TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

We’ve had a bumper summer in Guernsey this year and the seemingly-endless sunshine has made Lockdown and the attendant Covid-restrictions tolerable in a way that overcast skies would never have done. 

The last couple of days, however, with high winds and abundant leaf fall, are a stark reminder that autumn is just around the corner. 

END OF THE AFFAIR 

The heating gets switched on.

Sandals build nests in the boot-box.

The old straw hat sleeps, purring, 

on the shelf where, overnight, 

hats become cats.

Jumpers sidle out 

like pale young vampires in early dark.

The game’s up.

Summer’s finally pushed off 

as you always knew it would:

a false friend, 

a good lover gone bad.

 

WHAT IF?

Here’s a recently-written companion piece to the poem featured in my previous post.

DEAR JOHN

What if you hadn’t died at twenty-one

might we be sharing a park bench today?

Two friends, grown old, perched there to take the sun, 

much changed, a shade deranged perhaps, gone grey,

with wrinkles where our teenage spots once spread,

our youth replaced by age but neither dead.

Had you survived, might we have grown apart

as anguish, pleasure, parenthood and pain 

reshaped us, each one like a work of art

that neither could interpret or explain? 

These are the questions that assail me still

as I grow old but know you never will.

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

As I move steadily towards yet another birthday it's sobering to remember that, already, many of the boyhood friends who started out on this same strange journey have failed to make it this far.

Here's a poem, from my Stone Witness collection, that commemorates one such youthful friendship.

The image is from Elia Kazan's excellent film adaptation of John Steinbeck's great novel, East of Eden.
The cocoa tins referred to in Line 1, below, were a primitive type of field-telephone popular with schoolboys in the 1950s.

TWENTY-ONE

We started out with cocoa tins

attached by string: 

a telephone

of sorts; progressed to proper phones,

old army surplus; wired them up

and strung a line from my bedroom, 

to yours next door. 

We formed a link

that bound us fast through teenage years:

fifth form, sixth form, till, 

on you went to uni, I to unsought work.

Where you were cerebral and gauche,

I was the opposite, and yet

we hit it off: no other friend,

before or since, meant half so much.

In those strange, final months, we seemed

to drift apart: you went away

and I, in turn, 

went elsewhere too.

Estranged at twenty-one, we were.

You didn’t live to twenty-two.

Your picture, pale, in newsprint grim,

beside the stark facts of your death,

remains my image of you now

a half a century away.

My vanished childhood friend, 

you look so innocent, 

so fresh of face:

forever in a state of grace.

FUTURE SHOCK

This article in The Guardian earlier in the week prompted me to dig out and dust off a piece of flash fiction I wrote back in 2015 in which I attempted to address two issues that seem to cause unease as humanity becomes increasingly dependent on “intelligent” robots: the fear that we may become subservient to them and the anxiety that they might seek to harm us.

I've tried to weave these concerns into this little tale. 

MY ROBOT

My Robot brings me breakfast on a tray: fruit juice, toast, black coffee, also my supplements and pills, then later, a mobile screen with news and shopping options. It stands stiffly, recites its tasks in order, purrs softly like an electronic cat.

The letters on its chest read A.I.D.A. which stands for Artificial Intelligence Domestic Assistant. I call it Aida and think of it as female.

Aida is an indoor robot. There are outdoor types that patrol the streets, direct driverless cars and coaches, sweep pavements, collect garbage. These are municipal robots, MOBOs, noisy hulking brutes with no finesse.

Aida cleans and washes, manages household accounts, selects suitable mood music to aid my relaxation.

She is assisted by two inferior house-robots. I call them Bill and Ben.

Bill is barrel-shaped and slow. Ben moves quickly and is more maneuverable. They are programmed to obey Aida’s commands.

Aida enters with a tray of biscuits for my mid morning snack.  She says: “There is no need for you to fret. There is nothing I cannot find. I am programmed to fetch...”.

Her voice is calm, well-modulated, almost human, and indeed it is true, there is no household task AIDA does not perform with excellence. She is efficient, speedy and adept. The very model of a modern Domestic Assistant. She adjusts my reclining chair.

I slouch in my chair but cannot sleep. I find myself spending more and more time this way, sleepless, staring distractedly at flickering images on the view-screen.

I take a call from the person whom I called Son back in the days before the end of families. Now we speak formally to one another and address each other as Citizen.

He tells me a disturbing thing.

He has witnessed a group of MOBOs surround and kill a feral dog. They beat and trampled it till it was dead.

We understood that robots are programmed to never kill but clearly we were wrong. The video call is brief. Pleasantries are not encouraged nowadays.

The hours pass slowly. Too much repose has left me weary of a life in which I am merely an onlooker.

Increasingly, Aida fills the roles that once were mine. I should not complain. All households have Assistants now. This new world of ours is one of rest and leisure.

I rise from my recliner and go to the window. How beautiful the street looks. The trees and shrubs appear unnaturally green.

A large group of MOBOs have gathered on the corner. There is an object on the ground amongst them. I cannot see it properly. It appears to be moving.

Something bumps my shin and I spin round to find Bill directly behind me. Ben, too, has entered the room. They have approached stealthily and invaded my personal space. They should not be here and are not permitted in the Recreation Zone. I must summon Aida.

The door slides open and Aida comes, gliding smoothly as she does, bringing me a pot of coffee.

As I turn to address her. Bill bumps me violently again and I stumble to my knees. Ben moves swiftly to stand over me and suddenly appears much more imposing than I thought him. Kneeling, I turn towards Aida, extend my hands to plead for help. She pours the scalding coffee on my head.

GUERNSEY SNAPSHOT

It's interesting that, whilst Guernsey has a considerable number of self-proclaimed poets, few of them feature the island in their writing.
Should you, dear reader, choose to travel back through the 500 plus posts on this site or seek out copies of my poetry collections, Stone Witness or A Guernsey Double, you'll find that in my writing, at least, this beautiful island is not ignored.

  

AT LOW TIDE

On Bordeaux’s limpet-pimpled shore

a man hunts crabs among the rocks,

a woman in a summer dress

bends in her search for sea-glass gems.

Children, oblivious to cold,

with nets and voices like small birds,

flit back and forth and never stop.

With subtle choreography

gulls scrawl on sand their arrow signs: 

this way the sea, that way dry land.

Like toys abandoned, small boats rest

lopsided, tideless, dispossessed, 

while vraic in forty shades and more

shimmers, a legion laid to waste,

its burnished armour shiny still.

A hundred thousand living things

infest small crannies, clefts and pools 

while time, suspended, holds its breath.

All that lie sleeping, death denied,

await the resurrecting tide.