Zephyr

I wonder how you always find your way back home.
I’m really small, in the back seat of the Zephyr that you drive,
And we’re off to Preston, to the shops. But you went alone
That trip you never came back home from. You were thirty five.

We wandered in the wreckage of our grief for you
That hurts too much to think of, even yet.
When father met and married someone new
I felt betrayed he could so easily forget.

Which was of course unkind. With craftsman’s touch,
He was forever building stuff and moving on,
And drank, as did we all, too often and too much.
And died. I wished we’d talked. That moment’s gone.

I sometimes wonder what you’d think of how things went for me
And then recall the love. That’s what matters. That is family.

I was hugely pleased (and frankly surprised!) that this poem was in the 'commended' category in the Yeovil Literary Prize competition.

 This poem took its theme from a NaPoWriMo prompt by Jo Bell : "write about your parents in a rough sonnet. Six lines on your mum, six lines on your dad - finish with two lines on you. If you want to make it a Shakespearean sonnet, it needs to rhyme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. But I'll let you off if it doesn't. Some of you will have touched on the subject before - but it's one of the great inexhaustibles, isn't it?"

swifts

Swift
As seasons
Four swifts go
Screaming through the gardens
Saying “Summer soon!
Let’s go!
Yo!”

It was a chilly day yesterday, and gloomy and damp. But then I heard a familiar and long-awaited sound. Was I mistaken? I watched out of the window, and soon they reappeared; a formation of four swifts, sweeping round for another low pass, like a flight of fighters back from a successful sortie.

St George and the EDL

 When St George met the EDL
They gawped and shouted “Bloody hell!
That geezer looks a bit muslamic!”
He drew his sword and, in a panic,
They ran off, shouting “Dragon, aid us!”
The dragon, seeing these Crusaders
For Shit Britain, ate them all for tea
Then went to t'pub with St Georgie.

(illustration by Ernest Shepherd from The Reluctant Dragon, by Kenneth Grahame)

Landfall

As splash is bracing, so's the daffodil's yellow;
Salt-sharp, and waxy to the touch,
First lighthouse loom, that longed-for landfall after much
Wandering winter oceans.

Later, mellow on the Bristol train, my holdall stuffed
With Coptic crosses from Djibouti, buddhas from Colombo,
I watch the Wylye valley's willows roll
Slowly to the breeze's brush;
The roebuck stilled mid-field to watch our passing

And, on the bare bank, at last is such
A spray of primrose, petal pool of cream,
As glows against the stormcloud massing
Over the Plain, moment of grace

Warm as this sun now on my face,
Through the open window where I lean
To hear the evening-drowsy blackbird's song;
"Made it, though. Made it through another one."

early one morning

Just before dawn there's a handover period between the night shift and the day shift. So you can hear both owls and robins. And then you can wonder what it is that an owl hoot reminds you of.

Ol' lonesome freight train;

low call of the tawny owl

rolls over the roofs.

falling

Running in circles in a Preseli field,

I was holding on tight while you pedalled the bike,

Not letting go; until I finally did let go,

And you became Icarus, six years old and flying down the hill,

Finally out of sight round the green lane’s corner.

The whole afternoon held its breath. A gorse pod popped.

And there you were again, waving like a loon.

All this was ours. At night we named the stars,

Tracing Orion’s belt over Dinas Head

As the mice rustled in the hedge.

There was still magic back then,

When you first found out the world’s unfair,

But the hurt could be kissed better.

These April nights, sometimes the clouds part,

And the old familiar shapes appear,

Orion, the Pleiades glow, Cassiopeia;

And there’s the comet that I hoped to see,

Faint there over Filton, soluble aspirin of a star,

Too dim by far to warn of bloody war,

Foretell the fall of emperors.

But bloody wars there are, and emperors do fall.

And for some hurts there is no remedy.

Tonight, I look beyond the stars and see more stars,

And, further, even more, until the sky is deep enough

To fall into for ever.

But we have shared the stars, and just for now

I tell myself that that’s enough, and wonder if it’s true.