Between the Mirrors and Other Poems

By Garth Kellett

Most of these poems are reflections on the ups and downs of life, a life most of us live. However, the poems have a particular slant to them, reflecting the fact that normal is an abstraction occurring only in the minds of statisticians and politicians. The poems provide an interesting, occasionally eccentric view of life and, more often than not, show us a view we have not expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514463628

Garth Kellett

Garth Kellett is a retired Anglican priest. He started life as an art student and began to write poetry then. Subsequently, he did many things until he was ordained. A Yorkshireman, he was married to Maggie and has one daughter and a grandson. Following Maggie's death he moved to Hampshire and married Judy. Poetry is a joy and a bane for Garth, and like Leonard Cohen, he knows he has yet to write the perfect poem.

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Copyright © 2015 by Garth Kellett.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 09/18/2015

Xlibris

800-056-3182

www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

720659

Contents

Acknowledgements

Between The Mirrors

After Liz

Soul in Hand

A History of Violence

The Anniversary

A New Role for Maman

Lake Trasimeno

Sleeping Beauty’s Insomnia

Lazarus Wants to Sleep

Her in Darkness

Angel’s Wings

Me Seeing You

Nothing Gets Broken

For Eleanor Margaret Anne Miller

Such Slight Beginnings

Mona Lisa

Change

Nascency

Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait

If Things Become Samey

Matches

Not Living, Not Dead

Being Dropped

Don’t Cry

Marooned

Moving On

Shadows on the Wall

Suffering from the Cure

Land Lover

God of Loose Ends

The Argument

A Life of Risk

Second Refrain

Old Tales

Fourth Refrain

A Good Friend Calls

Other Sheep

A Wheelie Fate

Arriving

What’s Packed into Childhood

Memories

The Boy and the Man

The Curtana

The Wasp

Why Words When Words Won’t Work?

The Figure

The Deeps

Before the Cold Winds Began to Blow

Lake Peyto

Incarceration

The Old Man

Life’s Force

Pictures

A Family Photo

Screensaver

Friday Has Doubts

Healing Leaves

One Came, Seven Went

The Old Photograph

RIP

Cheap Music

Triangulation

How Quick It Is

Walking Gently

Visiting

The Foot of the Cliffs

First and Last Fear

The Advent of Perspective

Trespassing

Arioso

Beanstalk Bells

Sans Enfant

On Jubilee Bridge

Baby Looks Up

The Detail

Railings

I Have Lost My Child

The Fourteenth of September

We Will Not Lapse into Perfunctory Ways

Tinker in the Mind

A Comma in My Blood

Fifth Business

Above the Bustling Street

The Difference

The Cages Burst Open

I Wish I’d Known Then …

Watering the Plants

Thirty-Six Answers

The Argument

Acknowledgements

I owe a great deal to many people for their kindness and wisdom and for putting me right. But to some I owe even more. Chief among these is my wife, Judy, and my daughter and her husband, Rachel and Jonathan. I will also mention Jan and Ian Bramley, David Ison, and two college friends, Barry and Spike. All of these people deserve more thanks than I am able to conceive.

Between The Mirrors

Standing between the bathroom mirrors,

I can see my profiles before me and behind,

both receding and approaching.

They come from the past and the future –

so many reflections yet to come,

so many having gone before.

All that is before me are staring selves,

and I am caught and snared

in the middle of a palindrome

that my quizzing eyes of past and future

have created. Past things remembered,

now I wait for things to come.

Identical images, washed and shaved,

disappear into and reappear out of

an ancient site, it seems.

Lines, contours, profiles intimately known

yet made strange and green

are stacked like histories on a bench.

Prophecies cloned from the future

spread along the table

like legendary silhouettes awaiting

identification.

After Liz

The family dead fold up like garden chairs

put away for the winter. My chair remains,

though the seat sags and is full of rain.

And words that kept us together, cementing

brother, sister, nephew, aunt, and others,

are now redundant, found mainly in obituaries.

Even memories now fold up themselves

to be put away in the shed

in an overgrown corner of the garden,

forgotten by all save spiders and squirrels.

I once was known to twenty and more as nephew,

then to one alone.

Now Liz has gone; I am a relation of one,

an old garden chair leeched of colour and life