patient.
Most people know Rupert is a name
that towers rather than dog paddles, near those gondolas.
4. GOING ROUND IN CIRCLES
My daughter once telephoned me to ask
if I would like a goldfish for my birthday.
I said no as I don't really approve of pets
and she was disappointed. She wanted one.
But I believe in them alright, I've seen them
swimming round in circles, blurred through the glass,
in time to their own music. I love the sound
of a piano, hated practicing when I was a kid.
Synthesizers and electric guitars made more noise,
were more fun when I got older. My band
splashed around in shallow noise and sound
trying not to drown in the 80s.
5. CIRCLES GOING AROUND
Someone else’s daughter in the waiting room
with an aquarium said the goldfish were circling
her thoughts. I thought her mother, silent, may
have been disappointed her daughter was loud.
I believed her daughter could’ve been right.
The goldfish, catching the light, weren’t waiting like adults
for the muzak to change, or to hear their names
called by the assistant in scrubs opening a door.
I longed for a wilder guitar, not the shallow
cover of I am a Walrus that drenched us all.
The daughter said she dreamed last night
of flying fish, the musical splash when they’d land.
6. NOTHING IS WORKING
The walrus is a large aquatic beast,
who eats fish for all its meals. It rarely sings,
has never learnt guitar and is bored of
declaiming I am and trimming its moustache.
The doctor always asks if we dream in colour
but never if there is a soundtrack
to the surreal images we see. There isn't,
not even a buzz of static. No subtitles,
no apparent plot. The fish that feature
alongside myself are not credited, never named.
Walrus, fish and I, we are all scared of the lion
that roars at the start of every film.
7. NOTHING KEEPS WORKING OVERTIME
Nothing sings about everything it isn’t,
including a warbling walrus that has little interest
in caviar. Nothing never practiced guitar
and was bored during the guitar lesson.
The doctor dreams of being on stage, singing
while all the patients with their surreal pains
feel happy again, almost pointillist paintings
in their daydreams, his songs their soundtrack.
Unnamed fish in my neurons
signal each other, electrical, with nothing
much and nothing less to communicate
during the feature film they think I am.
8. SINK OR SWIM
Dreams within dreams and songs about songs,
intertextual metaphors that lead nowhere.
I circle around myself all day, trying not to
sweat now the summer's arrived, my name
is bandied about and one of our old friends
has returned to the village for a visit,
like a duck drawn to water, aghast at
the eagle in the sky and the walrus in the way.
In the shadows, away from tourist gondolas,
the art of paint and film. Every corner is
an echo from Don't Look Now, every church
contains paintings showered by coloured light.
9. UNTITLED AND SINKING
The power of dreams, long times in many places,
esoteric and metaphoric paths subsumed in each where.
The place itself says I, a kind of calculation of circumference.
It tosses the name of a season, catches the name again.
No matter how complicated, the friends
turn up, visit, improve my solitude.
The sky, with its landless although, is there
in our way, our thoughts drawn to it in ways.
In the shadows, all our longings.
So-called personhood is what we shy away from,
the way it can clutch and echo, flit and
tint, corner us, squelch.
10. FOOTLOOSE AND AFLOAT
Without excitement or spirit, quiet dreams
are all we deserve and all we get. Friends do not
require calculation, intuition kicks in and solitude
is sometimes left behind. The sounds
of summer are overwhelming and then
the temperature drops. There are no buts, what ifs
or althoughs, life simply is, just as the desert
stretches away before us. I remember
the emptiness, the long road, the dust and sun,
my eyeballs bubbling (it seemed so anyway)
and the ochres, reds and pinks of rock,
the sweet sound of distant running water.
11. WHITHERWARD
The sweet speck and the sweet spot
of thought, vision, colors, ochres, blues,
eyes anyway seeming the way
to fill time, that road, this sun.
I remembers what isn’t I, stretching further,
deserts in fairy tales, fairy tale justice.
Words may drop in, then leave, perhaps warm.
Summer, the word, floats above silence.
Sounds are at liberty, in liberty, left and right.
Solitude and intuition cohere, flower.
I’ll never know if I deserved to breathe.
As for my dreams, they come undone.
12. A DREAM I'VE BEEN WORKING ON
I just looked for it. I don't sleep much
when it gets hot, usually toss and turn
all night then feed the cats. Unfortunately,
they can't tell me if they love or not.
