Willow

4am. It's light
in London
and the birds are going.
One sounds like an alarm
and I get up
to check.

Last night, before
going to sleep, we blocked off
all the little lights—book against
the TV, tea towel
over the phone, postcard
against the CD player with
the clock.

(My son—I am one of his two
mothers—came up to the shed
as I was reading that stanza and
instead of calling him 'Jack',
which is his name, I called him—this boy
who is 19 and whom I have known since
he was two—I called him 'Jock'
which rhymes with blocked
and clock. He laughed
and headed back down the steps
pondering the philosophical question
of whether a year can pass
in which nothing
happens.)

*

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Back in London,
in the fat next door
lives Mr Willow.
My sister and her husband
see him only occasionally
on the stairs. Mr Willow is
small—unlike my sister
who is very tall—and he always
wears the same clothes
and a wig
with a visible line of stitching
across the front.
Through the wall they hear him swear
and often there's a tapping noise.

Sometimes Mr Willow acknowledges them
on the stairs
but other times
he appears
not to know them.

Mail comes for Mr K. Willow
and Mr F. Willow.
Does this mean there are two
Mr Willows?
Do two Willows
make a stand?
Perhaps they are brothers with only
one set of clothes and a wig
between them.

*

Once I lived in a rented house
where mail still came
for the owner. Somehow
she had gathered four different names

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and her son, too, he had a variety,
though only two were the same
as his mother's.
We saved mail for all these people
in piles, according to surname (we should have been
librarians, I know this now) and the woman and her son
would come and collect it
at different times, never taking mail
for more than one name
at a time.

*

Mr Willow
Mr Willow
Thee and thou

High in this fat
in the trees I dream
shouting dreams.
Every so often, in the distance,
a plane crosses
the side window.
My sister and I
cry in a bookshop.

*

At home
the lilac struggles.
I've moved it twice
but neither place has been
right. It doesn't grow,
stays barely alive
from year to year.
I feel a failure with this tree.
I don't know where to put it next.
I can't bear to see it die.

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I planted the lilac after my father died.
It was bought with a plant voucher
given to us by a nice man
in the hospital bed opposite
in a ward full of people
with the kinds of scars on their heads
you would never
have thought possible.
The ward was a world
of damaged, bandaged, people.
This man lived and hopefully still lives.
He was upset when my father died
and wanted us to buy a tree
to remember him by.

My first instinct was to buy a lemon tree.
I always want to buy a lemon tree.
But we already have two of those—both of which
have been moved twice.
I liked the idea of a lilac. It also
begins with 'L' and has the same number of letters
in its name, but I don't think I thought about this at the time.

When I first planted the lilac
summer had ended and I felt great fear
about many things.

*

Once, very soon after my father died,
my mother and I boarded a small plane
for Gisborne, to visit my father's stepmother,
who was dying.
It was a calm fight, with no disturbing incidents,
but I felt very scared
and knew I would be unable to return on the plane
later that afternoon.

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My mother, who is the kindest,
sanest person in the world, booked a rental car,
and after visiting Madeleine,
who we knew we would not see again,
and walking in the hospital garden,
we set off for Wellington.

It was Halloween.
On the streets of every small town we passed through
on our long drive home
there were straggling groups of witches and ghosts.

*

On the shuttle on the way to the airport in Paris
a group of Americans boards at a hotel stop.
They're in their sixties and have been
to an airshow. What's your name?
And your husband's name? And the names
of your children? Goodness and where
did those names
come from?

The names came from out of the air
and found the children, I explain.
Elaine changes the subject.
It's hot in Florida, and the winters
are mild. I like seasons, but you can't
have everything.

*

Planes nest in the mist.

*

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Eric Fonteyn
what a name
for the captain
of a plane.

*

The chief steward announces
that as a number of people missed out
on their first choice for lunch,
dinner will be served in the opposite
direction. The first shall be last
and the last shall be first, he explains.

Having eaten, I think about
Antwerp, which is where I was yesterday.
Antwerp—the hand thrown.
There's the legend of the giant
who lived in a castle
on the river (always, of course,
there's a giant and a castle, and often
a river). This giant terrorised fishermen
who wanted to cross the water
which ran in front of his castle.
The big man demanded payment
and if refused, he would cut off
one of their hands
and throw it
in the river.

*

One day a brave soldier came.
(In the same way that there is often
a giant, and often a castle and a river
to accompany the giant, there is also,
luckily—but not for
the giant—a brave soldier.)
This brave soldier fought the terrible giant

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and killed him. Triumphant, he severed
the giant's hand
and threw it
in the river.

Later in the fight, when we are not
too far from home, the giant's hand
clambers out of the river on to the bank
and in fury, reaches up
and starts to shake the plane.

I too begin to shake.
And even though I pull two blankets over myself—
because suddenly I feel very cold—I can't stop trembling.
The air hostess brings me water
but my hand is so unsteady
that I am unable to hold it. So she kindly sits with me
until the giant's hand tires
and climbs back down into the water
once more.

*

Weeks later, a woman I don't know well
but who possesses a lot of very useful information,
tells me something she has read
about fear on planes.
She says that some people are particularly sensitive
to fear and that on a plane
there is a certain level of anxiety
felt by all people present—just by virtue
of their situation: The plane;
the enclosed space of the cabin; the fact of the plane
not being on the ground; the fact of every air accident
you have ever seen pictured

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on the front page
of the newspaper.

All these things go to make up a kind of
collective fear, which you could think of
as also being a passenger on the plane.
The idea goes that some people absorb this fear
and there's so much of it, sometimes, that
the effort of holding all this fear makes the person shake.
This is good, apparently.
It is better to shake than not
to shake.
This seems somehow plausible to me,
though I am not someone who usually goes for theories
of this kind.

The same week I hear this,
a friend tells of someone who is HIV positive,
whose partner no longer flies
or even goes near the airport in the city
in which they live.
This man sought help and came to realise
that his fear was not to do
with planes, or flying—even though he did have
a bad experience once—it was to do
with the fear of
his loved one
dying.

This too, I can understand.

*

Back here in the garden, the lilac continues to struggle.
I've uncovered the paving stones we stood on
when we cleared the garden with my father.
They'd grown over and I'd forgotten

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they were there.
My spade strikes concrete
and there's another.
My foot fits exactly in the space
between each one.
I could have placed them there.

As it is almost spring,
when I get to the end of wherever
the pavers are going,
I will dig a hole for the lilac, or maybe another
lemon, and hope, this time, that whatever it is,
it might take hold and grow.