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Two Poems by Angus Ogilvy: from Lights in the Constellation of the Crab

in Poetry, The Arts.
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motorbike

Cartography

Following the old maps, he arrived

just where he had planned to be.

The landscape conformed to interpretation:

that hill, those clumps of trees, the village gathered

around the bridge. He saw the things

he’d expected to see, given the forecasts,

the time of year: the lone fox and the raven falling.

 

He wasn’t prepared for the motorbike

coming screaming round where the road forked right

in a curving descent over spreading contours

to the valley floor. Nothing could indicate how to turn

avoiding oblivion, the uncharted plunge,

the way time stretched through the flick of an eye

to a sound and a light in a circling loop;

but he did.

 

gratitude

Gratitude for Whatever

I cant be anything other

Than Grateful.

 

What’s the point?

 

Anger?

Hatred?

Jealousy?

Lamentation?It is too hard work.

 

Gratitude is the point

of least resistance.
angus

Angus was born in Glasgow, grew up in Galloway, and was educated in Edinburgh and Dundee. He has had a career in education which included 25 years as an international school teacher and administrator in Spain, China, Nepal, Indonesia and Zimbabwe. Since winning his school poetry prize in his youth, he has had an abiding interest in poetry and his poems have appeared in various publications.  He returned to Edinburgh in 2008 and spends his time writing, doing voluntary work, and addressing conferences, seminars and symposiums about the patient experience of cancer using his poetry as an aid to communication. He has recently published a collection of poems, Lights in the Constellation of the Crab and House Clearing by Moonlight, in aid of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.
– See more at: https://bodhicharya.org/manyroads/four-poems-by-angus-ogilvy/#sthash.R7xcnKtC.dpuf

Splenomegaly

in Poetry, The Arts.
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moonlight

 

 

The body has a lump.

 

The lump is growing.

 

Just under the rib cage

on the left side reaching down.

 

A torn muscle;

too many sit-ups rippling my abdomen.

 

And yet no pain.

No pain at all.

 

And weight loss too.

Yes.

 

But no surprise

after all that walking, swimming,

my modest diet.

 

Night sweats?

Well, of course.

The time of year!

The male menopause!

 

The spleen is considerably enlarged.

 

The spleen?

Funny.

 

Funny how you need to be alerted to the spleen’s existence.

Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys – you know of them.

Even the pancreas and the bitter gall.

 

What does the spleen do anyway?

And where exactly should it be?

Spleens rupture – don’t they?

 

Yes, but this is not a ruptured spleen. 

The spleen helps to clean the blood. 

It is part of the immune system.

 

Then why is it so big and hard?

 

I cannot discount lymphoma.

 

Lymphoma.

 

What a lovely word!

A place in Montana.

A child’s soft drink.

A moonlit orchid.

 

Why do I feel a frisson of fear along my spine?

 

You’ve probably been carrying this cancer

In your system for some time.

 

Cancer.

 

He said cancer.

 

I see the word

and all its letters have soft curves.

 

Only the first sound cracks

hard in the skull like a splenetic Viking’s hammer.

 

Hard as my spleen.

 

And yet if you cut it out,

eradicate that K,

you are left only with the softness

of the…answer.

 

So what now?

 

We cure it.

 

Cure it.

Like a dead pig into ham.

No ifs, no buts,

straight to the spleen of the matter.

 

I am grateful for that compassionate directness;

the confidence of hope.

 

First let us do some tests to be sure we know

exactly what we are dealing with.

Then we will cure it.

 

How?

 

A regimen of chemotherapy.

And then, perhaps, a stem cell transplant.

 

I see a line of cells with roots

taking hold, multiplying.

 

These things have come a long way

in the past few years.

New drugs!  Better drugs!

It is not the terrible vomiting mess

you may imagine from all you’ve heard before.

Many don’t even lose their hair!

 

I run my hand through my beard.

 

If you need to talk to anyone

about anything concerning this,

my door is always open.

