Category: Life

Doggerland

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

Far out, across the choppy billows
Pushed up by the shallows of the Dogger Bank
Probing lights sweep the wave tops
Blinking spots on a radar screen
Focus down, target the shoal;
Unbeknown, the flicking shards below
Silver-backed, iridescent, pearly-oil slicks
Of the herring-hive, dart and flare
Their fate ominously stalking –

Weighted nets plunge and drag
As the coughing diesel bucks and pulls
The mighty haul plunges too
Into the inner depths
Of that greasy tub,
Tomorrow’s fodder, soon dispatched, soon packed

Back on the slippery quay
A catch of a different kind
Is left in wonderment
No pennies here for the grizzled fisherman
No exotic flatfish for Billingsgate or La Boqueria

Bones, bones…
Stripped of flesh, polished
By the gentle swash and wash
On the sand armed sea floor;
Bones, bones…
Thigh bones like the Flintstones
Antlers of mega deer
Ivory, pocked with cavities, long-term decay;
Bones, bones…
Clues of a different land
Remnants of grasslands and river banks
Memories of once great plains
That swept from Pacific to Atlantic
Scarified by bitter winds
Sun baked and buzzing with life…

The last remnants –
The reminders of the past –
Our past, of Doggerland,
And maybe, of our tomorrow

Some look to the sea

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

Some look to the sea.
It’s in their bones, somehow;
Deep within, buried, innate –
In their very marrow, their blood,
Maybe not real, except to them –
Inexplicable, but there all the same.

Some look to the land.
Grains through their fingers
A brittle loam, dry, yet life packed,
A call – of the river bank, of the oak
A call – of the path, of the long grass
Silent, but there all the same.

Some look to the sea.
An iron rod, yanked by a magnet
The irresistible tug of the moon
On man or wolf, gentle, relentless
Unheard, undetectable
Unseen, but there all the same.

Some look to the land.
They feel it, heavy on their shoulders
Gravity weighing on them alone
No burden though – inescapable joy
Oneness, connection, shared beginnings
Unprovable, but there all the same.

Piston Slap

~ David Preston ~ 3 Comments

It started with dripping oil,
Dark smudges, smeared by tyres
Pounded into the new-laid tegula
Dusty blurs, like human shadows
Following a nuclear strike

Then gargling, spitting
A mist of greasy invective
Black words, barking
From the tailpipe, exhausted
A hail of mechanical fatigue

So in it went, to an ‘engine shop’ –

Spluttering, gargling to the far side of Needwood –
Trent one-side, power station the other
Flush to the canal, banged up behind
The digger plant and an old signal box;
Bletch-covered sleepers under edge-rusted rails

Yet lo! Empowered by oil
Uplifted by wrenches and spanners
Tar-smeared power tools
Pits, winches and inch-thick chains
I transformed. The engineer. Stephenson. Brunel.

Me.

“It’s likely the stem seals”, he said
“Or maybe the inlet rings.”
“Hopefully not a re-bore”
I bluffed, a parry. Nothing more.
“Might do”, he rumbled, gruffly

But who was to know?
Emboldened, now I dared to speak
The lost tongue of my father;
And before him, his father, William
Or Frank, his step-father, engineers all.

And the language of George,
Grandad, Mum’s side –
The tinkerer, the fixer, the trucker
Whose thick palms, nimbly dexterous
Were ingrained with oil and engines.

Never me.

So I animatedly spoke to my dad
Of O rings and rod nuts
Of engine shops and re-bores
Of widgets and grommets
Of gaskets and piston slap

His world, his words,
So I thought,
Benignly he listened; gently he shook his head
Amused and bemused
By my fluent influency.

