RECALLED

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.

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

I was fortunate to grow up on the outskirts of the city of Belfast, adjacent to woodland and meadows, in an age when children played outdoors and disappeared on 'adventures' for hours on end without causing particular concern to their parents. 

It was a time in our social history that seems barely imaginable now. We had no television, no social media, no smartphones and the fields we played in were free of pesticides and alive with the sound of grasshopper and bee. We'd catch sticklebacks in the small streams and, occasionally, glimpse the amber pelt of a hunting fox slipping through woodland at dusk.

Those woods, accessed from the back of my friend's house, were a place of magic. Each tree was a signpost or meeting place and our 'dens' were built then destroyed, like empires of old, as rival groups of eager, short-trousered boys staked out their respective territories.

All that has gone now. A walk through those same woods a decade ago brought nothing but an overwhelming sense of sadness for a vanished childhood.

 

THE SWING

As we launch out, the air feels clean,

the wooden swing, a pendulum

divining or recording time,

as sunlight stabs, pure platinum,

through woodland chestnut, cedar, lime,

into our playground, softly green.

It takes our joint weight on taut ropes

as we, in tandem, drive it on,

gathering momentum, we rise:

you grip the seat I brace upon

with boots, knees, adolescent thighs

and boundless, adolescent hopes.

The swing is like a storm-tossed boat,

the wood’s a bold kaleidoscope

of light, leaf patterns, soaring dreams.

I shout within the cradle-ropes,

the sound extinguishing your screams.

Free from confining earth, we float.

LOST AND FOUND

Here’s a romantic poem for St Valentine’s Day, dedicated to my wife and fellow writer, Jane.

FOUND POEM

I wrote something for you: a poem 

or maybe it was simply words

that you might choose to call a poem,

then lodged it, folded, in a book 

but you have half-a-thousand books,

so years may pass before it drifts,

ghostly, like a pale pressed flower, 

into your lap. 

Then you, while seeking Larkin’s Toads

or some nostalgic Betjeman,

will find instead

my soul’s elusive fingerprint, 

the true embodiment of love

or maybe 

simply words

that you might choose to call a poem.

You’ll find examples of my less serious verse on my Facebook page:- https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/

KEEPING IT REAL

I recall that during my teenage years people spoke of the 'Generation Gap' when referring to the gulf that had begun to appear between young people and their parents. I suspect that it had always been there but in the middle of the Twentieth Century it seemed to widen appreciably, largely influenced by contemporary music, cinema and literature. 

Nowadays I find myself emulating my late parents and muttering about a similar 'Gap' but this one is driven by technology. My grandchildren's generation seem unable to engage directly with the world about them and, instead, appear to filter everything through a screen of one sort or another: a generalisation, of course, for surely there are many exceptions. 

The poem below, which appears in my Stone Witness collection, tackles the issue, while the image, one of Banksy's, I think, puts it even more succinctly.

IMAGES

This is a tree, he said and pointed to a tree.     

We have seen images, they said.   

There are many trees, he said. This tree is cedar.

We have seen images, they said.

Here is a flower, he said and pointed to a flower.

We have seen images, they said.   

There are various flowers, he said. This is a rose. 

We have seen images, they said.

This is a cat, he said. See it move. Watch it stretch.

Just like the images, they said.

This is a dog, he said. Watch as it wags its tail.

Images are better, they said.

That is the sky. Those small birds are swallows, he said.

We have seen images, they said.

Over there are blue mountains and a lake, he said.

Can we go back inside? they said.