Lazing About with Lullabies

I wrote this more than six months ago, when our baby was a few weeks old. I'm posting it now because of renewed determination to post things on this blog. Before you read what follows, please allow me to say two things: 

1) We still sing to our baby all the time. 

2) Rightly or wrongly, the TV is never on when she's around these days. There's too much for her to see and do without that old thing. Anyway, here we go:

We teach our baby how to speak while watching telly. Singing songs to her, we also throw in the odd line like 'Did somebody say '"Just Eat"?'.

Jack and Jill have been up and down the hill a hundred times or more. We have rowed so many lyrical boats that we could have organised an aural armada with which to sink the English language into a maelstromed sea. 

Confused syllables and stops with rhythm. Back to merrily dreaming. We repeat and repeat.

Time to change, so we sing our way down the hall to the bedroom. There's a chest of drawers there that was given to us by a cousin who didn't need it anymore. This chest of drawers has a recess on top. Into this recess the changing matt sits perfectly. Our baby lays on there, mostly quite happy. We change her. She needs a fresh nappy once every couple of hours at least. Sometimes her clothes need changing too.

We seem to be busy all the time, even when discussing how we're not sure what we've done with our time. Routine rules and throughout our day we are singing songs to our baby. We repeat phrases.

Meanwhile the telly is on, so we might as well sing along to jingles too. She'll learn to say that she's lovin(g) it. Perhaps soon she'll be keen to see the home of the Whopper for herself. Unfortunately, there's no franchise in Guernsey but, after all, we do plan to show her the world. Then there's her own story to be written both for and by herself. She will, I'm sure, make the impossible possible.

These are our lullabies. Mixed in with Hickory Dickory Dock and Three Blind Mice we chatter and make things up as we go. Alongside adverts, we sing ditties of differing provenance, jumbling old-fangled and new-fashioned. She must pick up slogans as much as anything else.

morning view from Belgrave

I had a bench and a footrest

in a quiet spot

put there by the sea

morning haze for blaze of just gone sunrise

a view across the Roussel

now the tides have got big and shifted again

my bench is a little askew

my footrest out of reach

so I'll perch slanted and start the day differently

exercise 292

our boundaries are drawn 
in different lines
that intersect 
nicely at times
at others there are bitter cuts

I've used you 
all up

the sky is vast
and we're weepingly tiny

exercise 291

no Jesus no

put my faith in a madman

language endlessly inane

and skirting off into corners

noise and discomfort

but

The Word is pure and true

also

money matters nought, no?

an ecstasy of hunger

we fit together 

like pieces of broken biscuit from different tins

a cocktail made with different gins
falling apart: not gonna risk it
see some love crime - wanna frisk it

this is the biggest part of my life
so far
emotions like hot tar
leaving behind trouble and strife
wanna make you my wife

Swimming in the Dark

The flock flew up - We saw them then:

Thousand stars every direction.
We were below - Out in the dark.
Ancient rises beyond the beach
Appeared to move in time with each [wave].

Even at distance they were cold.

Bright lights swam up from the seabed 
And we both were carried away.
This quiet - Beneath endless sky.
We floated there

And talked.

this time backwards

[2am] the day pours in and pours out at once like the frame cannot hold

the assembled leftovers from the past 24 hours rush up - it's July: there are tennis matches on the radio and tv - the heat and the conversations about it, being hungry for half the day followed by cooking and the meal at the right moment

and when work was overwhelming and when it was enjoyable - there are too many factors to stack - there's a seemingly endless line of tasks. yet they are all balanced at once in this headache and are all found together in a wishpot, a collymarsh of thoughts that become feelings and transform back again via actions and out the door

the moment is full and empty with watering plants first thing, tennis commentary and walking when the sun was barely up and there was no one around, sat in the midday heat and now late and not sleeping

all's gathered, falling into and out of a moment both greater than could be enumerated and smaller than nothing