“ We rest here while we can, but we hear the ocean calling in our dreams -
and we know by the morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams -
The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore -
For ships are safe in harbour, but that’s not what ships are for……
William Shedd
“ creating a journey to pull myself back together, to rediscover joy, to face down my failings and rebuild my existence, was not only an important thing for my life, but ultimately for the lives of everyone around me
Elizabeth Gilbert, writer
Two poems commended in the First Thursday Poetry Competition 2008. The theme was ‘Over The Water’. Poetry nights every first Thursday at Linghams Bookshop, Heswall, Wirral.
Journeys
Some days
are like journeys, thoughts
drift as rain
thickens the window, settle
on forgotten things – the model boat stranded
in dust; the souvenir soap
hidden
in a folded letter –
a buttery pearl
fresh from the mould, the factory
seam intact, crescent moon imprint
smooth as a mirror.
White bruises crackle a corner
scratched from the ride home,
and the perfume’s gone but it stinks
of memory. Coarse
and delicate this coracle
crafted from mathematics, wood and tar.
Light as a lily
it carries me everywhere – oceans, rivers
gulleys, veins. You will think
it tough as a half-timbered house, and it is
if you let it bend
with the tide
where I wash
myself of my favoured
bitterness, leaving me filthy.
And there’s no escaping
the one oar. Where
to plunge the whitened blade
and how to draw? Or whether
to pick it up at all.
Home
is dust from the joiner’s saw,
is the smell of fungicide
and a broken tile.
Is forming
in the stack of stone blocks
and the red sack of yellow sand
outside.
Is small
as a matchbox, and lost
between the third and fourth rib,
a tin of paint
and hope.
Is in the fear of theft
or gardens gone to seed.
Is in pictures
cut from a magazine.
Is remembered
across the river
at a different address.
Penmaenmawr
(after ‘Adelstrop’ by Edward Thomas)
So I stay on the platform another hour
watching the day-trippers under their backpacks in the rain.
The quarry rises up on the other side of the line,
dirty and vast, unspeakable
bruise. Smell of candyfloss and pies,
painted capitals peeling: CAFE.
They frisk themselves for loose change
and call their children. The sea
is hidden by a ten foot wall. The memory of it!
Its sound, like passion or impatience.
A milky sky, and flags
torn apart on masts. When the storm hits
the beach is once again with itself. Single
yellow-horned poppy.
- (published in Artemis Nov 2008)
The Departed
Those white-tipped marquees
which cap the new glass building
are women wedded in summer, veiled
like sun on long-ago sails
or the ghost-ships we watched that morning
sea and sky melded, dulled
to powder by mist on the still reach.
How we waited.
And I like to think of the river beyond
the wall, or the ghost-river
beneath us, how it carries the mountain
through the capital’s foundations.
So imagine these yellow cameras
hoist on frozen gantries above the cobbles
are only heads in a café after work:
uncertain, embarrassed,
not really looking;
and the cars lined up in metallic shades
are, after all, just waiting
as we did
while the shadowed mullions of the station
pray for the departed.
- (published in Orbis Winter 2008/9)
“ I am a very old man and have suffered a great many misfortunes, most of which never happened
19th-century American writer and humourist, Mark Twain
Two Merseyside events for National Poetry Day Thursday 9th October in which I’ll be reading:
Liverpool Central Library hosts a full day of poetry organised by North End Writers - my reading slot is 4.00 pm (for 10 minutes). The day runs 10am - 5.30pm and includes Brian Wake, Levi Tafari, Matt Simpson and Gladys Mary Coles alongside a selection of Merseyside-based poets.
Then, in the evening, I’ll be at Bebington Central Library from 7.30pm – 9pm, reading alongside other poets based in Wirral.
Both events are free.
