I thought I saw a bindweed flower
amongst the rosemary,
a slightly pink convolvulus
between the blue-green spikes.
Puzzled at this odd relationship,
I peered more closely at the spot.
A mushroom? No, a single blushing petal
blown there by a sudden gust.
I looked back at the rosebush on the terrace –
more heart-shaped wreckage on the ground,
though other blooms remained in place, intact,
Summer must be leaving town.
Even the glueworks looks romantic
against the pastel paintbox sky, flamingo-blue,
the rococo vent-stack stands content-
edly exhaling smoky arabesques.
An emblematic swan parades between
the crowned heads of the water-lilies while,
further on, the peach and iron of the water’s gloss
is barely puckered by the breeze.
Along the path the scabbed-up bitumen gives way
to saffron-coloured gravel, wreathed in dusty green;
a hulk awaits reincarnation with its rotten planks –
an accidental masterpiece of texture, tincture, transformation.
The countryside is squeezed by power-lines,
tower-blocks and motorway until the town
inserts post-modern pastiche phoney arches,
brick-skinned on otherwise quite bland facades.
This pretty picture’s elements are disconcerting,
as intrusive as the stench of boiled bones,
but lover-like I squirrel it scenes like this
to get me through the colder months to come.
In the front-page picture
she stands there grieving,
head bent.
Even in profile
the resignation on her face
cuts under the ribs
of any observer
like an ice stiletto,
to make you catch your breath
with dreadful expectation.
There amongst the green bushes,
under a tree,
she weeps in silence.
Only when you unfolded the paper
could you see,
did you notice
her feet were not on the ground
and the rope at her throat
pointed like a rod
to heaven.
I don’t know why
I find forests so intriguing,
more than open fields and plains
or even heaths, where as a child
I first found a playground in the wild.
Maybe it’s the promise of discovery
of things that cannot easily be seen –
secret places, covered ways,
fragrant with the scent of sap,
fresh leaves, humus, fungus and decay.
Somewhere, around another corner,
behind the screen of greenery,
a cabin or a cavern or a den,
some animal, that’s glimpsed for a while and then
is lost inside the labyrinth again.
These spirits of an older time,
whose skins are atlases of years,
whose dresses flatter for a while
and then are shed as out of date,
recycled with each season, not just dead.
Only when I stand next to the ocean
or view the backs of houses from a train
and stories I don’t know arise
and break like waves then the shore,
does this sense of strangeness feel the same.
The trees breathe softly, nod their heads and whisper,
holding up their fingers to the sun,
digging toe-holds tight into the earth
and, where they are together in a crowd,
make an emerald city next to none.
19-20.9.09
Seasonal migrants of our global economy,
they don’t need papers to come here to work,
dashing all over like underpaid waiters,
they screech as they whirl about and never stop.
Harvesting much of our surplus winged insects
with no time to relax, they eat on the wing,
ducking and diving so long the sun shines,
‘cos any bad weather will bring down the crop.
When the picking is over they queue up to fly
back over continents, mountains and seas
but, if they only go south for the winter,
the question arises as to where they belong.
In a world without frontiers, as it is for the birds,
the question is meaningless, pointless to ask –
life is a struggle, as it’s always been,
if they claim a homeland, they do it with song.
rs 8.6.07*
* [‘voluntarily’ repatriated this day]
Closing at around 50k,
that pole’s got an extension.
Owl?
Cowled head
hawkturns.
Buzzardstare.
My heart leaps!
And we’re past.
I grope camerawise
and she slopes
slowly, easily away.
rs 17.4.91, Ardèche
One sunny afternoon
in yellow sports shirt, pink hotpants
and night-time driving glasses,
transistor radio to his ear,
he trucked on down the street –
not gay but rather queer.
He was a one-off
who made us freaks look staid,
who spoke with candour
both refreshing and bizarre.
You’d assume that he was touched
but then most people are.
