by Cath Mason
Most OLLI members have met Cath Mason, OLLI-USF’s intrepid Office Manager and general jack of all trades. But did you know she is a poet? With her background in English Literature, Poetry and Law and her ability to take charge of whatever task comes her way she crafts incisive verses like those included here. This reprint of excerpts from issues posted in 2023 and 2024 features a video of Cath performing her poem Absenses in a full-throated Yorkshire accent. — Editor
Night Fever
When joy for living dies in me
sleep heavy as a Muscovy duck’s squat body,
when trapped in looped dreams ugly as warty wattle
choked with what my death will be,
I push out of bed, make a cup of tea
carry it out into the night
walk onto the birdless deck
—daytime throne for Ibis, Great Heron, Egret
and the mighty grey-white Wood Stork
who preen and snooze, who stalk the rails
then stifle their compulsion to fly,
still themselves
stand one-legged in serene lines—
silence seeps through me, limbs loosen.
What if my death could feel like this?
Absences
What do you miss most?
You miss family, friends
fish ‘n’ chips, then sheep.
Or maybe pubs. Yes pubs
with names like Load o’ Mischief
Craven Heifer and Crooked Billet.
Pubs serving Sunday roasts
of local lamb and mint sauce.
Pubs in countryside.
You trek across fields
strewn with sheep
droppings, your face
in wind and slant rain
until you drip indoors,
duck under beams —
drawn in by laughter.
You miss your local
The Rising Sun set
in a terrace of cottages,
Aspidistra resilient
in front parlour window,
wood fire in the snug,
the warmth of
Lancashire hotpot—
pie ‘n’ mushy peas.
Spring in its beer garden
You bicker with your husband.
He calls you woollyback.
Bleats ricochet around
The valley, cream lambs
Scud across fields hemmed
by dry stone walls.
Today in a flat Florida landscape
of gated neighbourhoods
lined with palms, you long
For pubs on Pennine Moors:
shelters from
wind-wuthered gritstone.
You crave heathered moors
where sheep scale crags
and thrive on land
that won’t be tamed.
Cath Mason’s poems are forthcoming, or have appeared in Palm Prints, Literary Mama, Woman’s Weekly, Pennine Ink and Sandhill Review. Her poem “Dent in the Day” won an honorable mention USF’s Poetry Competition 2015. Her poem “The Out of Body Experience of a Potato” won the humor prize in the 2012 Southport Writers’ Circle International Poetry Competition. Her poem “A Tampa Welcome” is on display on the Tampa Poetry Post at the downtown Municipal Office Building. Cath will be one of a trio of instructors for the spring term’s class, Best of Ireland: Seamus Heany Poems. Two-thirds of the poetry collections sold in the UK in 2008 were by Seamus Heaney. The team of instructors will discuss the power and popularity of Heaney’s poetry through a selection of his poems. 4/14-4/28 — Lake Magdalene Church. Register here
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