The Microwave

This short piece uses the tanka stanza with rhyme added in the last line of each stanza. In fact the microwave lasted for 23 years which I trimmed to 20 because of the exigencies of the tanka form. And for many of those years I did not bother with a cooker but used the microwave for everything: so it was good value. How long will the new one last? The shop keeper told me if I'm lucky, 4 to 5 years for, admittedly, a lower priced model!

   A much earlier syllabic poem (written in January 1982) about the separate life of our gadgets is "On the Intractability of Things," written in January 1982, posted on 23 January 2013 and linked here. Its line endings are looser than I would tolerate now.  A much more recent poem, which cuts out the gadgets but keeps the disabused attitude to life, is "There is Nothing More Louche," written in August 2016, posted on 19 October 2021 and linked here.

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My companion
Of twenty years – not a wife
But a microwave! –
Suddenly died, leaving me
Forlorn – like a spouse indeed!

A kitchen fixture
So long, its demise made me
Rudderless: how now
To heat that half cup of soup,
Or that sausage roll at speed?

Happening hot on
My seventy-fifth birthday
It seemed portent of
Another death, escapeless
And nastily conclusive.

For think: at that death,
The mental enmesh which forged
Meaning – home to both –
Will void: soon, others’ recall
Of each will be illusive.

====================
© November 2024

Three Chestnut Tree Poems

Not far from where I live is a huge mature chestnut tree. These three poems were written independently but I thought they worked well gathered together. In "Utterly Stark..." it may be worth noting the internal rhyme in line 6 which chimes with the rhymes at the end of lines 5 and 6. This applies in each stanza. In the second stanza there are also serendipitous rhymes in lines 2 and 4 which rhyme with those in lines 5 and 6. In "The Chestnut Tree Now..." there is an internal rhyme in line 3 of each stanza. "Jigwarra" is a nonce word developed from Porthgwarra, a tiny cove at the far south-western tip of West Cornwall and a place visitors fall in love with not knowing what it's like to live there when the weather (frequently!) turns bad.

   An earlier poem to take a close look at a tree is "The Sycamore Tree," written in December 2014, posted on 28 January 2019 and linked here. And another earlier poem, this time taking a look at a single bough, is "A Fallen Bough," written in November 2013, posted on 6 June 2016 and linked here.

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1. "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree"

Under the spreading chestnut tree
   With leaves gone autumn-brown,
The fallen chestnuts mush the ground,
   The year swaps smile for frown.

I swept my mind through days of old,
   Their jaunts and jibs now gone,
But all I found were shrivelled hopes
   And promises not done.

(What yellows, reds, what sickly pales,
   Have smutched the chestnut’s leaves,
They zig-zag-fall from branch to earth
   Like splotches brushed from sleeves.)

Always this lust to stew in self,
   That sly-glanced foul “I will!”
Neighbour or loved one, both are blanked
   That appetite might swill.

(Fissured and knolled, a scaly-grey,
   The tree’s trunk sags with age,
Its baring branches jag the sky,
   Stiff with an old man’s rage.)

Who tells? Can there be settlement
   Of years and self’s excess?
For truth, these hates and lusts still burn,
   Aching for cheap success.

And like the spreading chestnut tree
   One day I’ll rot and fall,
Then rain’s caress and earth’s warm loam
   Will soothe its final sprawl;
But I, driven and wraithed, will flail
   In the wind’s caterwaul.

(October 2024)

2. "Utterly Stark Is the Chestnut Tree"

Utterly stark is the chestnut tree
   As January frosts flash white,
And crazed as a sheet of splintered ice
   Its branches clutch the light;
For dank is the day and dark is the night
When none might dream or beg respite,
   And snow slumped in its lee
   Writhes in the wind like lice.

Its trunk now bent like a crook’d knee
   And grained as a gaffer’s hand,
Is froze half-sided with brittle frost
   And by the weather tanned.
What hope or dream that’s summer-bland
Can live when fanned by winter’s wand?
   Yet soon hunched buds will spree,
   Shrugging off cold’s accost.

(January 2025)