Poems

Coal Face

And Every Valley

And every valley shall be filled with coal.
And the miners will mine, growing old
before their time, with pneumoconiosis
a constant companion, and that dark spot
on the grey slide of the sidewalk a mining
souvenir coughed up from the depths
of lungs that so seldom saw the sun
and soaked themselves in the black dust
that cluttered, clogged, bent and twisted
those beautiful young bodies into ageing,
pipe-cleaner shapes, yellowed and inked
with nicotine and sorrows buried so deep,
a thousand, two thousand feet down,
and often so far out to sea that loved ones
knew their loved ones would never see
the white handkerchiefs waved, never
in surrender, but in a butterfly prayer,
an offering, and a blessing that their men
would survive the shift and come back
to the surface and live again amidst family
and friends, and always the fear, the pinched
-face, livid, living fear that such an ending
might never be the one on offer, but rather
the grimmer end of gas, or flame, or collapse,
with the pit wheels stopped, and the sirens
blaring, and the black crowds gathering, and
no canaries, no miners, singing in their cages.

Comment: A friend wrote to me about the closing of the pits in Nottinghamshire and how the mining communities had suffered, were still suffering, and might never recover. This poem is the first one in a sequence on the mine closures in South Wales and other mining communities. Poems For the End of Time – the book is available here.

Low Ebb

Low Ebb

We have been apart too long, my love,
night’s dark corridor lying between us
and neither of us approaching the other
when doors close and blinds are drawn.

The way to the heart of the matter is not
an easy path to walk, not any more.
Our secret ways and dreams lie cold
upon chill, empty sheets and pillows.

Each day the tide revives the beach,
flowing out, abandoning its wet debris
for the sun to perform its magic: fresh
seaweed drying above warm sand.

Sea-birds bury their beaks, writing claw
letters as crabs burrow, dig deep, waiting
for the tide to return and re-create
its alternate reality of dreamy waters.

Half of my bed performs its nightly duty.
The other half lies cold, empty, lonely.
No sea-life wanders there, not even in
my most creative dreams of sun and sand.

Comment: The loneliness of old age is compounded by many factors, including ill-health, sleeplessness, and the need to sleep in separate rooms. How many homeless people suffer that loneliness, and more, and at ages much less than ours? And then there’s the distress of trying to live in poverty, to survive from day to day, with safety net that will not protect us, if we chance to fall. A sad world then, as Polly Toynbee points out in today’s Guardian.


Flight

Flight

Such a miracle: those first steps to flight
taken by the cormorant over water.
That first one heavy, creating ripples,
the second one lighter, and the third one
scarcely touching the water.

The need to take flight lies deep within me.
Fleeing from what? Flying towards what?
Who knows? All I know is that the future
lies ahead where my bird’s beak points and
the past, a rippling wake, lies behind me.

That white water, trailing its kite’s tail,
tells me where I have been. Machado’s
voice calls out from the past: “Traveler,
there is no road, just a wake across life’s sea.”

Comment: The photo is a golden oldie, one of the first I ever posted on this blog. The poem is part old, part new. In reality, it is a revision, completed today, of the earlier poem associated with that old blog post. It is interesting to compare the two visions – with those seven extra years of creative experience between them. Let me know what you think!

A special thank you to my long-time friend, Dale Estey, for commenting and suggesting an improvement for the fourth line. Spot if if you can!

Janus

Janus

I walked backwards into my childhood
a step at a time. I failed to find it
where I thought I had left it.

I opened cupboards, doors, drawers,
searched beneath beds, went outside,
rummaged through garden and garage,
and found absolutely nothing at all.

 My past was as dry as a squeezed orange
when the juice has gone and long days
left on the window ledge has dried it up.

I looked in the mirror, and the man
I saw was not the boy I had seen
the day before. How could he be?

Janus, two-faced, looks forwards and back.
I will no longer seek the self that was

I shall accept the self that is, the one that grew
outwards and upwards from the one
that was before. Acceptance. I can do no more.

Underworld

Underworld

In the secret world of my goldfish bowl
I speak in bubbles but only hear silence.

My fish-eye lens bends the pendulum
of the grandfather clock. Westminster chimes,

inaudible, do not intrude. Noiseless are time’s
ripples across the surface of my submarine sphere.

I feel, rather than hear, my troubled heart beat.
The foreboding sounds of distant voices leave

me untouched and becalmed. Rocked in love’s
cradle, these amniotic waters nourish and soothe.

In my beginning will be my end. One day I’ll return
to the beaches of my childhood, where the sun

always shines, and the moon path over the waves
is a welcoming walkway leading to the underworld.

What brings you peace?