In an age when it had counted more,
he’d grown up on the edge of things
in that strait lace-curtained world
of tight-lipped prayers and bibles,
so he found a ready audience
amongst the rebel tribals.
I don’t know what diagnosis
a psychologist would give
to explain his odd behaviour,
but he seemed very comfortable
with how he was
and not at all unstable.
He could appear quite innocent,
or knowing, sly or wise.
His babbled incongruities –
more dormouse than Mad Hatter –
while sounding free of malice,
would often still the chatter.
The mynah, chicken-wired alone
into a corner of the park,
who ignored attempts to teach him
obscenities vulgar, coarse and choice,
echoed happy aphorisms
in our hero’s well-known voice.
And, one night after closing time,
we followed two loud drunks in suits
singing the usual beery hymns
as they staggered on their way.
“It’s not the drink, they’re willing it”
was all he deigned to say.
The last act on the last night and we’re there,
it’s colder now the rain at last has gone,
everyone is standing, tense with hope,
we want a big finale to finish the weekend –
we’ve heard some of the finest in the world,
we’re glutted but we still want something more.
Pink glitter trouser suit, crop-haired, compact –
even on the stage she isn’t tall –
the women in the crowd go mad with joy,
especially the three in front of us –
one of them could even be her sister
and she is only four foot six, if that.
And yet she has complete control,
the ambassadress from Africa
with the dignity that this conferred,
her voice is like a banner and a sword –
why are small women often very loud? –
she overwhelms the whole of this huge crowd.
Benin’s not-so-secret weapon flies,
taking Jimi’s anthem for her own,
not just because her singing has such power,
nor the fact that she’s become a star –
for now her soul is in her throat for sure
and like a lioness she roars it out.
She sings of love, of struggle and resistance
and everyone there understands it all
though few of us can recognise a word.
We stamp and dance and cheer and sing along
in that dark and dusty summer field
to celebrate her night of victory.
Compared to men with armour, bombs and guns
she looks so slight, when she comes down to join us,
a warrior armed, but only with a song,
a queen crowned with conviction, strength and passion
so deep and wide and raw and real and whole,
she shows us how we also might be strong.
Then I passed 11+ and it was back to all boys:
seven years of being bored right out of my wits,
not forgetting the five being tortured and squashed –
I was so easy to wind up they couldn’t resist.
My chances of meeting with girls were so limited
‘cos I didn’t have sisters to fight and to argue with
it was well-nigh impossible to learn how to play,
let alone how to talk and even make friends with.
Our headmaster was a moderniser, he thought,
and thus, in first year, sex education was taught.
The teacher was ancient and useless as well,
he used to fill blackboards with acres of script
that we had to copy in exercise books.
I always wrote slowly and couldn’t keep up
and he would rub out work before I got there –
I gave up on Biology in plain despair.
We studied the glands of a rabbit in chalk
and thus came to the gonads at the end of the year
and then, as we slavered in anticipation,
at last he arrived at human procreation.
He projected a photo of a woman unclothed –
some innocent Papuan at 25 yards
with a fuzzy vague patch of dark pubic hair
and, with his school pointer, simply said, “There!”
He talked about semen and ova at speed
and said that a man passed a women his seed
when they slept together, but didn’t say how.
I sat there and puzzled how they came together
and imagined the sperm seeping out of a dick,
crawling over the sheets between a couple in bed
and into her hole while both of them slept.
With instruction like this it’s amazing we bred.
Comfortingly familiar
this lump of cold metal
with its double steely grip –
the gates closed with bolt, nut and washer,
defying gravity with friction –
our lives hung by a spiral thread –
drop-forged or hot pressed,
now dressed with
oil and rust in equal measure,
heavy and hard on the hands,
but light enough to throw and catch
if you’re good enough
(aim for the nose!),
a lesson in mechanics,
a sound, a shape, a pain
never to be forgotten
when you’ve stood over the abyss
and prayed it didn’t fail.