A recent conversation, about a local arts event that may have as its theme the subject of flight, prompted this short poem.
The Wright brothers, Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur (1867–1912), were two American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building and flying the world's first successful aeroplane.
They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA.
TWO BOYS
Nearly midnight, folk are sleeping;
brothers whisper in the darkness
while their siblings drowse like puppies
and their parents snore and rumble.
Seven Hawthorn Street in Dayton
hums with energy and crackle;
Bishop’s Boys, Wilbur and Orville,
once again are talking nonsense,
crazy dreams of birdlike exploits
freeing them from terra firma
and from gravity and boredom ...
how they’d soar with wings like buzzards
up above the dusty backyards,
up above the town church steeple,
higher than the swirling soot-spook
from the morning locomotive,
higher than the proud flag flying
on the Day of Independence.
Two boys safe in bed, unsleeping,
prey to wild imagination:
aviators, free as angels
fly towards the gates of Heaven.
This is my 500th blog post since I began publishing poems and short stories back in 2014.
My thanks to all those loyal readers who have stayed with me through these last five years.
'A word is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general
direction; and whatever body that destination finally acquires
owes quite as much to the reader as to the writer.'
John Fowles
GOOD FRIDAY IN ST PETER PORT
Sun warms the rooftops of the old town,
flows between close-built houses like liquid honey
and, in the tiny, unkempt gardens slipping down
the hillside, gathers interest like bankers’ money.
Gulls stand like weather-vanes to face the bay
from chimney-pots and leaning chimney-stacks.
Swallows scythe like scimitars from break of day
till evening when, with rounded backs,
finance workers ascend the hill, evolving, as they do,
into the dour wife, weary father, wayward son.
With laptop, bespoke suit and tie askew,
they hurry homeward, overtime undone.
Sun beats upon my shoulders as I climb
these narrow streets, unburdened, heart astray,
no cross to bear except the Cross of Time
whose crushing weight steals youthful strength away.
On granite steps I pause to mark the view
of painted boats that scorn the castle’s gun,
the sea, around the islands, unremitting blue,
the distant, crooked rocks where foreign currents run,
then, towards the airy summit of this prideful town,
set off, ascending, liberated, free,
through layers of stillness soft as eiderdown,
content, this hallowed day, to simply be.
Higher and lighter, the heart, of hope, bereft:
so many yesterdays gone and few tomorrows left.
T.S.Eliot referred to April as 'a cruel month'.
For me, August is a disappointing one for the reason outlined in this poem.
AUGUST
August always disappoints:
the days are never hot enough,
night falls too soon, warmth dissipates
and somehow autumn never seems
too far away: it hovers like
a beggar in a ragged coat
with mean dog, winter, at his heels.
Of course poor August disappoints
for Augusts now can never bear
comparison with Augusts then,
when each year, in a Morris packed
with windbreak, tartan rug and toys,
beach towels, stumps and cricket bat,
my father, mother, siblings, dog,
escaped from dull suburbia
to holiday beside the sea.
Two weeks unbroken happiness
with donkey-rides and candy-floss,
sand-castles, penny-slot-machines,
and strangely tasty guesthouse food.
Two weeks of sun and sea and fun,
with father less preoccupied
and mother carefree as a girl.
It never rained, no cloud would dare
intrude upon those halcyon days.
We spent each year, June and July,
with chalk marks, ticking off the days
till August and our holiday.
Those childhood memories that cloud
the way I look on Augusts now
are unreliable at best,
at worst a foolish fantasy
but still I find it hard to praise
these lesser Augusts nowadays.
The sixth and ninth of August respectively are the anniversaries of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the latter an area largely populated by non-combatants.
These were the first and only instances where nuclear weapons were used in combat and the total death toll will probably never be accurately assessed.
It is believed that these cataclysmic events in 1945 led to the Japanese surrender and the end of the Second World War.
WHY?
We work our fields. The sun is bright.
The men sing a patriotic song. We bend and straighten. Our backs ache.
We do not curse: we are polite and strong. To work is to belong.
We toil for the Emperor’s sake.
Old Haruki points overhead: a crane is flying from the north. Its languid wings sweep like brushstrokes. Cranes are good fortune, it is said.
We resume plowing, back and forth, joyfully, singing, sharing jokes.
I dream of fiery rice wine, ice then flame in my throat; the slow walk homeward.
We are a happy crowd.
Comradeship, sacred brotherhood, binds us together as we think of our great nation and sing loud.
I do not hear the Yankee plane
but shudder as a mushroom cloud despoils the picture-perfect sky.
Nearby Hiroshima,
domain of a nobility most proud,
is laid to waste.
Prostrate, we lie, while airborne poison, like a stain, begins to spread.
We tremble, cowed, claw at the earth, prepare to die.
Our tranquil world is turned to pain.
We burn to ash in fields we plowed.
One hundred
thousand people.
Why?
There have been more than 200 mass shootings in the United States so far this year.
The most recent, at a Walmart shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, will probably not be the last.
Twenty-two people were killed and more than two dozen others injured after a man opened fire in Cielo Vista Mall.
The suspect, a 21-year-old man, was arrested.
EL PASO
Withdraw the bullets, mend the flesh.
Place back the bullets in the gun.
Return the weapon to the store.
Remove the fury from the heart.
Transform the shooter to the youth
he was before obsessive thoughts
led him, against humanity,
to spew out death like obscene words
and scatter souls like fleeing birds.
Whilst it's pleasing to exceed one's three score years and ten and continue to survive, the downside is that month after month, one's contemporaries fall prey to terminal illnesses and prepare to join that great, silent majority, the dead.
MAKING SPACE
A sober card for sympathy:
words of condolence, trite but true ...
we write them now so frequently
as deaths of friends slowly accrue.
We cannot help but feel concern
as we grow old and wait our turn.
The world repopulates so fast
that when we’re gone we’re soon replaced
by models surely built to last,
smooth skinned, bright eyed, strong limbed, fresh faced,
that will obtain wealth, power, romance.
We can’t complain: we had our chance.
