Open Ground

Garrow Tor is the second highest hill on Bodmin Moor after Brown Willy and is wonderfully harsh and elemental.
   Cape Cornwall, in the far west, is the only cape in England and Wales, and is a ferocious sight with a full gale blowing and the surf exploding over the offshore Brisons.

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I must get into open ground,
The city crushes me,
High on Bodmin to fling around
Or shout beside the sea.

Ah, the brown flanks of Garrow Tor,

Streaming under rain,
Whipped raggedly by the wind’s roar
Are to me pure gain.

And in the cove at Cornwall Cape

As the breakers leap and scream,
The slapping spray on the neck’s nape
Is like waking from a dream.

Oh, the high sky, the moorland track,

Rock, sedge and pool,
Are fresh as childhood given back
Hushed in the morning cool.

And wide-miled sands at slack of tide,

Tart with the water’s breath,
Are absence where the seagulls glide
Yelling of life and death.

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© April 2015

Long-Tailed Tit

April leaf-time, April sun-time,
   Squeals with the shout of the long-tailed tit;
When the oak branch greens and the blackthorn sheens
   And raindrops on nettles slide and sit,
      Then the tit, its tail longer than it,
Leaps through the holly, grabbing grubs,
Hangs in the hazel, worries through shrubs;
      Grey-white, a slick of pink,
   Its folded-fan tail well splashed with ink,
Cuffed by April’s field-boy wind,
Snapping up larvae green with juice,
Circling boughs at hide and find,
It bounces through branches, atop, behind.
      How the wide-eyed parsley gapes!
And bluebells giggle like huddled girls;
   Ah, the dandelions spill their yolks!
Hunger-sore, agog for mites,
   That tit with the red-ring eye, pokes
      At stalk base and lichen splash
That spiders will scurry in morsel-fret
For that snub bill of black jet.
Which-way like a leaf on the wind,
Crumpled as a child’s handful of wool,
Ceaseless it scuffs from branch to branch,
Its wings in a stubby blurring blanch,
   Upside down, shuttling the void,
   Greedy for the next oak’s basking ticks,
   By April’s urge, a creature joyed,
      Its song all sharps and quicks,
Unstoppable as the spring-wet year,
Here, fled, far, near.
 

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© April 2015

 

Me Too

This is in trochaics with alternating lines of five and four stresses. I wrote another poem about this chap, 'The Paper Seller,' and posted it on 18 July 2017. It is linked here.

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Whey-skinned, shrunken-faced, with ill-shaved cheeks,
Clothes like drabs, unchanged for weeks,
Twisted-backed by age, his eyes to ground,
Glum, the old man makes his round,
House to shop and then a rubbish bin,
Taking out and putting in,
Seeking papers which he hoards at home,
Window-piled like browning loam.
Bald on top though scarved with cobweb hair,
Temple-strung like dirty air,
Limping, sometimes groaning to himself,
Each step like a sort of stealth,
Too-short trousers flap about his shins,
And sockless ankles flash like grins...;
Busy men and mothers with their young
Shun him like a stench that’s sprung
Suddenly beneath their careful feet
From a carcass in the street.
Unaware or uncomplaining, he,
Focused on his ministry,
Last week’s papers crammed beneath his arm,
Glares at tots but means no harm.
I, his pupil by a few scant years,
Death’s droll whispers in my ears,
Drifting into that Sargasso way,
Isolate by day and day,
Stung by questings, meaning to confess,
Tropes to shape and words to dress,
Might with purposed pointlessness like him,
Tatters-hung and waste of limb,
Sift the tide-scum for a pearl of price
Though, palm-held, it melt like ice.

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© April 2015