POETRY

A selection of my poems for AUGUST

 50s INCIDENT

“We always had to make our own amusement..”

A stranger staying down our road

(visiting with his favourite aunt)

had gained respect from local kids

by telling tales of things he did.

His railway trick was new to me

and, on those boring summer days,

any excitement seemed like fun.

Up the embankment by the bridge

where tracks ran straight for several miles,

we kept down low and out of sight

of the Nine Elms signal man.

Hidden by scrub & buddleia

we inched our way close to the tracks

where distance shimmered in the heat.

“I’ve only ever tried with two,”

our new friend said — but we were three —

each with a penny to squash flat

beneath a hundred wheels of steel.

But what if three was one too much —

causing the train to jump the track?

At ten we were too curious

to worry much about that stuff.

So, one by one, we inched our way

from cover to the railway tracks —

three pennies shining in the sun,

together on the outside line.

We waited for what seemed an age

crushed deep into embankment grass

Until we heard the signal clang —

a green light for our down line train.

There was a singing from the track,

then it came rushing through the haze

a laden coal train from the north

towing a billow of black smoke.

Too late to change our minds and run,

we pressed our hearts into deep grass

as yards away the train charged passed,

crashing and screeching near our heads.

The earth shook with each passing truck

as time was torn by flying wheels,

then, suddenly, the noise was gone :

fading to a distant click.

Summer returned and insects buzzed.

Somehow the rest all seemed a blur :

stumbling up across the lines,

hunting amongst the ballast stones —

the red faced, shouting signal man —

racing across four sets of tracks

and laughing all the way back home.

MORE HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD.

Outside the airport, waiting for the bus.

Sauna heat, such air, so damp and thick

I must grow gills to breathe.

Driving into dusk and sudden dark :

thunderheads mass as neon flares,

forked lightning strobes the sky.

Sleepless, I ride air conditioned drone

just like my ten hour flight :

my body says it's breakfast time —

here it's still the middle of the night.

As light begins to fill this motel room,

I watch dawn break across an alien land :

strange trees; buildings, unrecognizable

from shadows I first knew, disclose

themselves in startling shapes and hues.

And, through a veil of tiredness it's plain

that I have travelled all those miles

to find a truth already known :

what I love and really care for

I have left in England's home.

CICADA

Night swells with his chirping.

Sometimes alone, close to the house,

The wind will take his call beyond the trees.

Other times groups will choir, alternate through the dark,

Harmonizing, seemingly to please.

Amongst shadows of hibiscus, bougainvillea,

They meet. Haltingly at first

He serenades her.

He makes no secret of his love:

His passion clamours in the dark

And rides in waves the thickening air,

Filling the night outside our sleepless room.

AFTER THE FALL

Corpocracy’s graffitied world

(where everyone is ruled by screens) —

built from our cheerless yesterdays

when troglodytes raged at machines.

Trying to change our point of view

we had to turn the ‘scope around,

abandon dogma, party line

and look across to higher ground.

But will the coming dawn reveal

incumbents who will ride roughshod

across the afterwards we’d planned,

grinding to dust our household gods?

How dark would be our future then? —

Books to the fire or left unread,

computers would produce all art —

a place where angels fear to tread.

PERKIN’S FARM

Trespassing. Secret borders of the farm

where boys from our estate would stray between

banked dead nettles, cow parsley and the stream.

Beyond the cinder bank the broken barn :

ramshackle cars, forsaken old machines;

nearby, deep water channelled over rocks,

splashing bricked sides below the ragged docks

and once, dream like, kingfishers here were seen.

Above the rocks the stream more calmly moved :

watery home of rat and vole, hunting

ground for adventurous boys with working

slug gun, catapult, stones... and aim unproved.

Then there was our Tree : a crazy willow

leaning giddily across the stream, an

unsupported ladder of green fronds — span

for the stream that flowed dark and deep below.

High in the crest (some said where lightning struck)

the trunk had split : a hollow gallery.

Here we perched, The Boys, full of bonhomie :

joking, boasting of girls, cursing our luck.

It was The Muckers tree — formidable

to climb, with bark worn smooth, nowhere to grip,

the sloping trunk.....and water should you slip —

crow's nest view : prize for the brave and able.

But then the farm was sold. Our Tree dug-up

when brook was channelled, dredged and gentrified.

Farmhouse and barn were bulldozed down. We sighed

for lost forever fields of buttercups,

the herds of Friesian cows, and meadow sweet.

When land was levelled – hedges all grubbed up —

school replacing orchard and pond’s kingcups —

Our landscape turned to houses, street on street.

Today, more suburbs march across green space.

We concrete over land our parents knew;

but landscape should be children’s rights and due,

yet more and more is lost without a trace.

Muckers – Gloucester dialect for friend or mate.

THE BENCH

Weathered silver-grey into a landmark,

anchoring this garden to the sky;

attractive to inquisitive magpies,

a seat from which to catch the sound of larks.

Above the house, in birches’ leafy shade,

on sunny mornings it’s the place to be —

somewhere to enjoy a morning coffee,

to take a seat and rest, put down your spade.

Cutter-bees visit bright hypericum —

nest building : it’s leaves they want to steal;

above the bench red kites turn and wheel —

soaring on air, sky their chosen freedom.

An orange sunset silhouettes the bench,

into the dusk fly moths pursued by bats —

their aerobatics confuse our watchful cat

who’s used to robin’s flight or bounding finch.

Night. More stars than Van Gogh knew. Above,

Perseus scatters ☼Summer’s***shooting***stars…

And, on still air, an owl cries from afar —

From near this bench a Tawny’s call of love.

POEMS

“If I knew where they came from I'd go there”

Michael Longley

Poems will always catch me unawares —

it seems that they can start at any time —

I often go for weeks without a sign,

then, suddenly, like buses two appear.

Surprising, like an unexpected sneeze,

a poem starts to itch inside my brain;

as sudden as a view glimpsed from a train

or flash of blue kingfisher by a stream.

That poetry's an illness, I am sure -

a virus that takes hold on certain days;

it's ruled and changed my life in many ways

and late, some nights, I’m glad there is no cure.