TIME AND TIDE

I read this one on BBC radio a while back and it seemed to strike a chord with a number of listeners. I suppose that many of us fall short of our earliest hopes and dreams and discover, often too late, that time takes no prisoners. 

SHIP IN A BOTTLE

He dreamed of oceans as a child;
would run away to sea when grown;
might sail the chill Atlantic, wild,
or broad Pacific, tempest blown,

but grown to adulthood, he failed
in everything. There was no prow
or spreading wake: he never sailed.
He seeks his ships in bottles now.

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

My favourite Italian city, Venice, is once again struggling to cope with yet another aqua alta, one of several in the last couple of months. 
If sea levels continue to rise it bodes ill for the future of La Serenissima.

THE DROWNED CITY

A tide is rising in the flooded streets:

while residents stare dully, others weep.

A chill sea-fog enfolds, like winding sheets,

the drowned canals whose banks lie fathoms deep.

Abandoned kiosks float like ghostly ships.

The sky scowls down apocalyptically          

as, steadily, the ancient city slips,

into an endlessly encroaching sea.     

Upon the moving water, like a shroud,

fog spreads across the great drowned city’s face. 

The stately palaces, serene and proud,

sink helplessly into the sea’s embrace.

Now all are dispossessed, both foe and friend,

that called this city home, that sipped its wine 

and swore their tenancy would never end.

Those glasses, raised, now bear the taint of brine.

The sea, demanding, cannot be defied.

Departing birds rise over the lagoon.

Below extends the ever-marching tide.

The world expected this but not so soon.

TALKING TURKEY

This is a bad time of the year to be a turkey, although it’s probably fair to say that being a turkey at any other time is not particularly pleasing either.

Of all the birds one might choose to be, the turkey is probably pretty far down the list. 

Turkeys don’t sing, they don’t soar and, additionally, they’re really rather ugly. 

Jane and I will not be adding to the massive slaughter of these unfortunate creatures this year. 
We have alternative culinary plans.

SONG OF THE CHRISTMAS TURKEY

We have grown fat, my friends and I,

and although some birdbrains say
these gifts of food Men bring us

must be treated with suspicion, 
this I doubt. 

I feed on corn aplenty and rejoice,

grow plumply satisfied and portly stout.
My fellows fast become inflated too:

such fine birds with no work at all to do.   


I call the doubters paranoid and mock

their pessimistic attitudes and gloom.

Another feast arrives, I gulp it down

then gobble thankful sounds 
and strut about.

We grow each day more pillowy and sleek.

Our future is assured, our species blessed.

This is the life, I think, no need to fear:

December is the season of Good Cheer.

LIFE CYCLE

While living in Italy some years ago, I watched a young man cycling in our village with a child strapped into a seat behind him. It brought to mind excursions with my daughter when I was young and we lived just outside Edinburgh. Constantly impoverished, I travelled about on an old junk-shop bicycle with my tiny daughter perched precariously behind me in a rickety seat that wobbled alarmingly when we went over bumps. Ah, the recklessness of youth!

 























 
CYCLE

The living world sails by, complete:
strange images engulf her; sounds
pour into her; she is caressed
by air, safe in the old bike seat
behind her father, the firm mounds
of his buttocks against her chest.

A young child, perched like a nestling,
in the metal-framed basket-seat:
his firstborn.  A small miracle,
the proud father thinks his offspring,
and to him, in the noisy street,
she clings, tight as a barnacle.

He pedals hard, pursued by time:
like roulette wheels, the bike-wheels whirl.
A breeze, around her soft hair, sings
with lyrical, unreasoned rhyme.
Euphoria engulfs the girl:
her arms reach out like stubby wings.

KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy, in other countries, asylum from persecution. 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 14.

We, in modern Britain, are fortunate to benefit from a standard of living vastly beyond the expectations or imagination of our grandparents, and to enjoy a degree of security not shared by those who dwell in countries blighted by famine, war or the constant threat of war.
Our political leaders struggle to find a balance between securing our borders and extending the hand of compassion to the rising tide of refugees who stand at our door and knock. 
In the words of Dr Savitri Taylor: We must choose carefully how we treat the stranger among us, because our choice has serious implications for the stranger, but also for ourselves.

 







HEAVEN'S DOOR

The immigration queue winds on
and slowly on, then out of sight.
We clutch our vouchers, move along:
in twos, with eyes downcast, polite;
a flock, a never-ending throng,
bent-shouldered, stricken, sick and drawn.
All, but our clothes and one small bag,
is lost: abandoned any how.
The future is relinquished too:
we live in the rude present now
and leave behind all that we knew:
possessions, symbols, honour, flag.
Officials, at the narrow gate,
are brusque beneath the moving lens
of cameras that seem alive.
We enter, gather in our pens,
like bees within a buzzing hive,
to wait, survive and procreate.

