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I Promise: A Mother's Poem to Her Son

A mother and son share a special bond as active little boys love to write on walls, flush toys down the potty, and play video games. "I Promise" is a touching and funny poem from a mother to her son on how she will do her best (though she won't always be perfect!) in raising him through various stages in his life. Using mixed media to portray comical pictures, "I Promise" engages both chidren and adults. It makes a fabulous gift for mothers, sons of all ages, and has even been embraced by single mothers as the mother in the story does everything from playing football to managing finances while raising her son.

THE MERMAID'S TRESSES: The Secret Lives of Seaweeds

By Giles Watson

CODIUM

Velveted and branched as antlers,
Swaying slightly with the tide-flow,
I reach for them, bare
To the elbow.

And the touch of them is algal,
Like sodden felt, gloves
Covering blunt fingers.
I pluck at them where
Their ends probe.

Nip off the tip, and the scar heals.
Last digit of a mangled thumb,
Lost long ago.



ULVA LACTUCA

In the pressure-lantern light
it was the filmy greenness
beneath the ripples, where the fishes
hid, when we dipped our knives
and enameled plates, to wash them:

Sea lettuce. I lay awake
thinking of it all night.

And in the morning, we harvested
the flaccid Ulva, and it clung
to our fingers as we crammed it
into plastic bags. I stuck
some in my mouth and chewed -
it tasted salty and would not be swallowed -
and we carried it to camp, pounded
it with oatmeal flour, baking laver
over a spitting fire of eucalyptus
and Banksia cones, open mouthed
and glowing.

In the smoke
we ate them, and the spitting embers
made them taste better
than they might have been:
a bright green pungency
breathed out through my nose
with each mouthful.

It was a cunning way to persuade
a boy to eat his vegetables:
I even forgave the crunch
of sand against my tooth.

Source material: Ulva, or sea-lettuce, is delicious when cooked. It grows in rockpools both in Britain and in Australia, and like the red seaweed, Porphyra, it makes excellent laver bread. This poem is based on memories of camping with my parents when I was a small boy, at Picnic Point, south of Bermagui, N.S.W. To make laver bread, simmer Ulva or Palmaria for up to five hours in a little water, until there is very little liquid left. For every four parts of the boiled seaweed, add one part oatmeal and stir. Form the resulting mixture into cakes two inches in diameter and two thirds of an inch thick. Fry rapidly in butter until golden brown, and eat.



HOLDFASTS

Weed-flesh, wind-wracked, unbleeding
Clumped and kicked along the strand.
The stench and slickness of it;
Holdfasts clench like claws.

Encrustations craze them, salt caked,
Calcareous. Crabs scuttle, crustaceans
Jerk their joints within them. Stalkeyed,
Secretive; jostling for space.

You should have seen the storm
That wrenched them from rocks
Fathoms down, their forests
Of leathered leaves whirled

By ocean winds. Water
A flurry of whiteness, then
Browned by shreds of weed.

Lifted, cliff high, and dumped,
With shrimps - bug-eyed,
Planktonic, air-drowned
And spasmodic - the holdfasts,
Amputated from concretions,
Writhe in wind, like severed worms.

And all our glib presumptions
Wither with them: we too toil
To build on rock – and wind
And water ruin us.

Source material: Written after a Force 9 gale on St. Mary’s on 27th August, 2004. The holdfasts of brown seaweeds look like roots, but their function is limited to anchoring the plants to rocks; they do not absorb nutrients like the roots of land plants.



KILP BURNERS

One woman smokes a pipe, superfluous
as watering petunias in the rain, for both
are shrouded in kilp smoke, like black
and white ghosts. She has no feet, floats
above the fuming pit with a look on her face
which tells all a historian needs to know
about the smell. The other’s head is half
obscured, but she is past coughing, past
involuntary weeping.

It is almost the end
of the women’s shift, soon the men will come
with rakes to sift the steaming heap,
to work it up like molten lead. By dawn
it forms a hardened clump, ready
for the breaking. Thirty shillings a ton
in this waning age, and fifty kilns
in which to burn it. A pother of poverty
hangs over the islands.

In Orkney,
As in Scilly, the industry is dying,
and the reek of burning
dissipates.

One-eyed, skinless,
veins pulsating
the Nuckelavee sinks himself.

The horses of Stronsay
freed
from Mortasheen.

Source material: Kilp burning was common in coastal Britain from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, seaweeds of the genus Laminaria being particularly rich in the soda needed for pottery-glazing, glassmaking and soap manufacture. Numerous old Scillonian photographs document the noisome nature of the labour, and to this day the stone pits in which the kelp was burnt can be seen on Toll’s Island and in various other places throughout the Scillies. The Scillonian poet Robert Maybee gave a detailed account of the kilp industry in his Sixty-Eight Years’ Experience on the Scilly Islands, reprinted in R.L. Bowley, The Fortunate Islands, A History of the Isles of Scilly, Berkshire, 1968, pp. 81-82. According to Maybee, kilp was worth ?5 a ton when he first saw it being manufacture

Poem "In The Spirit of Martin" by Nikki Giovanni

This is a sacred poem…blood has been shed to consecrate it…
wash your hands…remove your shoes…bow your head
…I…I…I Have a Dream

That was a magical time…Hi Ho Silver Away…
Oh Cisco/Oh Pancho…Here I Come To Save The Day…
I want the World to see what they did to my boy…
No No No I’m not going to move…If we are Wrong…
then the Constitution of the United States is Wrong
…Montgomery…Birmingham…Selma…Four little Girls…
Constant Threats…Constant Harassment…Constant Fear…
SCLC…Ralph and Martin…Father Knows Best…
Leave It To Beaver…ED SULLIVAN…How Long…Not Long

But what…Mr. Thoreau said to Mr. Emerson…are you doing out?

This is a Letter from Birmingham City Jail…
This is a eulogy for Albany…This is a water hose for Anniston…
This is a Thank You to Diane Nash…
This is a flag for James Farmer…
This is a HowCanIMakeItWithoutYou to Ella Baker…
This is for the red clay of Georgia that yielded black men of courage…
black men of vision…black men of hope…
bent over cotton…or sweet potatoes…or pool tables and
baseball diamonds…playing for a chance to live free and
breathe easy and have enough money to take care of
the folks they love…This is Why We Can’t Wait

That swirling Mississippi wind…the Alabama pine…
that Tennessee dust defiling the clothes the women washed…
thosehotwinds…the lemonade couldn’t cool…
that let the women know…we too must overcome…
this is for Fannie Lou Hamer…Jo Ann Robinson…
Septima Clark…Daisy Bates…All the women who said
Baby Baby Baby I know you didn’t mean to lose your job…
I know you didn’t mean to hit me…
I know the Lord is going to make a way…
I know I’m Leaning On The Everlasting Arms

How much pressure…does the Earth exert on carbon…
to make a diamond…How long does the soil push against the flesh…
molding… molding…molding the moan that becomes a cry that
bursts forth crystalline…unbreakable…priceless…incomparable Martin…
I Made My Vow To The Lord That I Never Would Turn Back…
How much pressure do the sins of the world press
against the heart of a man who becomes the voice of his people…
He should have had a tattoo, you know…Freedom Now…
or something like that…should have braided his hair…
carried his pool cue in a mahogany case…
wafted that wonderful laugh over a plate of skillet fried chicken…
drop biscuits…dandelion greens on the side

This is a sacred poem…open your arms…turn your palms up…
feel the Spirit of Greatness…and be redeemed