The long grass in Summer
Bends to the murmur of the wind
Only so far for a polite kiss
Daintily hiding the traces
Of seasons’ past.
Heads of feral wheat, far from home
Are bold now, fine-whiskered
Heads up like prairie dogs
Alert to danger;
Yet through it winds a path
Down to Stoneyford bridge
Just the trace of wandered boots
Like wisps of gasping breath
Captured on a frosty morning
Or the ripple marks as the tide flows.
Stoneyford bridge;
Two planks wide, nothing more;
Knurled knots standing proud
Lateral lines of yearly growth
Polished to a gloss
By Hunter Boots and walking shoes
Towelling trousers of kneeling kids
Yelping with delight
At the white-water chaos
Of Pooh-sticks below.
And beyond, the path whispers up
A rounded hill, encircled with barbs
Round like an iron age fort
Or the tree-shod bloodied slopes
Of some desperate bayonet stand;
But no fighting here:
Just the contours and trees
The echo of children playing
The lowing of a far-off cow
And the sigh of the path back
To Stoneyford bridge
Category: Poetry
The Lone Oak
I am here
I am a remnant
Just one
One, of a once great forest
One, of once upon a time
They say, ‘There is the oak’
Church doors; cruck frames; the wood of war
I am formidable
They say, ‘There is the oak’
Proud; strong; sentinel
The watcher, keeping guard
I am alone
I am a remnant
Just one
Today, a whisper of the past
Today, the inconvenience of man
Like my kith
One day soon I will fall
Felled to ease
The pass of the furrow
Straight lines in mother earth
Like my kin
I accept my fate
Until then
I am formidable
The watcher, keeping guard
Four ages of snow
First, the hush.
The soft cotton-wool drifting
Landing, feet together,
A parachutist behind the lines
At first, a hiss, just faint
On the edge of sound
Then blanket quiet
Hide and seek; under the duvet
Muffled whispers, low breathing
Nothing more
Next the crush.
That swaddling coat
Insulating, hiding, trapping
Winter’s hug; warmth below
Cold above; frigid cold
Like musical statues
Dead still, the White Witch’s curse
That east wind from the Steppe.
And cold sets the snow
Below soles: crunch, crack, creak
The slush; from a world
Of soft edges, smudged details
Comes the hard edge
Of melt; of grime, of grit
Of rubbed-in dirt
Smeared eskers of ice
Trampled by boot and paw, by tyre and tread.
I dream: the crushed ice
Scooped into my Iced Tea
On a far off beach
The gush of melt
Himalaya; Karakoram; Alps
Milk white and blue streams
Suspensions of dust rippling away
Down the edges of highways.
No bright painted bunting here
No mountain sanctuaries
Not here in this Mercian street
Where all joy of Saturnalia has passed
We wait for the Equinox
Foreglow
Winter morning, the uneven flags
Crisp with rime
Champ beneath my feet
Crinkle-edged blades of verge-grass,
Like knives before the whetstone
Shatter beneath my tread
My passing marked, as if through snow
Or low tide mud in the creek
I crest the humpback hill
Away, on the short horizon a foreglow
Uplights, like on some historic Pile
Illuminate the trees root-up
A dusky radiance, the early morning
Dust alight, sparking like shards
Of blackened wick flaring upon the match
The trees, like phantoms, or ghosts
Black forms with flickering sharp edges
I walk towards their back lit forms
And as the sun’s warm fingers
De-ices the fields
I become one with them
Bankfull
They’re talking about building again,
Building on the floodplains
But it’s plain to see
That the floodplains flood.
Take today, for Heaven’s sake,
Breathing in across the Bailey Bridge
The river bankfull below
The water benignly still
In touching distance, calling out
An illusion – look closely;
Look closely at the ruckus,
The swirls on the surface
The whirls of pent-up energy
The commotion of power
The tumult of excess
Sicked off the hills
Like hot soup rolling in the pan.
If there was a levee, it’s gone
The old ox-bow, gone too
The cycle path, lost to the sea;
Only the swans are joyful
In their new meres; soon gone too
Flooded from plain sight
Snapped up by the river’s thirst
Smothered below a duvet
Asphyxiated by branches, roots, silt,
It’s where the shopping trollies go to die
It’s where they turn up
When the flood subsides
Cock-eyed, strangely slanting, half-buried
Like the fuselage of a downed plane
Draped in periwigs of sodden shrubbery
Head sore after a big blow out.
Beautiful, true,
But deadly too.
Lost Mini
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
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
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
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.
A murmur of Crows
My windscreen is a frame
On the fields, farms and pastures
On the billboards, brickwalls and cooling towers
Unfolding around me as I drive
Around this rolling land,
Passing at times as a blur
At others more sedately, an oasis
Of calm, an eddy swirling behind a rock
In the bubbling rapids of traffic.
Once, in the Fens, a pasture of starlings
Startled up all around me
Like flies off a mid Summer beck
Like dust springing off a taut beat drum
Four and twenty hundred at least
At a bend in the road in the village of Twenty;
And this last week, out from a candyfloss of Winter oaks
Arose an entanglement of Crows
Not a flock, nor a family, not a throng nor a mob
But 200, 400 maybe 1000 sooty corvids
Dancing together, bombing harmoniously
Agitating like pinballs yet
With grace, and beauty, with a pure white heart
With silent intent, a noiselessness
So unexpected from their crocking calls
They skittled off one another,
This murmur of Crows,
Until all that was left was a memory
Receding with the miles
In my dirt-smeared mirror.
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