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.

FOLLOW THE SUN

I tend not to write poetry when on the move, preferring to work in the surroundings of home with its lack of distractions.
Instead, I try to gather material on my travels for later use in poems or short stories.
The poem below however is the exception to this, in that I wrote much of it while travelling to Angouleme.

 















LA BELLE FRANCE

A hawk commands its post as we zip by, his gimlet eye evaluating us.

Beyond the gate a sunflower field spreads like a golden sea,
while to the right
green rows of vines march towards the swelling sun.
It’s forty-two degrees out there
but here,
within our air-conditioned car,
we are at ease,
our summer trip through southern France a joy.

It’s all we Francophiles desire:
small cafes, vineyards, postcard-rural scenes
and pungent cheeses far too numerous to count.

There’s much to see as we drive through
this countryside so similar, yet different, to home.
Each turn, each tiny hamlet brings surprise.

Already
I have forgotten
the hawk’s bleak eye of cool disdain.

WINGS OF DESIRE

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.

TREASURED ISLAND

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.

HALCYON DAYS

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.

SITTING DUCKS (2)

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?