CRY WOLF

Some people eulogise dolphins but, for me, a wolf pack’s surely one of Nature’s proudest sights.
Sadly, wolves have suffered centuries of bad press and, in many parts of the world, have been hunted almost to extinction.
It’s heartening to learn that much has changed in recent years and Man’s perception of this beautiful creature has become much more positive.
Although I wrote this poem some time ago, I intend to include it in a new collection which I hope to have published in 2020.
Perhaps it's worth reflecting how much the fate of wolves mirrors that of feared or hated groups within the human species.

WOLF

Out of a world corrupted 

and made vile, 

beyond the stricken tree, 

the murdered mile,

past poisoned streams and over tainted snows, 

copper-eyed, the wolf goes: 

beyond recall, 

beyond arresting cry, 

into an exile’s land where shadows lie.

His paw marks, 

his very scent, 

create his fleeting monument.

SPACE ODDITY

Here's a piece of lighthearted Flash Fiction about alien abductions. In the prevailing political climate, with each day more dispiriting than its predecessor, who wouldn't welcome the opportunity of being beamed up and whisked away from it all? 

                                                      STRANGE MUSIC

The day the spaceship came we barely noticed it at first even when its shadow fell across the avenue like a great shark. But once the haunting music began we all stopped and gazed upward as though hypnotized.
Perhaps if, instead, we had scattered like minnows, things might have turned out differently.
It began very slowly at first.
Ron Bradshaw stopped washing his Jaguar and, like me, stared open-mouthed up at the great ship suspended above us. Suddenly he began to levitate.
Up he floated, looking like an escaped balloon, his red cardigan vivid against the blue sky.
Janice Williams went next: with a short cry, she too began to rise, with Toby, her dachshund, paddling furiously beneath her at the end of his lead.
Moments later, people who’d come outdoors to stare began to drift upward like dandelion-seeds on a soft breeze. Gradually the sky was full of them, a rag-tag collection of scarecrow figures rising towards the shining spacecraft that hovered above us: lads in baseball-caps, still clutching their skateboards, girls with push-chairs, the daft old lady from number 12, an Amazon deliveryman: one by one up they went.
In the distance, I spotted a host of other figures rising like bubbles towards an open hatch in the belly of the silver ship and, all the while, the strange, unearthly music continued.
It was then that my pacemaker decided to malfunction. One moment I was gazing with wonder at a scene beyond imagination and the next I was lying on the ground. I must have passed out, for when I opened my eyes again the people had all disappeared and the spaceship was leaving. As the strange music grew fainter and more distant, an overpowering sense of desolation overwhelmed me. I sat on the pavement and wept like an abandoned child.

ASSASSIN'S DEED

John F Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States was assassinated at 12.30pm on 22 November 1963 while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
The President was travelling with his wife Jacqueline and Texas Governor, John Connally, also with his wife, when he was fatally shot by a sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was hiding in a nearby building.
The assassination evoked a stunned reaction worldwide and in America that fateful day people wept openly and gathered in department stores to watch the television coverage. Traffic in some areas ground to a halt as the news spread. Schools dismissed their students early.
The event left a lasting impression throughout the world and many people today can remember where they were the day that President Kennedy was shot.

NOVEMBER 1963

The motorcade moves steadily,
as time does, towards history.
Three limousines, sedate and slow,          
glide through the Dallas noonday glow.
A white Ford leads, while, at the back,
sleek as a shark, a Cadillac
and in between, smooth chrome and mirrors, 
a Lincoln Continental purrs.
Outriders, vigilant and keen,
tough cops, cool, muscular and lean,
on Harley-Davidsons, survey
a festive, jubilant display.
The President, young, debonair,
beneath a boyish mop of hair,
shares with the world his winning smile,
his charismatic sense of style.
His modish wife, serene and proud,
waves to the rapt, adoring crowd
of smiling faces, black and white,
expressions optimistic, bright,
that sways excitedly to cheer
as, steadfastly, the drivers steer
to Dealey Plaza up ahead,
a routine job, no cause for dread,
nothing to hint that, from today,
small screens will constantly replay
the coming moments, frame by frame,
as devotees call out his name,
JFK, Kennedy ... a hymn.
The noonday light appears to swim
as, past the captivated throng,               
three cars cruise steadily along,
one hard-top car, two open-top,
into the moment time will stop,
into to the space that fate dictates                             
where Oswald, the assassin, waits.

