Category: Poetry

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.

Wall

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

Eight foot six
From toes through hips
To the far-off tips
Of fingers spread,
Little is said
Of such common things
Lost in the everyday –
As stretchers and headers
Soldiers and sailors,
Or simple baked bricks
Lovingly laid, end to end
Leaving a gap – a perpend
Sloughed with mortar,
Or comfy in a bed
Whereupon happens
Such intricate patterns
The saucy stuff, the bonding:
English, Sussex, Flemish, Monk –
But nothing, no, nothing
Quite compares
To quoins and half-bats
Shiners and rowlocks;
For me, it is a simple call
The easy beauty of a well laid wall
More – my very heart goes a’throbbing
At haggard old beams
Standing proud or unseen;
And the merest glance of good brick nogging.

Volcán

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

For months it was said
The land rumbled and creaked –
The deep reverberations
A stomach unfed, fretful.
The priest, brim-full with fear and piety
Seeking mercy, or sanctuary –
Scrambled up the crackled crest
Over sharp black rock
Edged with knives, devoid of life
Pock-marked with worm holes
From venting gas years past
In hemp and rope sandals
A hessian smock, scrabbling
To witness… what?
The Lord himself, surely
Rip apart the land
Pull it, lever it, break it, wrench it
Smash it. Smash his creation,
Swallowing farms, feasting on livestock
And the fields themselves
And then –
Volcán came.
The breath of the Devil
The spittle; the fume; the bile
An inferno bursting like pus
Villages lost, eaten whole, or throttled;
New rivers made –
Ash, smoke, dust, flowing fire;
Endless fire, endless.
One man did not run;
He beat back the bubbling river
With a bucket, and a straw shoe;
Gone.
Three hundred years hence,
They will not forget, surely
What happened here –
What he witnessed –
From this chimneyed eyrie
Soot-pasted, choking,
The breath of a Cuban,
Dry, acrid, pungent, dusty;
Yet now they play like kids
Round – in! – the crater
Mark it with stones, and crosses
Build their cairns; make their names with rocks
Oblivious it seems
To the dormant power
The impassive evil
That lies here, sleeping.

Waiting.

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.

Scrublands

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

The hard edges advance daily;
The kerbs, pavements, the flyovers
Storm drains and run-offs
The push and probe of new roads
Endless spans of concrete
Tarmac and stone –
But as the wild is sent
Into seeming retreat
So it finds new avenues of its own
To push and probe
The verges and ditch sides
The verdant hillsides of cuttings
And meadowlands renewed
Upon our fair embankments
These scrublands, these wild worlds
Lost in full view
Owned by no one but us all
Milkwort, Hawkweed
Muskmallow and Knapweed
Hoary Plantain, Oxeye Daisy
Meadow Cranesbill and Great Mullein
Tended by no one
Except the feather dusters of the bees
And the inquisitive nose
Of the dog or vole.

Hedge-Den Recalled

~ David Preston ~ 1 Comment

There was a den under that hedge
Between the knurls and knots and twists
Of the haw and blackthorns;
An occasional nip, a reward –
The beads of blood like wax drops
Greedily sucked back
No time for pain to get in the way of war;
Of battles or fights or surreptitious
Half-snatched conversations;
Innocently illicit; longed-for yet alarming
The long grass; rich green with pigment
A bushel of knee stains, unmovable,
And wheat grains, masking the entrance –
The hedge cave MUST STAY secret
From the unknowing eyes of authority
And n’er do wells of the grown up kind.
In the corner, the hill fort (without a hill)
A flattened ring of pitching legs
And flaying arms combining
To harvest everything but crops
The imaginary machine guns
Trimmed the field; close-cropping the infants
And juniors alike – let them play tag;
They’re not welcome here anyway –
The last defence may await: the skin-stun
Of nettle rows, a barbed right of passage
Yet in that moment, that brief moment
With the June sun pulsing down
And pushing out the latter day hedges
I snapped back to –
To today, in Needwood,
And a hedge in distant lands
Brought back by hot grass under the sun
And by the smell and the song of the fields

Quarter Mile Bridge

~ David Preston ~ 1 Comment

As the curtain of ice swept back
Leaving only a blanket of drift and till
The rivers emerged from their ice-coat
Throwing off old shackles
New courses cut, new ways found
Vital, young again, challenging –
They swept forth through these soft lands
Breathing deep in the warming air
Of a new Spring-epoch;
And for endless years
Men used that course
Thinking it ancient;
For trade, for war, for lookout,
Until a new water-path was broached
No flow there, no bore;
No ebb, no flood, no fetch…
Yet it is here, below the Needwood
The two life-bloods entwine,
One, the course of nature
The other, the cut of man
Side by side they co-exist
At the weir, a gentle embrace
A deft kiss – before they part once more.
Above their meeting,
Above their parting,
Runs the Quarter Mile Bridge;
Floating; a hover-fly above the washlands,
Oftentimes, the morning mist
Breathes so lightly on the ground
That the bridge dances on cloud
Perspectives diminishing,
Vistas opening
A chance, perhaps, to pause:
To think, to touch gentle waters;
To bridge the water worlds
Of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Swáre-burn

~ David Preston ~ 1 Comment

10 miles it flows
From Forest source
To reed-bound mouth
Needwood’s life-blood;
Cloaked in a medieval patina
Of beech, of oak, of ash
Neck-clasped by the lustrous bricks
Of its arch-back bridges.
Yet there is no stealth here, no subterfuge
No lazy meanders
Its fair valley is straight-cut
Rare glimpses, treasured:
A distant spire; brooding Pines.
Swar bourn – swáre burn
Our Saxon fathers dubbed it – slow brook
In flow, perhaps

But not in flood.

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The Long Man

~ David Preston ~ Leave a comment

Long ManBandy-legged he strides
Through wind-weathered pastures
Tousled haired grasses,
The long fringe of Winter
Blow across his gaze
Sweeping, his clod footed feet
Brush them back
With irritated steps.
Boldy, he bog-hops
Over transient streams
Seasonally available
Like plump strawberries
Or barb beset pineapples;
There is a spring in the long man’s steps –
But Spring is not upon us, not yet
Just this low, long sun of Winter behind him
And those shadows – spreading, stretching
Elongating the everyday.

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.