Each Day

Each day is a waiting for death and a dying,

A rising, a pratfall, a tantrum, a sighing,
   In moments the stretched empty hours have passed by,
And night has descended with foul words and crying.

Oh where is that youth with his life chances nighing,

In rich clothes and posings to catch the girls’ eyeing;
   The footings and glancings all sped on the fly
Till lovers were honeymooned, laughing and thighing.

Midlife was a quagmire of cold-shouldered lying,

The children resentful and sneeringly prying,
   Redundant, remortgaged, the weight of the sky
Crushed love, hope and kindness until I stopped trying.

So, old-aged and solus, my sands are fast drying

In Chastened-by-Sea where the salt mist is hieing,
   And death with sunk life at my carcass will vie
That day when my wait is cut short with a dying.

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© July 2015

 

At the Lake in July

This poem is really a metrical exercise. It is in tetrameters and in each stanza the first line is iambic, the second dactylic, the third anapaestic and the fourth trochaic.

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   The goose-strut crow with panting beak

      Parts the fawn grass in a scavenging search;
Broiling heats of July are at afternoon’s peak;
      Moorhen grub in bankside birch.

   Those crows are dancing in a clique,

      Hounding two Canada geese and their chick;
The stout chick, grey-green fluffed, with a crop-heavy squeak
      Seeks its dam’s protecting kick.

   The dragonflies like lightning streak

      Petrol-sheen blue on the lake’s dusty face;
A lame vole drags a leg through a mud-clotted creek,
      Magpies haggle, giving chase.

   The Mallard ducks by jowl and cheek

      Doze in the feather-scorched glaze of the sun;
A white-foreheaded coot on slap feet tries to sneak
      Lakewards past dogs on the run.

   Egyptian geese rich-stained like teak

      Prowl by the water on pirate-red legs;
With patched eyes and a swagger they feed as they seek,
      Prodding the lake’s heat-spoiled dregs.

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© July 2015
 

Comes A Day

Mid-sixties, on a day, my hips grew stiff,
Cleaning house locked them in a grating ache,
To be was to groan whether I stood, sat or knelt;
No matter, comes a day my bones, dry of pith,
Will stretch in the grave as the months and years flake,
Painless though eaten by mould like felt.

Already my skin had given notice of wear

With red cracking rashes and refusal to heal,
My flesh become puffy as if struck by a belt;
No matter, comes a day my skull, plucked of hair,
Will grin in the grave and my rashed skin peel
From my corpse gone twisted and hard like a welt.

And my acid-hot stomach and dust-sore eyes

Had nuisanced my days with griping and stab,
I felt like tumbleweed scorched on the veldt;
No matter, comes a day beyond gasps and cries
When I’ll house in the grave under a weed-thick slab
And my intestines and eyes will melt.

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© June 2015