BIRD CONFINED

October in Guernsey ended in a series of wet, dismal days and the forecast for much of November promises similar gloom.
Trapped indoors and feeling decidedly under par, I am experiencing a crushing sense of confinement and attempt to distract myself by rummaging through stacks of paper in the hope of discovering some abandoned poem or story to retrieve and rework.
This short one came to hand. No reworking is necessary.

THE CAGE

The child’s attention is engaged
by a red fire-finch, captured, caged.
Man steals the fire-finch from the wild.
Time steals childhood from the child.
How similar are both their fates.
The cage of adulthood awaits.

LET'S DANCE

It’s disquieting when a child discovers that its parents have identities other than those of Mother and Father and that the stranger hidden within the familiar shape has his or her own fears and yearnings, dreams and doubts. 

HIS MOTHER DANCES

Crouched on the stairs, he sees her dance:

her feet glide over lino squares,

the wireless playing sweet and low.

She waltzes, as though in a trance,

alone, amidst pans, table, chairs, 

white kitchen sink: her eyes aglow.

Those slender arms grasp empty air:

her partner is invisible.

She circles, sweeps and murmurs words,

song lyrics or a lover’s prayer.

What seems to him incredible

is how the music, like small birds,

whirls round his sleepy, tousled head

and makes him sad. The dancing stops.

His mother, hungry for romance,

settles for washing plates instead;

talks to herself, while he eavesdrops.

His father never liked to dance.

LEST WE FORGET

A short poem for Remembrance Sunday.

 





TRENCH RAT                                                     

A battered Woodbine is a precious thing.  
If you can light the bugger, better still.
Inhale the harsh, uplifting, acrid smoke   
and, for a fleeting moment, you’re a King.   
Dear old King George can keep his best cigars
and damn Lloyd George, 
may that sly bastard choke. 
It’s him and and not the Hun I’d choose to kill
to end this bloody war to end all wars.

SHELL SHOCKED

The recent news story of the tragic deaths of 39 illegal immigrants from Vietnam found dead in a refrigerated lorry in Essex brings to mind another terrible incident back in 2004 when 21 illegal workers, all Chinese, were drowned by fast-rising tide whilst cockle-gathering in Morecambe Bay.
Here is a poem I wrote at the time.











THE COCKLE-GATHERERS

We found them difficult
to love, despised
their foreignness
and could discover
in those bland,
concealing faces,
no vestige of ourselves.

Their exile presence here
was deemed invasive.
We shared with them
no culture,
no common aim.

Their language
set them apart; built a great wall
between us, their so-reluctant hosts
and them, the strangers,
hungry to seize
those beastly jobs
no native beast would do.

To destitution, famished dreams,
into the grasp of greedy men,
in numbers, unrecorded,
they came regardless,
fleeing, in a hostile land,
without a single English phrase,
a past beyond imagining.

There on a northern, winter shore
suddenly,
in language universal,
their frightened voices
spoke to all the mongrel souls of men
spawned from a common source.

The tide
of panic rising
with the sudden water;
the hopeless cries;
cold darkness
sucking life away.

REGENERATION

As we enter what I think of as 'the dead season' I cast around for uplifting images to ward off the inevitable melancholy of November.
This villanelle, which I wrote a decade ago, still pleases me with its optimism. 

 








THE WORLD STOPS TURNING

The world stops turning then begins again
and suddenly, abruptly, change has come.
Blooms burst in deserts fresh with gentle rain.

Rain-forests rise, reach heavenwards, attain
full grandeur, scorn the chainsaw’s hum
The world stops turning then begins again.

The bare ravine becomes a verdant glen.
Trees blush with fruit. Famine is overcome.
Blooms burst in deserts fresh with gentle rain.

Bright birds repopulate a blighted fen.
Fish spawn in rivers where there once were none.
The world stops turning then begins again.

Returning life reclaims its lost terrain,
a verdant place beneath an orange sun.
Blooms burst in deserts fresh with gentle rain.

Old men grow young, straight-backed, forget their pain:
they shrug off leaden years, so burdensome.
The world stops turning then begins again.
Blooms burst in deserts fresh with gentle rain.

HALLOWE'EN FUN

Here's a bit of macabre fun for Hallowe'en in the form of a plea for more compassion towards that much-maligned social group, the Undead.

 










ZOMBIEPHOBIA     

Others, they call us The Undead
and everywhere we go, they flee;
if trapped, they shoot us in the head;
they simply cannot let us be.

For we can’t help the way we are:
with rotting skin and clothes not fresh.
It’s hardly our fault if we all
enjoy the taste of human flesh

and clump around on shaky legs
or claw at people that we meet,
so you should not discriminate
and keep your distance in the street.