I try to believe in a God who created a world
that pays her back with hate and spite
but often wonder how decaying seconds
of war and noise and death fit in with that.
Everyone is an expert at something, we all
have feeble powers of faith and persuasion.
Whatever our names mean or echo, surely
they should help us smile and lead to peace?
13. OR ASLEEP
I won’t look for it. It comes or it doesn’t.
I can’t lose something I never had, awake
or asleep. This poem is a where, too, all night.
I like to think of people in love, more of them
than raindrops during a day it rains all day.
I do believe in love. I like small wonders, like
Lewis Warsh going to Steve’s to get a haircut,
both of the barbers named Steve. Warsh’s poem
about them, and the shop, is titled STEVE’S.
Steve is a name that makes me think of stevedores,
unloading cargo. We rarely think of barbers
unloading hair. Everyone is thinking of something.
14. THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOSS
Surely, we're all going to lose everything?
Things we've had and what we've never had.
Trying to live in the moment is problematic,
memories and ideas are both now and then,
time unmanageable and, like my thoughts,
difficult to control. The Steves I know are poets
and a musician I once worked with, clippers
not barbers are all the remains of my hair needs.
I think too much, don't unload enough,
physically and mentally stuff piles up and
fills the human space. Sleep becomes an escape
a chance to dream of empty modernist homes.
15. MATTER, MATTERING
Loss, unbroken, at the speed of life, surely
then uncertainly saved, remembered, had
in parts, momentarily held, now-ed and now’ll,
place and placed, ideas fluttering.
Time, a thug or an embrace, controlled and/
or mirrored, touched, unfurled, time
a writer hoping the next word will work and open.
By the way, Melville never considered starting
Moby Dick with “Call me Steve.” That’s what I think,
I have no proof. Is the space inside what I consider “my”
mind a human space? I believe. My dreams, usually
peopled, matter, are not a matter of chance.
16. DEAR STEVE
Have you thought of taking up whaling? Recently,
I read a book about Moby Dick, although I did stop
and wonder about the sense of reading a book
about a book I've never read. That's humans for you,
dumb as dumb can be. Anyway, what about writing?
You know, poems or stories, even an autobiography,
invented or for real? Confessions of a Hairdresser?
Battles as a Barber? Sweepings from the Barbershop?
Ok, not funny. I know. But we can dream of what
we might do, dream of what to dream about. Nobody
can see inside each other's heads, we just assume
we're all the same, air and water, flesh and blood.
17. HAIR ABOARD THE SHIP
Steve spends another 45-minute session talking
about his dream of cutting Queequeg’s hair
aboard The Pequod. Charity, Steve’s therapist, pretends
she, too, has read Moby Dick, fairly easy to do because
Charity’s sessions involve her primarily being
silent, providing human silence, along with what Steve thinks of
as her creaturely and autobiographical silence, like
a whale not singing. Steve rarely thinks her silence comes
from anywhere inside her head. He describes Queequeg’s
head, the bold contours under the hair he scissors, how
the hair of Queequeg becomes Charity’s
too, silently, falling, and not through familiar air. Time’s up.
18. WHEN IN ROME
If I were charitable I would listen to the dreams
of others and say nothing, but I'm not. Steve is
funding Charity's retirement, paying for a chance
to fantasize about big ships and whale song, hair
out of place, swept overboard. I can't even spell
Queequeg, had to look him up; it didn't make me
want to read the book. Besides, I'm in the middle
of a kind of travelogue or journal about a writer
in Rome. I've never been there and the narrator
is lost, adrift. He doesn't seem to be able to cope
with his children abroad or the project he's there for.
Is desperately struggling to stay afloat. Harpooned.
19. THE CADENCE OF THEIR CONVERSATION
If you were laconic, Charity tells Steve
at her retirement gala, talk therapy
would’ve been more of a dream. Ah, Steve
replies, I’d guessed you’d fantasized about me
being more terse. Yes, Charity admits, yes, as terse
as Queequeg, but I do always prefer a name
like yours, with two e’s rather than three. Rome has one,
Steve thinks, then remembers that some of his hair
fell out last night in the shower. He won’t tell her.
Do you believe whales ever sing about their dreams,
he asks her. Their songs are their dream journals,
she thinks, but instead of answering she shrugs.
20. POSTCARD FROM ELSEWHERE
I've looked for Steve and Charity everywhere,
to no avail. Venice, New York, London, home again
with no sight of them, no need for therapy.
