A woman who attended some of my poetry workshops sent this poem to me recently. It was heart-warming to read and also reminded me why I do the work I do. I reproduce it here with her permission.

Coming Out
I came out in class today.
It was quite a revelation.
Something I thought I'd never do,
Was share my inner thoughts with you.
I wrote alone, in the dark, behind the closet door,
Putting pen to paper and writing words
Which were never meant to see the light of day.
Or be revealed to anyone other than myself alone.
I thought I'd never be able to say the words out loud.
But today, I found my voice.
I thought I'd never show you my bare throat
Or expose my anguish for public gaze.
I thought it would be easier to remain within the closet.
But you have shown me that it is good to share
And that we all have something worthwhile to say.
And that is why
I came out today.

Marion

I do, however, write about my own experience of counselling. This was a poem I wrote some years back about my relationship with my then therapist. It echoes, of course, with the poetry of the wonderful Anne Sexton.



Mr H
with inspiration from Anne Sexton

I call you comfort
because you comfort me,
I call you guide
because you guide me.
I call you Mr Rescue Inc
as well.

And you call me?

I need you.
I lack the required hope.
My weaknesses unfold,
a child’s picture book
with clever devices
to hide and then reveal
and then hide again.

I call you companion.
You came with me
to the water’s edge,
held my hand as I paddled,
flung out the life buoy.

We snapped crab claws
do you remember?
Searched for pearls
in the seaweed.
You must recall that.

I fell at the rocks
sliced my hands and feet
so there were pools of blood
amongst the star fish.

Are you unstained by our journey?
No salt tides on your suit?

Why do you never slip?
Unsoiled, ungrazed
by our voyage through grime.

Each time after I scrub myself
pink
with a cruel brush,
comb silver fish from my hair,
drag eyeless eels from my ears,
anoint myself
with the heavy oils of myrrh,
rub myself with lime,
wrap myself up in purple and silver
to cover over the debris.

I have you under my fingernails
whispering in my head.

Unmoved, untainted,
I call you Mr Rescue.

And you call me?

The Lapidus Pilot Project finally, tentatively, got off the ground this week. Recruitment has been difficult and yesterday only one woman turned up. She was engaged and willing, so the session ran smoothly, but we'd obviously hoped for more participants. And I'm not sure what it will all add to our understanding of the therapeutic value of creative writing.

I have butted up once more against one of the tensions between my self as writer and my self as healer. When I was solely a writer (was I ever that?) the world, and every person in it, was available to my pen. These days I wonder, at what point does my interaction with someone, my response to those I meet, become enough of my own property, to be expressed in my creative work? It is not an easy question to find an answer to. I notice I do not write about my counselling clients here - even heavily disguised - though I carry them and their concerns with me in my everyday life. But I do write about those I connect with when I'm working as a poet in a therapeutic environment. Have I found the right place for that fine line between me as (trainee) counsellor and me as writer?

Sitting here talking about death
with a man who is dying.
"Life is precious," he tells me.
How can I disagree?
"It's worth holding onto,"
he says.

Though I want to say:
Not always,
not for everyone,
not necessarily.
How can I argue with someone who is dying?

We chat about deaths,
good ones, bad ones,
as if about the weather.
I feel his expertise,
a deference to his experience,
though I suppose - later -
that we are all dying
by degrees.

I am startled by the puddles of purple and white which are suddenly appearing under the trees, and by the little parades of trumpeting yellow. As I drive down to Hull, I marvel at the gathering of giant metallic irises rising out of the flat green and brown landscape. I want to capture their strange alien beauty, their arms outspread to capture the wind or in some bizarre sign of sacrifice.

I have written this blog entry many times in my mind and dream of the technology which would see what I concoct in thought being transmitted onto my computer to be edited and crafted later. How much easier this would make keeping up with my emails.

Landscape Adjustments
The world changes
after a storm,
trees become bonsai,
telegraph poles, fence tops.

The old lady oak
in her pleated serge cloak
has a mirror now
to gaze at herself in
and weep,
for her once straight spine
is crooked,
her arms bent,
too heavy
to embrace the sky.

Sheep stare warily
at the creep of water,
ducks rejoice
at new possibilities.

Their view is for ever altered;
they’ll remember pasture
as greener than it really was,
less bogged
in manured mud.

Oak, sky, sheep, duck
watch the waters recede
their field
no longer – quite -
as they recall it.

There is a library, a monumental library with majestic pillars, zig-zagging black and grey marble. The windows are high up, square squints which change colour with the hour, the day, the season. And somewhere on a bees-wax polished shelf marked 803.96 EVA are my discarded selves.

The ones I don't want or need anymore, or the ones I didn't take up. There's the straggle haired girl who rouged too often, too ferociously. The mother I never was. The bold war correspondent I once dreamed I wanted to be.

I imagine them as lifeless rag dolls, but perhaps they are not. Maybe they are already breathing, examining their nails, counting backwards from a hundred. Waiting. Endlessly. Waiting for me.