Daily writing prompt
What brings you peace?
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Septets for the End of Time

I

Crystal Liturgy

Here, in the abyss,
where song-birds pluck their notes
and send them, feather-light,
floating through the air,
here, you’ll find no vale of tears,
no fears of shadow-hawks,
for all blackness is abandoned
in the interests of sunlight and song.

Here, the crystal liturgy surges,
upwards from the rejoicing heart,
ever upwards, into the realms of light,
where color and sound alike
brim over with the joy that, yes,
brings release to head and heart.

Here, seven-stringed rainbows reign,
the everlasting harp is tuned and plucked,
and an eternity of music cements
the foundations of earth and sky.

Here, the master musician conducts
his celestial choir, their voices rising,
higher and higher, until they reach
the highest sphere, and song and voice
inspire, then expire, passing from our eyes
and ears into unbounded realms of light.

Here, the seven trumpets will sound
their furious dance, a dance that will announce
the end of this singer, the end of his song,
but never the end of song itself.

Apologia

Apologia
pro vita mea

The fairground’s distorting mirrors distort.
I change as I walk past one and then another.

Rage, rage against that hump-backed shape
that looks back at me from the bottle-glass.

Magic: eye of a newt, eye of a toad, cat’s
eyes at night lighting the road to bed.

Bedlam all around me. Absurd this world,
gone carnival mad in the blink of an eye.

I need a white stick to walk through
this fog that clings to my clay-bound soul.

This wine I drink, these thoughts I think,
life’s fountain pen soon runs out of ink.

Watch the tides as they ebb and they flow.
When your time runs out, pack up, and go.

Comment: My friend Moo did himself proud with the above painting. What is it? I asked him. Dunno was his reply. I have shown it to several friends and speculation is rife: the dancer and the dance, dancer and diver, a blur of three figures, headless mermaid (I love that one). And yes, life is absurd (Albert Camus), a carnival (Bakhtin) in which knowledge is power and civilization is mad (Foucault).

Originality and imitation – how many genuinely original ideas are there? Very few. And the same goes for poetry – original poems are very rare. Most of our ideas come from elsewhere, even if we do not know it. The title of the above poem comes from Petrarch. It’s structure is traditional – a sonnet. Its ideas are borrowed from Camus, Bakhtin, Foucault. And yet, shuffle the cards (Cervantes) throw the dice (Mallarme’) and this poem and this post have both achieved a kind of originality and uniqueness by linking disparate ideas in a new unity.

Rebirth

Rebirth

“El mundo nace
cuando dos se besan.”
Octavio Paz

A new world is born
when two people kiss.
The hummingbird sips
at the hollyhock’s lips.
Bee enters the blossom
and, sated, comes out.
A butterfly perches,
flutters its wings.
The sun enters a cloud:
radiance is born.
Silver linings
morph to gold.
The sun’s needle stitches
the world together.
Oh to be a part of Eden,
Paradise born anew,
in the moment when
lip meets lip and the tongue
is a twister, touching down.
Two hearts a-whirl,
their world aflame.
Their world reshaped,
new shapes now born.
Wild flowers swaying
in an age-old dance.
Life’s journey renewed,
not always by chance.

How would you describe yourself to someone?

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone?
View all responses

How would you describe yourself to someone?

I wouldn’t. Why should I? I might give them a self-portrait, or a painting of me, by my friend Moo. Or I might give them a poem or a book of poems or short stories. That way they could see me for themselves or read about me and make a decision about me that way.

“Ah, would some power the giftie gie us, to see our selves as others see us.” Robbie Burns, if I remember correctly. For those who don’t follow the Scottish accent – the giftie gie us = give us the gift. I don’t have that gift. What I see in the mirror when I shave is not the same as what people see when they look at me with their own eyes or, with their own ears and minds when they read my words or hear me read.

Meanwhile – I invite you to read this. There’s a little bit of me in there somewhere. If you can find it before it floats away down the plug-hole.

Self-Portrait

I smell. I whiff. I gloriously stink.
My arms, my feet, my crotch, reek with beauty.
This is me. I am still alive. I’m rank.
The time has come, the Walrus said, to take
a shower. I strip. I weigh. I obey.

Hot water streams. Bathroom steams up. I draw
faces on grey glass, smiling, glum. Soft soap
works its miracle turning Japanese
nylon into a rough body cloth that
rubs and cajoles all putrid dirt away.

Butterfly from its chrysalis, I step
from the shower, sniff with caution, and stench
no more. I am clean. I no longer pong. 
My body has been taken over by
perfumes no longer mine. Who am I now?

I am no more myself. I am no more
my own gorgeous underarm muscular
ripeness. I have left my odor circling
in the soap suds and drifting down the drain. 
What a pain. It will take me a week or 
more to start smelling like myself again.