Diana Hendry
Diana has published three collections of poetry – Late Love & Other Whodunnits being the most recent. Her many books for children include Harvey Angell (which won a Whitbread Award). Her short stories have been published and broadcast widely She was writer-in-residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary and then a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Edinburgh University. She joined Shored Poets in 2002.
You were otherwise occupied
and so, in a thistledown way, was I.
Also living in the wrong town
and not done with the lunacies of youth
or the worse ones of middle age.
There were children, of course,
taking priority in energy, money, love,
and books to write and much mellowing
and tenderising of the heart to be done
and all the impedimenta of history,
fantasy, expectation to ditch,
and the fire wall to take down,
and the barbed-wire brambles to snip,
and the breast plate to strip,
and the look-out to drug,
and one’s mother to silence,
and one’s cover to blow,
and one’s heart to risk.
Even so, when my waist was slim
and my hair still brown,
where were you?
O let me be your bidie-in
And keep you close within
As dearest kith and kin
I promise I’d be tidy in
Whatever bed or bunk you’re in
I’d never ever drink your gin
I’d be your multi-vitamin
I’d wear my sexy tiger-skin
And play my love-sick mandolin
It cannot be a mortal sin
To be in such a dizzy spin
I’d like to get inside your skin
I’d even be your concubine
I hope you know I’m genuine
O let me be your bidie-in.
Why It Took So Long and Application from Late Love & Other Whodunnits, Peterloo Poets/Mariscat Press 2008
I help roll her stockings over her feet,
then up to her knees. She’s managed her dress
but I free her fingers from the sleeves.
Before the mirror she rouges her cheeks,
combs her thin curls, hands me a bow.
It’s scarlet and goes on a ribbon I thread
under her collar and fix with a hook.
Over an hour to dress her today.
Such an innocence stays at the nape of the neck
it fumbles my fingers. I see her binding
bands of scarlet at the ends of my plaits
and fastening the buttons at my back.
Now look – she’s dressed as a child off
to some party. I straighten her scarlet bow
and don’t want her to go,
don’t want her to go.
Dressing Mother, Making Blue, Peterloo Poets 1995