Battlestead

~ David Preston ~ 3 Comments

Battlestead walk warrior_FotorForested bluffs, these valley sides
Trent, Dove, Swarbourn, Blythe
Buttressed walls
Defending Needwood’s home
The forest plateau
Riven by scars, slashed deep –
The erosive ferocity
Of river, brook and stream
Yet lying low, discrete yet blunt
The rounded tops of Battlestead
On whose slopes, forgotten blood
Has seeped and soaked
Steep battlements cut
Deep ditches, high walls –
Wanderers repelled
All lost now under tilled earth
And swaddling pine;
This lookout, this belvedere
This sentinel point –
Eerily still, for now
It is the calm before the storm
Millennia have passed
Ice advanced, then receded
Meanders slipped back and forth
And churned and cut
Battlestead was born then –
Battlestead has watched since –
Yet now, a maelstrom of progress
Concrete, brick, glass and steel
The tree-skirt gone
The legacy lost
New towers are built
Her battle lost too –
And in her stead?
A brutal lesson.

Brock

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

BrockDigger, builder,
Badger, Brock,
The grey man of the fields
Scuttling gait, shoulders rolling
A shepherd lolloping after sheep;
Pausing, snout up, paw cocked
Like the keeper’s gun,
Trunnion-hinged,
Ready to snap-shut
And kill;
Brock waits
Maps the land through scent
Worms, or grubs, or nesting chicks;
In the far field, home
Root-roofed, earth walled; the sett
A safe haven – until the men come
With their shovels and picks
Holler and thrum
Dogs and gas –
Brock runs
Low now, head down, urgent
Through the long grass
Into the ditch
Beneath the hedge
Under the wheels.
Brock lies
Gutter-ways
As if asleep
Dreaming…
Digger, builder,
Badger, Brock.

 

Lost Mini

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

Sprinting across the shingle;
That’s what we did; sprinting
And flirting up a wake of pebbles
Grit too, like a rally car
Power sliding through an unpaved bend
In deepest Wales or Kielder or Galloway
Barely in control
The shingle gave way below our feet
Until we threw ourselves down
Next to the towels, spades and wind-breaks
The beach was the racetrack,
Banked bends, long straights
A Mulsanne and Eau Rouge in one,
With my Mini; unblinking eyes on the front
Throwing out death rays of light
Twin exhausts out back
Two fingers to the Planet
Spewing out the bile of internal combustion;
But it didn’t count on the assault course
Of being thrown from paw to paw
Or accelerated through the sound barrier
Or worse, being buried one foot down
By infants.
That’s where it ended.
I buried the car, like I buried the Scirocco
in later years; buried it deep
Not into the side of a truck
But in a pit; a grave of beach shingle.
I went to dig it up – but the car had vanished
Clawing, I dug a hole four foot wide
Roped my Dad in too; no avail.
Where is it now? That’s the recurring thought
I have whenever I walk on a shingle beach –
From Chesil to Slapton Ley
Where is my Mini?
In flights of fancy and whimsical thought
I imagine it now, somewhere near
The Mid Atlantic Ridge By-pass
Or whizzing through the Grand Banks
Pursued by Whales and Cod
More likely, it’s like that tank they found.
Fell off a boat it did
When practicing for Omaha and Juno
Came up years later; pock marked
Armoured by limpets
And camouflaged by kelp