You couldn't make them up but I think you did.
Or it might have been me, daydreaming in the bath,
dreaming of sharks and whales, deep sea diving
and wondering why the cats won't come when
they're called. I'm not one to remember dreams
and visions have passed me by. I struggle with maps
and road signs, prefer places I've already been.
The journey isn't part of the trip, it's just a way
to get there, preferably quick. Let holidays begin!
21. NEITHER LEFT FORWARDING ADDRESSES
Charity, in her new houseboat on the Danube,
congratulates herself for not giving Steve
any contact information. Steve, in his new apartment
in Uckfield, after a long therapeutic walk along the bank
of River Uck, is taking a long bath and rereading
THE DREAM AND THE UNDERWORLD, dogearing the pages
most relevant to his dreams about Charity. His two cats
purr in unison on the blue fluffy bathmat Steve bought
in nearby Five Ash Down, purchased before his dream
about a gigantic blue bathmat upon which he, tiny
as a flea, wandered, lost; all the road signs illegible
scribbles. The cats don’t mind their flea collars.
22. THE EMPTY BATHTUB
Up anchors and move to a new address. Charity
begins at home, has left no forwarding address.
Dogeared history means we have all been reading
from the same book. Other versions are possible,
other people romanticise life on the water, sail
into dreams and daydreams, adrift from reason.
Occasional showers and cats asleep on the bed
mean it is raining again outside. I have thought
all day about having a bath, stay awake most nights
wondering where you have gone. The drainpipe
is a tunnel to elsewhere, a swirling whirlpool
of memories, desires and our wasteful lives.
23. REPEATED ONCES & ELSEWHERES
Charity had hoped to give a different sort of life
to all those she loved, including clawfoot bathtubs
and other versions of immersions, but it never rained
money, not even occasionally—yet her daydreams
of telling the beneficiaries they needn’t waste a minute
writing a thank you note continue to anchor her
with the purring of her cats in the background
of these daydreams’ elsewheres. Her parents’ gifts
of history books, beginning when she turned five,
are all dogeared, and she thinks of them as tunnels
in which there’s usually no light at the end,
simply endpapers, wordless, upon which she doodles.
24. BEST FOOT FORWARD
We might learn to make our own future and history,
others do. Usually, it involves bluster and bragging,
perhaps fame or politics, always money. Lots of it.
No one can buy sacred things like time or sunshine;
we either know that or endlessly chase our own tails,
worrying what might, what could, what did, and what
other people thought or might think. We must discard
the clawfeet, grab a torch and enter the tunnel of
our choice. If we immerse ourselves in life we may be
rewarded with experience, heightened language and
dramatic effects, narratives that branch and twist
towards blank endpapers and unexpected light.
25. MEDIOCRE
A mediocre dance step is not in your future,
the fortune cookie assures me. In the graphic novel
I shall create forthwith, a clawfoot bathtub climbs
a steep off-white cliff for that view from the heights
over the ocean, a view being in my bathroom
had denied it, plus it had longed for more
natural light than entered through a small, cracked
frosted window. I may ask my future publisher for endpapers
which shall transport my readers to a sacred space
where all their chasing after enlightenment
is relegated to their pasts, alongside all their random
worries, mediocre missteps, failed escapes, and insect bites.
26. ALL FALL DOWN
The fantastical enters page left, all cliffhangers
and sound effects: Biff! Bang! Pow! Boom! Clunk!
echo around the tiled bathroom, my favourite place
for singing. The only missteps are when the floor
is wet and I overstretch to grab a towel. I won't
attempt to write the sound as I fall, nor repeat
my shout. I've never managed to dance, my future
has no dance steps in it at all. I hope not, anyway.
The wall of a concert is a sacred space. Somewhere
to lean and look, to listen, as the band rocks out.
A nod of the head is as far as I get, nothing else,
but only when awash in an addictive sea of sound.
27. DOMESTIC OVERLAPS
The monogrammed towels, awash in my memories of childhood,
are some of the items I stretch through the space of my memories
to almost touch. If silence could be a concert, I was addicted
to such silence, back then, alone in a home and a head.
My parents didn’t shout at each other, but sometimes would
yell for us to come in for a meal or a bedtime. I did
listen for them, was not a rebel who put my fingers
in my ears and uttered words like THUD! SPLAT! FIZZ!
to drown out their raised voices. I got as far as I could
at home, where the cliffhangers usually had only a small
thrill of suspense. I liked to sing with my mother as she played
“Moon River” on her piano. So much was waiting around the bend.
