Geoff Page: Three Poems

Not yet

 

The girl who’s not yet said a word

when all her playmates have

has no great problem with her hearing

nor any lack of love.

 

Her parents watch her thoughtful smile

and grow impatient for

a harbinger, some sort of magpie

chortle with the dawn

 

wafting clearly down the hall.

Why won’t it start to happen?

Their daughter would, it seems, prefer

to wait until the pattern

 

finally declares itself.

She wants the syntax too,

the way the words all fit together,

their order in the queue.

 

Each day, her parents trawl the net;

they check the specialists.

Statistics proffer averages

they have to half-resist.

 

Larynx, tongue and vocal cords

are present-and-correct.

They read to her exhaustively

and, plainly, she connects.

 

It’s not a case of temperament.

“Shy” would be absurd

and even visitors suggest

“observant” is the word.

 

Her parents are “observant” too

for that first utterance,

foreseeing its complexity,

its charming, one-off dance

 

of adjectives and adverbs with

its courtly verbs and nouns.

They tell themselves they almost hear it,

one sentence on its own.

 

At times, it’s almost visible;

a pirouette, on cue.

A year away? Perhaps, but now

just “Mum” or “Dad” would do.

Geoff Page

 

 

 

Ornithology

 

A bebop solo,

fierce and fleet,

impeccably melodic.

 

It’s Clifford Brown

once more on trumpet,

dead these almost

 

sixty years

yet fresh as this

new slice of spring.

 

I must have thrown

the windows open.

A magpie on the balcony

 

gives me back the

last eight bars,

scatted note for note.

Geoff Page

 

 

Sorting the Shoes

 

I’m not Imelda Marcos but

I’m sorting through my shoes.

We men don’t buy so many and

it’s easier to choose.

 

I’d thought to find those riding boots

my father used to wear

but somehow they’ve regained their horse

and are no longer there.

 

I note the rubber thongs with which

I used to grace the beach.

The frame of mind I wore them in

is safely out of reach.

 

Those sloppy joggers lying there

give off a sort of shock

when I recall how, years ago,

I’d sweat around the block.

 

More remote, no less absurd,

those pointy ballroom shoes

that danced all night with heady girls

and left a morning bruise.

 

I see a pair of walkers too,

acutely out-of-date,

their grey so pale you’d almost swear

I worked in real estate.

 

Those slippers in their faded suede,

three decades down-at-heel,

no longer fit the fashion for

the latest deshabille.

 

I’ve lined them all up by the door.

There’s not the slightest doubt

they’re way way past their use-by-date

and need to be thrown out.

 

I’ll keep my Clarks, my Jacoforms

to nose about the town.

I’ll keep a pair of handy sandals,

also mission brown.

 

My partner hopes I’ll one day show

some small diversity.

She plans to change my taste if not

my personality

 

which time has shown more durable

than any sort of shoe.

Together though, we sometimes share

a bed and point-of-view.

 

Geoff Page