In December 2019 I set myself a challenge to write a poem a day, starting on Christmas Day, for 12 days where each day was a poem based on the gift for that day of the 12 Days of Christmas song.
I did it, and was largely pleased with the results. I had managed a villanelle, rhymed and unrhymed poems, comedy, misery (obviously), love, and incorporated some personal memories. I made small edits on some of them but something was bugging me. The Milkmaids poem from day 8. Not good enough, no matter what I did with it. So, I never properly published them, although I put out the drafts on my facebook page and have read some of them at Open Mic events.
Finally, a year later, the replacement poem came to me. I appreciate that it breaks the challenge to an extent, but I think the other 11 poems deserve an outing and the original Milkmaids poem has gone to the dusty "Unpublished" folder.
12 Poems of Christmas Challenge
25th December - Partridge in a Pear Tree
The Pear Tree
He remembers (or maybe it's a dream)
climbing the weathered rungs
up the pear tree.
His mother, in a panic, getting him
down, removing the ladder,
feeling a splinter in her finger. Squeezing
out a tiny drop of blood.
Standing, looking into the tree
at bulbous fruit loaded with summer rain.
Golden, hiding among the whispering leaves.
He reaches, one hand, then two. The pears
are beyond him. He sits, hoping for windfall.
There are birds in the tree, free to come
and go, to take the fruit. He squints
at their shimmering shapes,
frowns at their mocking calls.
Touches the scratchy bark, his skin on wood
much older than he. It consoled him,
told him that things are as they are
for a reason.
Tim Fellows December 25th 2019
26th December - Two Turtle Doves
Turtle Doves
The first arrived on a Wednesday,
finding its home in the old oak
at the bottom of my garden.
It made the "turr", "turr" sound
that gave it its name, flitting
from tree to ground, feeding.
It was not long before the second
came, the mate, paired for life.
I knew better than to get too close,
to scare them away. I watched
as they performed their rituals
while summer warmed and faded.
Then one day, they were gone,
to run the gauntlet of guns
on their long path to the sun.
I wondered if they would ever
come back or whether, like you,
they had simply flown.
Tim Fellows December 26th 2019
27th December -Three French Hens
Three French Hens
Florence, Mathilde and Juliette
in a Weatherspoons in Leeds
where they weren't exactly certain
as to what they had agreed
They're wearing deely boppers
and plastic fairy wings
and Juliette's nervously twirling
her engagement ring
She's the one wearing the "Bride" sash
she's going to marry Dave
they're going to live in Harrogate
he's told her to behave
on this classic British pub crawl
the hen party from hell
Mathilde's had one too many
she's not feeling very well.
It's December up in Yorkshire
it's freezing cold outside
yet English girls who have joined them
just take it in their stride
From pub to pub, from bar to bar
with voices ever louder
it's a truly foreign land and the
jokes are getting lewder
They finally lose the English girls
somewhere on Otley Road
and fall into a taxi
a relieved Gallic carload
Her friends are saying au revoir
at the airport the next day
They didn't fancy driving
on the crossing from Calais
They've seen some British culture
they never thought they'd see
but they're happy to be going back
to their life in gay Paris
Tim Fellows December 27th 2019
28th December - Four Colly Birds
The Colly Bird
The colly bird opens its throat and sings
It spreads out its feathers on coaly wings
The bird that will sing for queens and for kings
Sings loud for you today
The colly bird flies from tree to tree
It flys so high, how it loves to be free
I watch it soar, but I can never be
By your sweet side today
The colly bird taps with its yellow beak
A tune where love deserts the soft and meek
I know that I have lost my chance to speak
My love for you today
Tim Fellows December 28th 2019
29th December - Five Gold Rings
Five Weddings, Two Funerals and an Electrician
The first one's name was Maureen
in nineteen seventy four
we got hitched in Cleethorpes
we were happy, though we were poor.
One day I got a phone call
They said "We're sad to tell
you that there's been an accident"
the next weeks and months were hell.
The second time was two years on
It happened very fast
We were married in Barbados
we really had a blast
for four months - or was it five? -
until I caught her in our bed
with Jim the electrician
so marriage two was dead.
So I said goodbye to Sharon
I've not seen her since that day
but it was only a year or so later
when I re-joined the fray.
Jane was a practical woman,
divorcee with kids in tow
We had fifteen good years -
was it love? Well I suppose so
because I cried the day she told
me that the cancer had come back
and I cried when we stood around
the grave, all dressed in black.
If you think it's been bumpy
up to then, well number four
was the worst of all these women-
if I'd known what was in store
I never would have wed her,
I so regret it still
For Helen saw my money
then my bank account was nil.