28. WHAT IS LOST
Charity may start at home, but there was also a piano
to deal with, and trombone, flute and many voices
when the extended family gathered. Haven't had
a singsong for many years now, not sure I miss them
much, although we too have a piano that has sat
in the lounge, ignored, since the girls expressed
an interest that soon disappeared. I write my name
on everything, because too much has been borrowed
and not returned. Mostly books, usually my favourites;
you know how it is. I wouldn't call my scrawled initials
a monogram and my anger at what's missing is no cartoon
sound effect but worse. Much worse. Splatter rumble whapp!
29. TIME MAY START
Time may start at home, “and” rather than “but” continue
with moments as long as trombones while Charity folds
our laundry and her thoughts simultaneously, getting both
right, and humming another Thelonious Monk song, this time
“Leap Frog.” “Monk liked to get up from the piano and dance,”
Charity thinks, smoothing out a pillowcase emblazoned
with cartoon sound effects, including WHOOSH! The child
says dreams whoosh; she thinks it could be worse,
the child could say dreams demand or smother.
The trombone waits in its case again, not ignored;
Charity will open the case in a few minutes and play
“Claire de Lune” or “Ruby, My Dear,” it all depends.
30. SELECTIVE MEMORY
Mingus rather than Monk for me, no buts or ifs,
that's how it is. My favourite album seems to be
known under several different names; the best track
is a "Prayer for Passive Resistance". I have an LP
I found on top of a locker at the hospital I worked at
decades ago. Time leapfrogs along but mostly back-
wards; although until we had kids it often stood still.
Now it rushes on and there's more washing to do,
more responsibilities, less time to sleep, no way
to unfold memory and history and get it right.
We invent the past each time we think about it,
have forgotten all our hopes and dreams, desires.
31. DEDICATIONS AGO
I don’t remember any midnights at Antibes,
don’t recall being in Antibes though my memories of
Cap Ferrat include swimming on a topless beach
when I was underwater, in my 20s, and surfaced
to a surprise. Ah, personal history, it sometimes
stands still, not quite passive, passing, almost aloft.
"Prayer for Passive Resistance" is on both
MINGUS AT ANTIBES and PRE BIRD.
Speaking of frogs, we don’t call tadpoles pre-frogs,
and speaking of memories we could also mention
metamorphoses. We invent the path of when and
where, sometimes desire what we find, and/or recall.
32. MAN OVERBOARD
I don't remember much, feels like it's all dim
and distant history. My copy of that album
was called Mingus Revisited, and came before
the two compilations I bought later, now sold.
I preferred surfing to swimming, although
I recall falling off a windsurfer in Greece;
skateboarding and sailing skills were useless
and stinging jellyfish were everywhere.
Can we resist change? I'd like to but no.
Can we change anything? Only our attitude,
perhaps. Do we choose what to do, to hunt
the whale, or does it attract our harpoon?
33. OCEANS OVERBOARD
Can we resist character? Do we choose
becoming compilations of others? I remember
being in high school and listening
to Cannonball Adderley and don’t remember
if anyone told me about him. I never thought
I could be Cannonball Levy. Nor imagined
wielding a harpoon after seeing Captain Ahab
in the movie, Gregory Peck finally going down.
The scene hasn’t dimmed or stood still, as if roped
to my neurons it re- turns, oceans away
from Wynton Kelly’s “On Green Dolphin Street.”
Everywhere is between my two ears.
34. WHERE I WASHED UP
Well, it's only a few days later. I still haven't read
about the whale, know there will never be enough
time to listen to all my CDs and albums again.
Everywhere is nowhere and that is nowhere to be
found. Personhood is the product of memories,
memories simply how we choose to remember
what we do and why. Music is the soundtrack
to all that and I find it impossible to resist,
passively or otherwise. I came to jazz through
progrock, then improvised music in damp rooms
at the behest of a friend. Jazz seemed to apply
the textures and sound, made a kind of sense.
35. THE FIRST WHALE
Memories, even when nursed, rarely bring back
the first time one learned that a whale exists.
Most of us learned, first, about one whale
rather than a pod, herd, or school of them. That they sing
may have been learned minutes later, during childhood,
that reign of soundtracks, when thought could be at the behest
of whims and/or connected to a texture under fingers.
