About…

The poem is dedicated to former husbands dead and alive .

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Katie Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .

The last adventure of the edible pigeon

from your high hide
can you see forever or where forever is ?
and on the chiltern hundreds far below
can you see the hyde where upon a lawn
a dot of red once made yourself

her face thin and osseous and wan
wan taught muscles barely ever flexed
but not the simile of a smile
and of simian but little trace
wired with its blue pierced stare
nose beaked, droop cheeked
above the freckled haggard chest
the peregrine of falcon birds a top her mast
red she likes her wine and her hair in a coronation crown
a distant echo of the Thatcher years she saw as a Heroinic Age
and the age of Midas Man
of exciting city deals and affairs with the bosses city contacts
affairs that were in truth acted out in a sordid hotel
just off Shaftesbury avenue
just why did she married Eddie ?
he was just like so many French pigeons thrown seed
his hair flocked in a schoolboy mop
seemed overwhelmingly persuasive at the time
as did his highly profitable resourcefulness
that didn’t last long
it transpired no more than hazard of a few lucky connections
and while she lay in between the avarice sheets
dreaming of a larger purse
he sweated cold beside her
and could no longer be that drug
the embodiment of Golden Man

"all that you've concealed" she recalls
mainly because she always on some nest
or mending his, Eddie broken wing
later as he greyed and folded into the butter flour mix
that make flat sponges out of men
she no longer cared for the decoration of cakes
or appearances of marriages
she needed excitement
being able to fly herself
she took to the air
where three dimensions gave her counselling
its exhilarating updraughts cushioned her loneliness
and its cold gusts blew her to amnesia
she was debased

and of youths early rainbows bent
where did you hide that arc across the sky
my sad paulinian ?
where did morality find its hidden cove
the cove where dove may nest upon its break ledged cliffs
that claw the sea bed
and peregrine may hunt them swift as death they fall
and where is Eddie now but a pile of rough plucked
bone, osseous and thin mangled
are the ligaments of life
while out upon the seas dolphin play
and fish which love this sport are flying too

Sources…

Katie at the book guild sent me a list - presumably of poetry notabilia The name Pauline Hyde appealed to my stupid humour and i immediately wanted to find out more about her so i googled her. I have to say i was not disappointed but rather than write a poem about her i decided to use the lyrics from the song Midas Man coincidentally the name of one her books as the respiration for the poem above - that plus a remembrance of my earlier years working among the lovely people of London's inner city ..

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Picture of the real

pauline hyde