We tore the postman limb from limb?
Hands up, we did that: a mistake.
But these things happen, life’s not fair.
We only kill when we’re awake.

So what, if we smell of the grave?
Most days we are polite and good.
We are not the repulsive bunch
portrayed on screen by Hollywood.

Okay, we ate your mum and dad,
and maybe others, quite a few,
but you must make allowances
for Zombie folk are people too.

Compassionate society
should make us welcome and be fair,
enjoy diversity, be cool.
Embrace a Zombie, show you care.

THE YOUNG ONES

If anything is likely to make one feel old it's to blunder into the midst of a group of enthusiastic young people on a festive day.

SUMMER WEDDING

A wedding party gathers on the steps
that lead up to a sombre roadside church,
the guests resplendent in eye-catching style.
They’re mostly young
so swathes of tattooed skin predominate 
this sunny, summer day.
The girls, all young, in ostentatious hats,
resemble flocks of strange, exotic birds
while the young men, a dozen strong,
parade in tight, flamboyant suits  
and look like cheeky gangsters on the razz.
The air feels charged with energy and youth
and who’d begrudge them this euphoric day?
Come on, I say, 
and firmly take your arm.
Invisible and old, we hurry by.

STILL CRAZY ...

To meet, to know, to love and then to part, is the sad tale of many a heart. 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

CHANCE MEETING

He takes her hand, then suddenly,
impulsively, embraces her.
Unchanged! 
He stands tongue-tied
while old familiar feelings stir
and she, acutely conscious
that she only dressed to shop
feels suddenly complete again
and prays that time might stop.

Still Crazy (after all these years) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1naJEacE8

A GOOD INNINGS

Cricket to us was more than play, It was worship in the summer sun. 
Edmund Blunden

The late Edmund Blunden was one of the First World War poets and is among those commemorated in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. 
Passionate about cricket, Blunden was the author of Cricket Country, the tale of a man whose interest in the game was, in the words of one critic, "fanatical".
In his review of Cricket Country, George Orwell referred to Blunden as "the true cricketer", and went on to say that the test of a true cricketer is that he prefers village cricket to 'good' cricket, that his fondest memories are of the informal village game, where everyone plays in braces, where the blacksmith is liable to be called away in mid-innings on an urgent job, and sometimes, about the time when the light begins to fail, a ball driven for four kills a rabbit on the boundary. 

THE CRICKETERS

A makeshift platform in a cherry tree
afforded views beyond the garden wall
and far off in the distance I could see
some cricketers, with pads and bats and ball,
at play, all shining white. 
A stirring scene
with radiant figures on a field of green
which, to the naive child that I was then,
spoke of a wider world, somehow more true,
inhabited by dashing, fearless men:
a braver, wider world than that I knew.

OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS

Creative writing and the imagination allow us to explore other worlds, other lives, that might have been ours had we followed a different path.

THE ROOM

The room is furnished just enough
to qualify as furnished: a bed, a table,
chairs that look the worse for wear;
but it’s affordable and so I say
I’ll take it and hand over cash.
She nods and, with a downward glance,
leaves me to settle in.
I sit down on the threadbare bed
and study patterns on the wall,
the paper faded and forlorn,
the picture of a weeping clown
and, by the door, a pitted mirror.
The window faces to a street,
with graffiti and shuttered shops
and nothing, dog or cat or man,
is there as evidence of life.
Quite suddenly the walls encroach
and all the ghosts of tenants past:
the failed, afraid or just plain old,
assail me and the room feels cold. 

MAKING A COMEBACK

Most people are familiar with the name of Lazarus, whose reanimation features as the last of the miracles ascribed to Jesus in the Gospel of John. 
Lazarus, already dead and entombed, was commanded to return to life and duly rose in his winding sheets and rejoined his family. 
We assume he was overjoyed with this turn of events.
But was he? 

 








 
LAZARUS REGRETS

I suppose I should be grateful
that I have been restored to life.
Truly a miracle, they say,
for I was dead, my youthful wife
a widow. Then came that fateful
moment: the voice, to my dismay, 
of God, or something like His voice
recalled me from that peaceful place,
a still, enshrouding nothingness
where I was free in endless space.
I sat up, watched my wife rejoice,
enfold me in her warm caress,
and back came flooding all the cares,
the daily desolation, fears,
unspooling like a ball of thread.
My neighbours wondered at my tears
and crowded round me unawares.
A kind God would have left me dead.
In death, I had at last escaped
the terror, that each human knows,
of his inevitable doom. 
A feather underneath my nose
proved me extinct. My coffin, draped
with sackcloth, waited by the tomb.
Then came a Man, a God of sorts,
whose word alone awakened me,
my winding sheets fell off, my eyes
perceived, at first, a wondrous tree,
then children carrying reports
of miracles with joyous cries.
I, through this sudden jubilation, wept
for that lost, lovely place wherein I slept.