“Thanks for the view,” someone says, “it’s no nowhere.”
Sometimes I am in the middle of another: measures
of music, say, or a domain of sky, or brushstrokes, or
“the feigned self-robbery of the poem,” as Elke Erb wrote
in a poem translated from the German by Roderick Iverson.
36. NATURAL HISTORY
The whale I remember hung from the museum ceiling
in London. Huge, though to my child’s eyes grey not blue.
And the album I heard of whale song, later in the 70s
was more spaced out and abstract than anything
I’d ever heard. No rhythm though, and punk came
along and pushed Pink Floyd aside. The whale turned
out to only be a full-size model and the actual skeleton
exhibited elsewhere did not hold the same fascination.
The moments I remember are well-rehearsed stories,
anecdotes modelled around the bones of family repetition,
but sometimes there are also out-of-focus photographs,
lost events and moments now strange creatures out to sea.
37. WHALE SINGING VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
A person comments that his or her
16-month old daughter “sounds exactly like this”
and that when this toddler listened to and watched it,
“she smiled and responded back. Apparently she is
adopted and has discovered her people.” Another
comments, “I’m sitting here playing this for my classroom
of two year olds. you would not believe how invested they are
in this. i’ve never seen them so focused. haha.”
That “haha” could be a quote from a Ken Bolton
poem. There are eight-hundred-and-thirty-six comments.
Another, “I frickin love this planet.” Another,
“If only people could be this happy” [no full stop]
38. IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS
If only there were no full stops, no comments
and we had more time to listen to whale song
then the world would grind to a halt and no one
would ever learn to invest or how to swim
through the rest of their lives. Wonder will
only take us so far, whoever our people are.
And can happiness be a permanent state to
aspire to? Especially if singing's involved.
How to navigate the oceans of society that
insist on regular payments and the right way
to do things? The barnacles of distraction
and desire slowly build up, impede our flow.
39. INSIDE LANGUAGE
If only one word didn’t distract me from a previous word,
I could stick to a word as if I were a barnacle
with eight pairs of legs, and not feel cramped
inside my shut shell, dwelling on the solid word
that doesn’t move any letters or meanings
and has no use for proceeding to a full stop
or following a semi-colon. The whales, singing,
heroes, certainly, but I’d be happy and silent.
Let others swim, and wonder which where is next.
I’d stay put, opening and closing, reaching and
withdrawing, content. Somewhat rational,
okay, yet a dreamer no full stop undermines.
40. OBSESSIVE MONOLOGUE
Of course, full stops become ellipses when clumped
together, which kind of changes their function and
leaves things more open-ended. Fade in or fade out,
a shrug of the shoulders and a knowing silence.
Rules are made to be broken, grammar sometimes
seems illogical and not fit for purpose. Why do
Americans put quote marks after punctuation,
and why double not single? And what about
indirect quotes and paraphrases? Why does
referencing references referencing references
make it academic? Nothing sounds like anything
else. It isn't a song, it's a cry of lonely despair.
41. ISOLATION, LANDSCAPE, THE MOUTH
Punctuation behaves to scatter or herd.
From the footage of a low-flying drone, a molehill appears
to be a full stop, lonely down there, that single thing
with fluttering green leaves above it on all sides.
What about the anonymous person quoted saying something
about being as lonely as a mole in a cage
in a small, white-walled academic lab? Feeling moved by this
quotation, a child may not even notice where
the quote marks are placed, placed in relation to
that full stop, that full stop the child now imagines
may be a molehill seen from the tallest treetop.
This child begins to wonder about the word molar.
42. THE GUT-BRAIN CONNECTION
My teeth ache and our garden is too unruly for moles.
Mike is the one who hates moles, spends hours at a time
trying to remove them from his life. One could even
say he punctuates his gardening with prepared attacks.
Shock and awe! Or sock and paw when our cats are involved.
Their unwanted gifts of mice and shrews await us
in the morning, on the kitchen mat, in trade for
the food we give them. We try to subdue the grammar
of wild animal still inside, prefer them asleep on our laps
or chasing their tails in circles. We can't imagine
what it's like to have fur for brains or understand what
they think of how we make mountains out of molehills.
