CLOCKING OFF

Yesterday's clock change for the start of British Summer Time prompted me to post this time-related rhyming poem, The Clock. 

Coincidentally, yesterday, whilst visiting St Peter Port, 'Town' as we islanders generally refer to it, I noticed that the Church clock had stopped.

THE CLOCK

Its hands no longer mark the hour

and only bats share the clock tower

with pigeons nowadays because

the mechanism, plagued by flaws,

has quit: 

but still time slips away

despite an absence of display.

Twice daily, 

its clock-face records

the time correctly and accords

with multitudes of other clocks:

thus it is able to outfox

a stranger, taken unawares,

who does not know the timepiece errs.

But we, the locals here, all know

the clock is neither fast or slow

and that the time, due to neglect,

is only, by default, correct.

DOG TRACKS

The dog, often referred to as man’s best friend, is derived from an ancient, extinct wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. It was the first species to be domesticated by hunter–gatherers over 15,000 years ago.

JAKE

Jake, my dog, though canine-brained

and limited, has been well trained:

when I say sit-boy, sit he does,

when told to beg, he lifts his paws;

roll over, fetch, commands like that

denote that he is dog not cat. 

What strange ancestor, long ago,

accepted man as friend not foe?

What breed of man could conquer fear

and bear to have a wolf come near?

His sense of smell, his alphabet,

helps him distinguish treat from threat.

With no thoughts of mortality,

he is more fortunate than me.

A good companion, loyal, true,

content with an old shoe to chew,

he’ll wait for me for hours on end

and, daily, strive to comprehend

remorseful words that I address

to him expecting nothing less

than the discretion of a priest,

omerta, at the very least.

THE FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST

This short, rhyming poem was written a year ago when a newly-arrived neighbour decided to remove a long-established tree that bordered our garden. 

This happened without forewarning and was deeply upsetting, not only for selfish reasons (the tree was a haven for our avian visitors) but because Guernsey has comparatively few trees and can ill afford to lose any more.

THE TREE

The tree the chainsaws felled today

was host to birds, a home to those

that shunned the nesting box or bush.        

They will adapt, no doubt, they may

seek a new billet, I suppose,

but we will miss them, blackbird, thrush.

IN THE SAME BOAT

With the Russian-Ukraine war in the headlines daily and a refugee crisis growing by the hour, it seems timely to revisit a poem written a few years ago about those who risk their lives each day in an attempt to reach Europe via the perilous crossing from Africa.

FLOTSAM

The sea does not want her.

It takes the others:

her, it discards

half-dead on shingle-sand,

the reek of salty fear

on brown skin.

 

Gulls shriek 

and quarrel overhead.

She lies face down

barely breathing,

a human starfish,

one black asterisk

referencing nothing.

Cruciform

on wet shingle,

she counts her stations:

hunger, terror, flight, 

abuse, exploitation, 

a merciless sea 

crossed.

A too-small boat,

the huddled shapes,

fear, their common bond.

A heavy night-sky

bearing down.

Waves like white fists

against the hull.

                                                                       

Land 

that does not want her

blurs like a mirage:

a half-moon cove, 

gaunt trees 

aligned like bars,

European houses.                          

She claws wet gravel,

draws herself

to her knees, 

kneels to vomit.

Along the beach,

relentlessly,

policemen come.

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/