FRENCH LEAVE

Driving through France this summer has been a rare pleasure, especially now that we've acquired a modern air-conditioned car.
Our lovely old seventeen year old camper-van has gone to a good home and we now own a far from new, but for us state-of-the-art, hatchback.
The roads in France are a joy to drive and it's a relief to be away from the everyday frustration of motoring in Guernsey: a depressing experience even on a good day, as the island's obsession with car ownership pushes it ever closer to gridlock.   
Here's a poem from our French travels.

 













LE DEJEUNER SUR L’HERBE

A July day in southern France.
The picnic was a simple one:
cheese, ham and crusty fresh-baked bread,
a little wine to wash it down.

Post-lunch, we fell into a trance.
Our holiday had just begun.
We dozed, our paperbacks unread
I sought the sun, you slept facedown.

Waking, I chanced an upward glance.
Above us swallows wheeled and spun
as though they were unwinding thread
from an incredible blue gown.

FRESH AIR AND FRENCH HARE

Whilst staying in Marsac, Jane and I walked a friend's dogs each day in early morning before the heat became exhausting. 
The area is rural and remote, the nearest cities being Cognac and Angouleme, and is largely agricultural with vines, wheat and sunflowers vying for a space in the rolling meadows.
One morning we had the rare pleasure of spotting that most elusive and mythical of creatures, a hare. 

 



















A HARE

Passing by a wheat field, early,
we saw suddenly 
a movement:
something camouflaged 
had broken  
cover and was moving slowly
with a hunched, ungainly motion
to the tree-line 
in the distance.
What had seemed, before, a boulder
now was animated, lifelike. 
As we turned to watch its progress
in an instant it was sprinting,
all ungainliness forgotten,
into sanctuary darkness
at the all-concealing tree-line.
We walked home 
to our commitments.
How we envied it its freedom.

CATNAPS

Having experienced temperatures of 43 degrees in Europe recently and discovered that an escape to the coolness of the bedroom is the perfect antidote, I'm now a devotee of the siesta. After all, if cats do it it must be a great idea.

MEDITERRANEANS

In noon-day sun no creature moves
and even lizards, acid-green,
designed for heat beyond belief,
remain within their creviced walls.
Dogs hide away, cats sleep in shade
if anywhere shade can be found
and noon to four the natives sleep
or skulk like fugitives indoors,
the black-clad women making lace,
the men at dominoes or cards.
They have adapted to their world
far better than we have to ours:
at ninety-three they’re still alive
while we burn out at fifty-five.
 

A HARD RAIN

I was drinking coffee at a pavement cafe in Auray, a small town in Brittany in northern France back in 2001, when I heard the news of the terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers.
Conditioned by many years of exposure to Irish Republican terrorism in Ulster, I was perhaps not as shocked as many of those around me.
A terrorist’s advantage is the ability to think, and then perpetrate, the unthinkable. There’s no defence against this unless we begin to think like terrorists. 
Most democratic institutions are incapable of doing this.
It’s sad to reflect on how much the world has changed since that terrible day.
How good it would be to be able to rewind time.

 REWIND

Wind Time back. Rewind Time.

     

Make the struck towers rise from dust,

reconstruct themselves: 
glass, concrete, girders, walls,

a huge jigsaw

interlocked, 
complete again.

Lights come on, phones chirp like crickets.

In reconstructed work-stations, 

fingers dance on keyboards again;

vending machines cough 
then spew out pungent brew; 

air-con sighs then resumes; 
elevators ascend, descend;

video conferences resume mid-
sentence, emails beep, 

digital clocks flicker
like quick, green lizards. 

Wind Time back. Rewind Time.

Time restarts 
as though it had never ended.

Hopes, innocence, daydreams, boredom: 

all the mundane certainties of ordinary lives 

are reaffirmed.

Shoes, handbags, mobile phones, flesh, 
warped by intense heat:

these un-melt, re-form, 

resume their former shapes.

The terrible, unearthly screams 
subside.

Wind Time back. Rewind Time.

Backwards 

the soft clouds drift; 
birds fly in reverse.

Those grim death-planes, 
stiletto-silver in the morning sun, 

withdraw, like daggers, from the shattered towers,

whose twin glass skins, pristine again,

shimmer

like smooth, un-rippled water.