The rivet

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

I tramped like a hobo
Across the rock-littered moor
Outcrops of stippled, lined rock
Stacked layer upon layer
The folds of the long-gone puthering lava, still evident
Blancmange blobs of plaster on the builder’s hawk;
By myself, alone on the lonely moor
Except for the litter of life all around,
Heather alive with sound,
Tufted grasses, antennae twitching in the air waves
To catch a water droplet
Or a Russian broadcast;
Glossy gorse needles set to stun,
And Cotton Grass nodding its disapproval
As my careless feet print their way
Through the sucking sphagnum.
A mere glint, a visual tripwire, made me look
A winking jewel, eyeing me suspiciously
A coin of sorts, misshapen by years, curved
Like a claw or talon,
Old? Perhaps a Ducat or Sheqel – priceless?
I briefly dreamed that I had the knack
For spotting Dollars, Dòngs and Dinar
But, no
It turns out I was Talentless;
It was a rivet, misshapen, deformed by age,
The friction between bridle or stirrup maybe
Or the broken connecting-rod
Of some Knight’s plate-mail,
Snapped by the pleasure-less frottage
Of iron upon iron, year upon year.
Like Bilbo’s ring, the rivet has a new home now,
Nestled amongst the broken crumbs
Of low-fat taste-free rice cakes
Old Kleenex, shiny with the dried slug
Smears of weeks old snot
And the rustling chrysalis of unused poo bags;
When the pocket of my old coat
Finally gives up, the rivet will fall
To a new place; amongst the leaf litter
In a lime-lined park; or on the floor of a charity shop
Sold as seen
Or maybe in that strange circularity of life,
On a rock-littered moor, hidden amongst
Outcrops of stippled, lined rock,
The folds of the long-gone puthering lava, still evident.

The last draw

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

There she stands
Feather footed in her Fit Flops
Auto-exercising on-the-go,
Slim framed and lithe
In a slim-fit pink overcoat, belted
And swaddled tightly round
To ward off the chance
Of a cold, or the ‘flu, or the merest sniff;
Held lightly,
From her eco-friendly brown paper bag
She scoffs a super smoothie for inner strength
And a super salad, seed-packed with chia
The pink teeth of pomegranate
All manner of nature’s wonders;
No excesses here: matt black glasses
Adorn a neutral palette;
Made up not to be made up, so to speak
Self-evidently, a paragon of health
Radiating vigour and well-being
A role model for our modern times.
She waits,
Deeply breathing in the fresh air
Outside, on the office steps
And raspily draws
On a desperate fag
Before arranging
The evening slot
At the gym

The train from the North

~ David Preston ~ 3 Comments

My dad still tells of
The great steam trains of his youth
Vast hammer clouds of dirty smoke
Erupting from the chimneys,
Not just ejected from the engine, but up, up,
Up, Into the upper reaches of the stratosphere
Hanging above the cuttings
At the bottom of Oak Street
Or Marsh Green Road;
But the majesty – no other word
Will do to describe, to eulogise
The crowning glories of the Victorian Engineers;
The ingenuity to create movement
From cracked stone, fire and iron-clad inertia
From what is, in truth, whisper it…
A teapot on wheels.
And such is the way in those parts,
Where I grew up, near Railway Town,
There was a fascination, a worship
Of engines, of tracks,
The mobile machinations
Of pumping pistons and spinning gears –
Of water, of rock, of gas, of light.
Maybe then, it’s why, when I jump on
The train from the north midway along
A carriage of Scousers and Mancs
And the posher sort, from Wilmslow or Hale,
There remains all around still
That childlike fascination of travel on train
To distant places,
Through nameless middle lands
But then, on the edges of the Smoke,
The train, now smoke free
Yaws on the tracks and the necks strain
Rotate, pivot, swivel and spin
At dreamed-of panoramas;
The looping arch of Wembley;
The first glimpse of curving Tube tracks,
A peep through buddleia riddled track side
Towards the Post Office Tower or Centre Point,
Before the descent into the gloom –
Stephenson’s vast cutting –
And All Change, All Change
For reality.

Transitions

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

At the edge of this island; it seems
So permanent; a full stop, but no
It is a transition, that is all
Of cliff and sand, of tussock and scree
To sea, to waves and another world.

At the edge of the moor; the stone circle
Napped by flintsmen, it seems so ancient, inexplicable,
It is a transition, that is all
A launching pad to another plane
A liminal zone between here and where?

At the edge of waking, the dreams
Are vivid, intense, so real I can touch them
It is a transition, that is all
To my waking rituals; a stretch, a flex
Facial scrub, ear-wax cleansed.

At the edge of my tether, it seems
As if all I am told is true
It is a transition, that is all
To a new chapter; a future
In my hands, shimmering.