THE HILLS ARE ALIVE ...

The death yesterday of Jamaican music producer and singer, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and the announcement of the forthcoming Bob Marley musical, Get Up Stand Up, prompted me to re-post this Reggae-related, two-minute tale, One Love.

ONE LOVE

One love! One heart! Let’s get together and feel all right ... 

Shel mimed Bob Marley’s words to the musical ringtone of  her fiancee’s mobile as the distinctive jingle sounded and Dave began jabbering to his mate about arrangements for the away-match that weekend. 

One love! Shel smiled and thought about the boys she’d known before. She’d thought herself in love with some of them but not like this, not like it was with Dave: one love, one love forever.

They’d been together three years: a passionate affair that now had reached the mellow stage. Their lovemaking, wild and reckless in the beginning, had become a familiar, twice-weekly ritual. Shel was content, but sometimes thought wistfully of those raunchy sessions up on Mortlake Hill in the old ruined barn. It was blissful up there, high above the town, their own private Eden, where the air was crisp and invigorating, far from people and prying eyes. God, they’d made the earth move, she and Dave, back then.

Saturday came, she packed his sandwiches, promised to have his favourite supper ready when he got home. He was meeting his mate, Del, at the station.

Three o’clock, Shel turned on the radio: the match was live. She thought of him, just another anonymous face in the crowd, but special to her, so special. One love!

Just thinking about Dave made her tingle. Bored, and on impulse, she decided to hike up Mortlake Hill to get some air: perhaps recapture the magic that seemed somehow missing from their life together nowadays.

The afternoon was warm and Shel, dressed in fleece and jeans, set off up the Hill. Approaching its summit, she felt exhilarated and full of energy. As she passed the ruins of the old barn, she glimpsed movement: a figure, no two figures, half-clothed, darted out of sight behind a stone facade.

Shel smiled. Young lovers in our old love-nest, she thought. Bet I know what they’ve been up to, and who can blame them: it’s the perfect spot for a bit of the old al fresco. I’ll tell Dave: get him hot and sexy for tonight.

Snatching out her smartphone, Shel called Dave’s number.

After a moment’s wait, a familiar ringtone sounded in the ruined barn. One love! One heart! Let’s get together and feel all right ....  

STICKS AND STONES

Back in the days when youngsters played outdoors unsupervised and war-game consoles were the stuff of science fiction, we learned some fundamental lessons about the reality of life and death.

As my late father frequently remarked, "Experience is the best school but the fees are often high.”

Blackbird employs a Chiasmic rhyme scheme.

BLACKBIRD

With catapult, once school was finished,
I went to hunt in woodland, high
above Belfast, in summer light
and heard, among leafed branches spread,
a blackbird, singing like a bell.
I took aim, shot, the missile flew ...

... unerringly, my aim was true.
With awful suddenness it fell,
all broken. Exultation fled,

to be replaced by sickly fright. 

I knelt to watch it slowly die.
Within me somewhere, light diminished.

Chiasmus

Repetition of any group of verse elements (including rhyme and grammatical structure) in reverse order, such as the rhyme scheme ABCDDCBA. Examples can be found in Biblical scripture (“But many that are first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first”; Matthew 19:30). See also John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”).

THE WAITING GAME

The poem, Memento Mori, is a personal favourite. It first appeared in my 2017 collection, Stone Witness, and has since appeared in Snakeskin, a highly respected international poetry webzine which previously published one of my other short poems, His Room.

Image Rod Hunt

MEMENTO MORI

An ambulance howls like a hurt cat;

parts traffic as Moses did the waves.

Worms burrow in awaiting graves.

A police car buzzes like a gnat.

Stuck in a jam of steaming cars,

I contemplate how life transforms

in moments. How they wait, those worms,

so patiently, for us, for ours.

 

WHAT LIES WITHIN

I'm a great admirer of the work of English film director, the late David Lean, whose cinematic triumphs ranged from the wonderful low-budget classic, Hobson's Choice, to epics such as Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, the latter of which launched actor Peter O'Toole to stardom.  In 1945 Lean directed a film version of a Noel Coward play, Still Life, a poignant love story about a couple who meet in a railway station: the sort of film that my mother's generation would have referred to as 'a weepie'. The film was entitled Brief Encounter.

My story's title is obviously a play on the film's name and is also about an encounter in a railway station but there the similarity ends, except, as a few film buffs may note, both my protagonist and the male lead in David Lean's film are named Harvey.

  

BRIEFCASE ENCOUNTER

Eurostar disgorged its passengers like a pod expelling seeds. 

Harvey, clutching his briefcase, allowed himself to be carried forward slowly, legs still stiff from the journey.

Security checks were in progress but Harvey moved forward confidently, certain his bland exterior would ensure cursory attention.

Waved through, he waited by the railing close to Betjeman’s statue, briefcase resting at his feet. 

He saw the woman approach; her stride confident. She gave him a quick, cold smile and set down her briefcase, departing with his. Harvey picked up her case, identical to his own, and hurried to board the returning Eurostar to Paris.

He wanted to be far away from London when Pandora released the deadly spores in Oxford Street.

Safely aboard the speeding train, Harvey cradled the briefcase, itching to handle the stacks of hundred-euro notes he knew lay inside. He thought of Pandora preparing to text him with the combination to open the case: his portal to a new life. 

Of the devastation awaiting London’s population, he thought very little. After all, who said life was fair? 

Mid-way through the Tunnel, Harvey was on his third cognac when the text came through. He fumbled with the lock; suddenly remembered Pandora’s icy smile, and felt terror engulf him as he opened the case.

 

DREAMTIME

 It’s somewhat 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.