43. THE PARENT-CHILD CONNECTIONS
My maternal grandfather was a dentist and my mother
noticed everyone’s teeth throughout her life. Teeth
in mouths in gardens, teeth on mountainsides, teeth
in living rooms, teeth of the person with a cat in a lap, teeth
above shod feet that walk by this molehill. My father
didn’t like hate, or, at least, talk as if he did. My mother
was more okay with it, though more comfortable
with a strong dislike. She loved to correct my grammar,
no “can” allowed where a “may” belonged.
My father loved his roses in the garden he kept
pruned, fertilized, watered, adored.
My mother created art, her faith in awe.
44. DISCONNECTION
My grandpa mended watches, in a workroom
made by dividing a bedroom in their house.
I was only getting to know him when he died;
at fourteen you think you're an adult but death
makes you know you're not. My dad died over
thirty years ago; his father was the gardener
in our family. My sister and I used to move
two garden ornaments around the flower beds
when we visited. Funny how all four grandparents
lived within 3 miles of my childhood home, how
unusual that turned out to be. Only my mother's
in London now: same street, same house, same dreams.
45. AGE
Rupert thought he was an adult at fourteen,
for a while. I never considered myself a man,
becoming an adult didn’t seem possible.
Though I didn’t identify with Peter Pan.
Peter Pan dressed all in green.
Hard to imagine him in a classroom,
with a yellow pencil and a wooden desk,
back in the days when a metal pencil sharpener
would be attached to every classroom wall.
I liked sharpening a pencil, liked the crank, the smell,
and the briefly sharp point. Roll call
in fourth grade. “Here,” I said, something of a lie.
46. TICK TOCK
Cars and trains and promises of space travel
turned out to be fiction, just like Peter Pan.
I still don't like the book and am not supposed
to like the film, its racial stereotypes. But
I do, my favourite is the crocodile who makes
snap judgements because it has no time to think,
must strike the moment that its tick is heard.
Growing up is hard to do, and boys only schools
and being short don't help. I learnt to fight,
to say the right thing, eventually to learn.
Then had to start again outside in a world where
cleverness and exam results simply didn't count.
47. AGAIN
Peter Pan and I go way back. Sometimes
I daydream about Peter Pan’s daydreams─
well, that’s not true. But I have lived with him,
and the crocodile, and Tinkerbell, ever since
doorknobs were at my eye level.
I had hundreds of daydreams of walking the plank
and the crocodile did not have a clock inside it,
instead a long black emptiness from teeth to tail
waiting for me. My father was an undefeated boxer
in intramural matches at his university, and he tried
to teach me to box. He gave up, without seeming
disappointed in me. The gloss of those new boxing gloves.
48. NEVER-NEVER LAND
I never got boxing, all that violence and brain damage
never appealed. And, of course, Mr. Darling was Captain Hook
whenever a film was made or play performed. At school,
the backstage society I was in had a stuffed alligator
which made unscheduled appearances in every Xmas show.
Daisy, she was called. The younger teachers didn't like
that kind of thing, thought it stank of private school,
which it wasn't. We'd take it to the pub on closing night
and then it would disappear for a year; no one knew where.
Funny how things come back when prompted. Nothing to do
with Peter Pan or poetry, just the result of someone's words
and the ongoing fight with getting old that I can never win.
49. NAMING
There is no correct way to name a stuffed crocodile.
Is there an incorrect way? Many wrong ways?
Which flower names would be appropriate? Is Daisy?
Fishwort? Butcher’s broom?
Sticky willy? Stinking hellebore? “Here, dear, and
perhaps you should name it Stinking hellebore.”
Funny how names prompt thoughts, as if names
are stuffed. Some stuffed animals groan and mutter
under the bestowed weight of their settled names.
Names may knock against the heart. What is
the result of a name, its ongoingness, and how
it may slip in, sideways, over and over then under?
50. SELF-REFLECTION
You can search for names or let them fall into place.
We're all stuffed anyway, our names will be forgotten
as the tide rises, our children age and future relatives
go on without us, oblivious to who or what we were.
We land with a splash, make waves and swim away,
looking for somewhere to land and call our own. Home
is where the heart aches when friends decide to move
away. We did too, only telephone and internet remains.
Sometimes we disconnect for a while, pick up where
we last left off. The piano notes fade and die, soundtrack
life as we age; wrinkled pale echoes. Only the whale,
stuffed or not, remains to guide us with its song.
© John Levy and Rupert Loydell 2025
℗ facqueuesol 2025