Earworm

I listen as I sit beside my mother's bed,

which she thinks is a bus, though, unlike me, she is unaware of its final stop.

I sit by this static vehicle and listen 

as she dredges broken fragments 

from a seabed of confusion. 

Her index finger keeping time like a metronome. 

Tick tock. 

Tick tock. 

To and fro. 

To and fro.

Tick tock. 

She's been like this all afternoon

addressing the blank wall, 

ignoring visitors. Her rhythmical babble full of strange surprises:

'Under the Zion Methodist

Under the jelly belly

Milly Molly Mandy. 

As Mae West goes under her vest

Onion jelly 

Under the Zion Baptist 

Zane O' Mally

at the gay call centre

with the yellow rose of Texas. 

under a lilac sky. 

Oh Rachel! Oh Rachel!' she cries. 

Rachel, the grandmother she never met.

Rachel, who took her daughters to Australia 

from where they would return leaving her bones behind in the dry earth beneath the thirsty Queensland sky. 

I remember the lock of Rachel's hair, 

which I found in a little round tin. 

A careless child: I would curl  the auburn strand around my fingers, until it eventually disintegrated like my mother's mind. 

'O'Mally,' she mutters, 'O' Mally.'

 No one in the family  knows  who he is but whatever Mae West is doing under her vest, I  leave to  whatever is left within her broken down mind. 

In my hands, I almost hold the yellow rose of Texas knowing I will be  earwormed by the tune for the rest of the week. 

Joan Bailey 

Oasis

 We - well, you mostly - created an oasis in our back garden. I helped but in a random way, buying plants here and there but you did the digging, the planting, the tending.

I took advantage of the council's offer of a compost bin. Twenty years of good, rich fertiliser from vegetable peelings. Twenty years of decayed soggy lettuce, sprouting spuds, wet parsnips and wizened  carrots. It made me feel less guilty for over buying and not producing as many home cooked meals as intended. 

You made the little pond for frogs, filling it with tadpols and oxygenating plants with the help of interested friends. 

We left the self seeding Elder, which was little more than a bush when we moved in, to  grow tall. You hung seeds, peanuts and lard cakes for the birds on its boughs.

I saw some gold finches in the clough and a colleague told me how nyger seed would attract them to the garden. Flashes of red, and yellow jostling for places on the feeder. Their high pitched musical twittering a sweet addition and, in the evening, the blackbird's resonant song. 

We - you mostly - created this green space between the high laurels, planted by a former owner, a miserable bugger by all accounts, who wanted to screen out his  neighbours and, in doing so, gifted us this private space, this little oasis visited by hedgehogs and squirrels.

Somewhere to chill. Somewhere to forget the petty conflicts of family or work and the state of the nation with its never ending meaness, injustice and scandals 

Somewhere to screen out thoughts of people being bombarded by bombs thousands of miles away. People whose oases have been ripped up, ripped apart, ripped away. 

Destroyed. 

Thousands of people who have lost those they love. Injured, uncertain. afraid; who have to start over with nothing. 

Joan Bailey 

Herb Robert

Herb Robert has crept in and colonised some pots near the bin without my permission.

Yet I find him to be a welcome addition.

Trust this invader the experts say: he will bring bees and butterflies. Just cut him back if he gets in the way.

Rub his leaves on the skin to avoid midges but never cut his flowers and put them inside overnight or death will surely follow. 

Who would think such as this could herald such sorrow? 

Sources speculate about the origin of his name.

Views differ. 

Some believe he was named for a medieval monk, who used plants and flowers to relieve sickness and pain with their curative powers. 

Or is he named for the puck known as  Robin Goodfellow, the Shakespearian sprite, who circled the earth for King of the Fae on the titular midsummer night?

Whatever...

He can live anywhere: woods. commons, hedgerows, cracks in the pavement. 

He doesn't much care. 

All he needs is some soil, the rain and the God given air.

Joan Bailey