 

Thank you, doctor, I appreciate it.

 

And I really do.

 

I walk out through the open door

into the radiance of a high veldt afternoon:

the flame trees and the flowers;

a hoopoe bobbing on the lawn.

 

The beauty of it overflows inside me,

smartens my eyes.

 

No ifs, no buts.

I have a purpose.

 

I have awakened from a long, long sleep

and  from this moment

I will be

alive.

 

©Angus D.H. Ogilvy November 2008

 

 

Angus Ogilvy

Angus D. H. Ogilvy

Angus was born in Glasgow, grew up in Galloway, and was educated in Edinburgh and Dundee. He has had a career in education which included 25 years as an international school teacher and administrator in Spain, China, Nepal, Indonesia and Zimbabwe. Since winning his school poetry prize in his youth, he has had an abiding interest in poetry and his poems have appeared in various publications.  He returned to Edinburgh in 2008 and spends his time writing, doing voluntary work, and addressing conferences, seminars and symposiums about the patient experience of cancer using his poetry as an aid to communication. He has recently published a collection of poems, Lights in the Constellation of the Crab and House Clearing by Moonlight, in aid of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.

– See more at: https://bodhicharya.org/manyroads/four-poems-by-angus-ogilvy/#sthash.R7xcnKtC.dpuf

FOUR POEMS

in Poetry, The Arts.
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Cartography

 

Following the old maps, he arrived

just where he had planned to be.

The landscape conformed to interpretation:

that hill, those clumps of trees, the village gathered

around the bridge.  He saw the things

he’d expected to see, given the forecasts,

the time of year: the lone fox and the raven falling.

 

He wasn’t prepared for the motorbike

coming screaming round where the road forked right

in a curving descent over spreading contours

to the valley floor. Nothing could indicate how to turn

avoiding oblivion, the uncharted plunge,

the way time stretched through the flick of an eye

to a sound and a light in a circling loop;

but he did.

 

©Angus D.H. Ogilvy

 

 

 

As Moon

 

A long sweep passing since

I saw the moon

as moon.

 

The flare of summer,

town horizons,

cloud-cast sky ways;

all the moot excuses

I assume.

 

I see it now

 

moon as moon

 

gravid with harvest

 

rising in the crisping

of a fading afternoon.

 

 

©Angus D.H. Ogilvy

 

Love Tea

 

Flavour

intensifies

through the second

and the third infusions:

don’t use boiling water; avoid

sweeteners.

 

©Angus D.H. Ogilvy

 

Edge

 

You never know where you might find your edge,

and, spun by vertigo, flail to grasp

the crumbling earth, snatching at sparse

scrub wedged by twisted roots for rootless legs,

jarring the panic wilding of the heart

to sudden stillness.

Then, how to move from

that tight, cold spot, exposed, alone, remote,

hemmed between yawning emptiness – the space

of the possible – and the tyranny of place?

 

For this is the test.  It doesn’t matter

that it struck as you’d hardly begun to

feel those slopes beneath your feet, or after

turning from the top for the long descent;

it’s how you will open, what your intent.

 

©Angus D.H. Ogilvy

Angus Ogilvy

 

 

Angus D. H. Ogilvy

Angus was born in Glasgow, grew up in Galloway, and was educated in Edinburgh and Dundee. He has had a career in education which included 25 years as an international school teacher and administrator in Spain, China, Nepal, Indonesia and Zimbabwe. Since winning his school poetry prize in his youth, he has had an abiding interest in poetry and his poems have appeared in various publications.  He returned to Edinburgh in 2008 and spends his time writing, doing voluntary work, and addressing conferences, seminars and symposiums about the patient experience of cancer using his poetry as an aid to communication. He has recently published a collection of poems, Lights in the Constellation of the Crab in aid of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.

– See more at: https://bodhicharya.org/manyroads/four-poems-by-angus-ogilvy/#sthash.R7xcnKtC.dpuf