A whole section devoted to Ewan this month. He deserves it, for he has certainly put in the work and it is of high quality. Ewan is showing development, both in breadth and depth, and in technical ability. This is great to see, even if it is hard to summarize. There  was a moment of freshness, renewal, complete difference in this lovely poem Anew

    In a field of browning green
    I lie immersed in liquid silk
    Surrounded by cast off things
    Too large, too small, tooooo bright
    Thrown away and cast off
    To rise anew from the ashes
    Clad in garments fine
    Be-Fitting a lord
    Spelt with a small 'l'
    Because I might cast of the silk as well
    And arise anew in denim.
 
The newness, of course, was part of coming to terms with the old, with realities of one kind and another. Here is another fine poem. The Square' which puts the moment of birth firmly in the context of the
ongoing travail:

   Packets of young men hung about
   Talking, laughing, chatting
   Like a health camp advert
   About tomorrow and the next trip
   Young woman at ease, skin fresh
   Casual days, casual clothes
   Jeans and sweats, breasts and smiles
   Day time perfume and daytime charm

        I make my way down the steps
        Stumbling occasionally
        They are about to laugh
        Then see my crutch
        And move aside with a grin

  I have just emailed the other side of the world
  The other side of the square is as far.

and who can forget the imagery of 'Dusty Boots'?

        Now the confidence remains
        The easy grin and the stubble
        Even the denim shirt and jeans
        And the confidence and calm

  It is only the black boots that have grown dusty
  And unworn in there corner - chucked there from last night
  Many moons ago they were worn to the last night
  Wonder where I went?
  Who cares they are gathering dust in the corner now.

One of the most startling aspects of this journey has been Ewan's new
look at his past. He has gone far beyond 'therapy poetry' in these 
poems, deeper in many ways, than he did in the Cycle, 'Songs for my
daughters' which was a precursor of this development. He makes no bones about the fact that this is his personal assessment and reading of the past, that it may change given a different time, a different 
circumstance, but meanwhile, we are privileged to see self knowledge without avoidance or excuse being forged into very good poetry indeed. 
The Old Man was part of this, and throws new light on the poem last 
year which announced a new level of ability at that time. I'ld like to 
reflect on each poem in its entirety but that would necessitate a 
complete book, and we haven't that kind of space. 
BEGINNING another look at 'the green hills of' from a different angle, and one that reflects the realities of family being. From

  Green hills glowed in the dark
  Our naked bodies cavorted at the river bank

to:
        Were did it all go wrong?
        Perhaps out there
        Perhaps back here
        Or did we just grow apart as we grew up

and the beautiful, moving: 

  Even when she was born and made us both laugh
  With her babyish stunts
  We even started to talk like her
...

  It didn't matter, a dirty nappy was still a dirty nappy
  From someone so small so much mess

        We washed them for years - by hand!
        Too poor for an auto washer
        Is that why?
        We weren't poor in each other
        So why?

here were have the mystery without self drama, the description without the sermon - the story unfolds, and there is, I think, no one who wants to rush in with an explanation, feeling, with the poet, the puzzlement, and sense of inevitability that goes with this emptying of a relationship of all its sap. 

  It doesn't really matter because we both said goodbye
  To each other, me to her
  Sitting on a concrete step somewhere in my mind
  Her small figure haunts me even now.

as it will, I think, haunt each of us, the moment revisited, as so many 
sore places are revisited, like an aching tooth, touched to see if it is
still there, like the Ice princess of the Kosovo poems, here she is 
again, in 'Forlorn', 

    Not forlorn, but has every right to be
    Her and her sister called out to me
    Dad, and smiled, thinking she would be picked up
    Her sister sulked and moped, thinking she wouldn't be picked up

    I walked inside the pub

    She was still swilling it down
    Gave me a look as if to say
    "This is all your fault"
    I panicked and rode away.

and all the moments when we have 'panicked and rode away' rise up to haunt us. Again, in Low History:

  Folded notes of many peoples days
  In the sun and sand, wind and rain
  Mere words won't hold you dear
  To me here, oh fair one of tear filled days

   Who is the lonely little girl on the step?
   Whose motor bike sits in the courtyard?
   Whose wife is in the pub?
   Who does the lonely little girl watch
                                 ...
  And life continues.

This is a point of view not often expressed, not often openly 
acknowledged, but life, as Ewan says, goes on. I really liked THE LAST ONE

  Verily amused she was
  Amused at life, amused at me
  We laughed a lot together her and I
  We laughed when there was a dark day
  We laughed on a fine day
  We seldom cried
  Even when we went our separate ways
  We did not cry
  A hug and a laugh
  Rueful maybe, but her laughter remains with me
  Does mine with her?

A whole relationship in a single, backward-glancing question. Yummy! 

Meanwhile, life doesn't merely 'go on' for Ewan. It presents itself for 
sharing, for the vividness of place, context, emotion. Tired Eyes

  As the web crashes around me
  Into another irretrievable hole
  Tired eyes and tired bones
  Sitting slumped over a plastic machine
  Staring numbly at the unedifying site before me
  A rectangular box, customized with ornaments
  Desk tops personal, short cuts to the favs
  Lights winking occasionally
  Dust apparent, the lost keys, the stapler
  The pad, the hole punch, the  telephone line
  The phone, my life in a mouse click
            Phewt.

- my life in a mouse click ! So much, so economically expressed, and so much part of every life that uses a computer. The whirling of choices, in Colours - so much more than a merely visual choice:

        Blatant discrepancy of eye dazzling
        Colours, nerves wound when you look
        Jangled when you look at another menu

        Or colours that will rest my eyes as I watch them change
        My eyes relax as I see them
        Like an old friend come to visit

All this took us far indeed from the world of 'Snow White' and the 
ploddingly painful look at politics and war in the Kosovo series. For me this central and repeated image hung over the whole month. From its first appearance, it was impressive, if somehow, by its very nature, 
incomplete and clumsy. Snow White herself was far from clumsy. This was another fine, complete utterance. Economic and powerful. Excellent work Ewan:

  A tired and weary princess
  Breast feeds her baby as she walks
  Wrapped in snow white swaddling clothes
  Stark contrast to the line of hundreds behind her
  Fleeing their home
  From bombs and killer squads roaming
  Ominous locked cattle trucks full

  Were has the world seen this before?
  Flashbacks and old movies of another war
  Fought by yet another despot
  How far will this princess
  And hundreds of others have to walk?
  Before their home is safe.

Like the famous image of the woman who ran through the Vietnam war, so does this tired and weary princess. Thank you Ewan for a fine and inspiring month's work.