You'd think that I'd be finished
no more wedding bells for me
but I still had happy memories
of spouses one and three
So now I'm happily married
for the fifth time, I'm well set.
Her name's Matika, we're in Thailand
all thanks to the Internet.
Tim Fellows December 29th 2019
30th December -Six Geese A Laying
Geese
The geese that lay across the path
looked bored, but others, strutting
as if they knew they owned this gaff
left runners with their certain footing
in no doubt about their likely fate
if they dared to step too near
so they, berthed wide, went off-straight
and left the geese to honk and cheer.
Meanwhile, in soft grey winter skies
a perfect vee of northbound birds
called instructions from on high
"Join us, join us" - such deceptive words.
Tim Fellows December 30th 2019
31st December - Seven Swans a Swimming
Swan Lake Memories
There were seven swans
on the lake that day.
One, head down, tail up,
feeding in the mud
while we, your hand slipped
into mine, laughed
at the thought that it was mooning
us. Cygnets,
grey-brown balls of fluff,
resting on their mother's back.
A first-time kiss and other thoughts
of future broods.
Sitting in this comfy chair
I see, in not quite real-life,
the white birds, now what are they?
A thing inside is nagging me
and, clear as day, I see a girl
giggling at an upturned bird,
and hear the sounds
and smell the Spring.
She looks a little like
the woman who looks after me,
makes drinks
and gives me pills to take.
She comes in with a mug of tea
and I gesture wordlessly
towards the screen and she
says Swans. I sigh, of course,
I should have known.
They're important! I reply
and a small smile flits across her face.
Yes, they are and she looks sad
but another word is better;
melon?, melony?
It shows the birds are flying now,
I don't know where, oh
those white birds, what are they?
Tim Fellows December 31st 2019
1st January - Eight Maids a Milking
The Milk Maid
She squats on the short stool, hands
moving rhythmically, automatically,
while her thoughts rise beyond this shed
to a dreamland where she can never live.
Where she and the beasts she loves
are free. She leans into the heavy flank
and feels the rough hide on her cheek,
closes her eyes and imagines the coursing
blood inside. The cow shifts slightly
and its low call vibrates their bodies.
She listens to the milk splashing into the pail,
knowing it should have been for a calf
and thinks of the child that she never had.
Tim Fellows January 1st 2021
2nd January - Nine Ladies Dancing
The Tea Dance
The "Ladies Only" Tea Dance
was already underway
when Joan and Betty entered
and watched the women sway.
Joan and Betty held their pose
for foxtrot, waltz and jive
Around the floor they heeled and toed
it made them feel alive.
Some of them had learned to lead
and others to be led.
They were all dressed up to the nines
but danced in secret dread
that one day there'd be whistles,
and shouts of "It's a raid!"
They'd be led away in handcuffs
the price that would be paid
for the unjust laws that stopped them
and punished them back then
for just being women with women
and men being with men.
It was only when they got home
to their cottage by the sea
that they could hold each other
the way their love said they should be.
Tim Fellows January 2nd 2020
3rd January -Ten Lords a Leaping
Hunt
Here they come,
hard hats and hearts;
hurrahing and harumphing,
hurdling high hedges.
Hark! their horns,
hot and hungry hounds
hysterically howling.
The hunted hobbles
to its hole, a home,
a helpless haven,
hardly hiding.
Hating, haunting,
heavy guffawing,
historic houses a
human Heaven
hosting bloody Hell.
Tim Fellows January 3rd 2020
4th January - Eleven Pipers Piping
He Who Pays
It's like some kind of nightmarish cartoon
where Orwell seems to be right on the mark
and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
He has this image of a dumb buffoon
who lets slip the occasional remark.
It's like some kind of nightmarish cartoon.
He takes a hatchet and he starts to prune,
the flood will come but he'll be on the ark;
the one who pays the piper calls the tune.
It may be that I'm howling at the moon;
the world's gone mad, may I just disembark?
It's like some kind of nightmarish cartoon.
And, all around, his enemies are strewn;
ambition leaves them fumbling in the dark.
The one who pays the piper calls the tune.
Is there a chance this horror will end soon?
We're sinking in a pool that's full of sharks.
It's like some kind of nightmarish cartoon
where they who pay the piper call the tune.
Tim Fellows January 4th 2020
5th January - Twelve Drummers Drumming
Twelve Drummers Drumming
Fitzgibbon, Moon, Starr and Bonham,
Stewart, Taylor, Baker, Rich,
Weinberg, Copeland, Peart and Watts
beating rhythm with their sticks.
Getting on their neighbours' wicks.
Tim Fellows January 5th 2020
Image by Xavier Romero-Frias, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
