Still Life with Apple and Cat's Paw

We had a writing workshop today, that I'd organised for the WEA social circle. The topic was the Dymock Poets: Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, Lascelles Abercrombie, Wildfred Gibson and Eleanor Farejon, who all lived at Dymock, on the Gloucestershire/ Herefordshire border, in the years leading up to the first world war. 

Dymock at that time was rural and bucolic. It still is, but there was no email or facebook in those days, so poetry was more widely appreciated!  
We had a chance to do some writing, and share it. I was happy enough with my effort, but had to rush everyone out so that I could lock up the community centre and go climbing in Gloucester!

When I got home, I set up my book on the stone flags in the garden, with an apple and some string for added interest, but immediately, Bomble came along, pounced on the string, and knocked the apple away! I re-set the shot, but left in Bomble's paw. 

When we were children, a mitten made of flannel was used to clean our faces in the bath. It was called the cat's paw. 

Words of my second-draft poem:

Flash of feathers
mist and mizzle
ping pong prickles on my stubborn skin.
Alone on the shores
I trudge among pebbles
Spattered with oil and longing.

Snatch of a song
a tremulous air
on a shepherd's pipe
a tale once smelled on a peat-smoked night,
of Irish wives and Scottish sins.

Will it come back on this salt air?
will it come back on the glistening path?
It cannot come back, no
It will not come back
I forget, I forget, I forget
I forget what it is
to remember.

Copyright Helena Petre, 2017

Incidentally, there was a dementia group that used to meet at the community centre where we were meeting today. Someone was playing the harp in another room while we were writing. I believe these factors influenced the mood of memory loss and melancholia within my words.