Poems

Hastings

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Hastings

A cloud on the horizon
no bigger than a small boy’s hand
turns into a sail and then
a sailing fleet,
an armada of hostility
sailing towards our shores.

Shield upon shield the shield wall
binds itself together,
becomes impregnable

Loud the clamor,
the raising of voices,
the heavens split asunder
by a sharp hail of arrows,
closer the enemy now,
and arrows become spears
their sharp heads
tumbling from the turbulent sky.

Fate hangs now on a single arrow
protruding from the royal eye.

Faith falters.
The shield wall, firm at first,
breaks now and the house carls,
one by one,
fall like corn
beneath sharpened blades,
to wither and die as all men die.

Help!

 

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Help!

The world turns full circle
and my mother is on the phone.
It’s four AM. “Help me!” she cries,
from the far side of the Atlantic.

Her ship is sinking fast and she’s
nine sheets to the wind.
“I’ll stick my head in the oven,”
she says, “and turn on the gas.”

What can I say? What can I do?
She makes so many threats.
She’s crying “Wolf!” and her words
now bounce off this duck’s back.

Yet still I wake at night to hear
her whispered words, and they still
chill with their razor’s edge of
“Help me! Help! Please help!”’

Cramp

Chaos

Cramp
(Jackpine Sonnet)

Late last night, lying in bed,
cramp laid siege to my lower limbs.
I crawled out of that bed and stretched,
left leg, right leg, in the bathroom.

Aching still, the fear of more cramp
to come weighed heavy on my mind.

I didn’t want to wake my wife
with panic and alarums, so I slept
in the spare bed in the other room.

A great round moon sailed its pale-
faced boat on a sea of silent clouds.

I lay on the life raft of my bed
and prayed for cramp to stay away
and for the mattress to keep me afloat.

Clare

 

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Clare

She moves more slowly
up the slope,
pushing against the hill’s
shallow grain.

I knew so well her
swaying grace,
but now she shuffles
with the drag-

foot limp of the aged,
and aged she has,
like a good wine in
an oaken cask.

Her beauty still stays
in my memory,
lodges in my mind and
I see her as

she was, beautiful
in body, slim,
graceful, a joy to hold
and behold.

Her eyes still sparkle
and she bubbles
still with a champagne
joy that draws

me to her, and still she
enhances each
room she enters, filling
it with light.

Lost

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Lost

My body’s house has many rooms and
you, my love, are present in them all.
I see you here and there, glimpse your
shadow in a mirror, and feel your breath
brush on my cheek when I open a door.

Where have you gone? I walk from room
to room, but when I seek, I no longer find,
and when I knock, nothing opens. Afraid,
sometimes, to enter a room, I know you are
in there. I hear your footsteps on the stair.
Sometimes your voice breaks the silence.

It whispers my name in the same old way
I remember … how can it be true, my love,
that you have gone, that you have left me
here alone? I count the hours, the days,
and snatch at sudden straws of hope,
embracing dust motes to find no solace
in the sunbeams, salacious as they are,
that drag me from my occasional dreams.

Bearing Witness

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Bearing Witness

Pen on paper,
words falling like tears,
salt waters that erode
the hardest of stones.

This man bears witness
to thought, word, and deed.
He’s the outsider who sees
the interior world
and drags forth its spirit
for others to see,

not painted in paint,
not sculpted in stone,
not a breeze through
bound river reeds,
just words on the page
lined up in thin lines
to flower and flourish
like an army that conquers
the world of the soul,
and leaves fresh footprints
on eternal snow.

A Cancer Chronicle

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I wrote A Cancer Chronicle between 2014, when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 2016, when my recovery was complete and confirmed. The book was meant to reach me before Easter, but there were some delays. Last Sunday, when working with one of my writing groups, I saw the first hard copy of the book. A good friend had ordered a copy from Amazon and I was able to see it and sign it. My own copies arrived last Tuesday, late, but very welcome.

It is in the spirit of friendship and comfort that I offer these poems to any and all who, in their own turn, follow me on this long and difficult journey. Many forms of cancer can be beaten. Early diagnosis, good doctors and specialists, optimism in the face of difficulties, faith and belief, all these positive elements will help pull patients and fellow sufferers through the ordeal of diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

I would like all sufferers to know that they are not alone, even on the darkest of nights. I would like them to know that others have walked this way before them and are there on the path ahead to offer their advice, comfort, and help. I call this A Cancer Chronicle because that’s what it is: the chronicle of one man’s journey from sickness back to health. My thanks go to all of those, too many to be named, who helped me along the way. I dedicate this book to them and to any who, like it or not, follow in my footsteps.

Pax amorque: may you all share peace and love.

A Cancer Chronicle is available online at Amazon.

Rain

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Rain

Rain walks thick lines
down the window pane.
They wander into the garden
and slip out again,
sliding down to the river.

The waters below the dam
churn like white shirts
tumbled up and down
in nature’s laundromat.

The radio calls for rain,
more rain, four inches,
they say,
in the next two days.

The moose have already
migrated to higher,
drier ground.

They stand on the highway,
head to head with cars,
stubborn and steaming
in the never-ending rain.

Le mot juste

 

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Le mot juste

Searching for what exactly?
For the exact word, le mot juste,
the word that sums it all up,
catches the essence of the thing
and holds it in the mind forever.

Le mot juste? Think color.
Think color blind. Think blind.
Think of the world we see
reduced to grey scale.
Think of the seven colors
that stripe the rainbow sky,
each with a unique name:
it seems so easy, so simple.

But the world has changed.
Think now of the computer,
its screen more accurate
than the human eye and color
coordinated by a million or more
tiny little pixels that multiply
the seven rainbow colors
by a million or two and every
color numbered beyond
the recognition point
of the human eye: le mot juste
reduced to precision of number.

Think flowers. Think scent.
Think of the limited ways
we describe the smell of things.

I look across the breakfast table
and see my wife of fifty years,
a teenager reborn, walking into
the café where we first met.
I search my memory and my mind
for the words to describe that beauty,
that surge of excitement,
but I cannot find les mots justes.

Brain Drain

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Brain Drain

I do the daily crosswords,
first on the computer,
and then in the newspaper
when later it arrives.

My wife does the Sudoku,
but I hate numbers
though I adore
the restless energy of chess.

Online games of point and click
deaden my brain and kill my eyes.
I lengthen my winning streak of patience
every day. Twice I have climbed
to fifteen hundred wins, then wiped
them out to start again.

Boring? Not at all.  Anything to keep
the old grey matter ticking over;
anything to keep me
lively and alive.