The Microwave

This short piece uses the tanka stanza with rhyme added in the last line of each stanza. In fact the microwave lasted for 23 years which I trimmed to 20 because of the exigencies of the tanka form. And for many of those years I did not bother with a cooker but used the microwave for everything: so it was good value. How long will the new one last? The shop keeper told me if I'm lucky, 4 to 5 years for, admittedly, a lower priced model!

   A much earlier syllabic poem (written in January 1982) about the separate life of our gadgets is "On the Intractability of Things," written in January 1982, posted on 23 January 2013 and linked here. Its line endings are looser than I would tolerate now.  A much more recent poem, which cuts out the gadgets but keeps the disabused attitude to life, is "There is Nothing More Louche," written in August 2016, posted on 19 October 2021 and linked here.

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My companion
Of twenty years – not a wife
But a microwave! –
Suddenly died, leaving me
Forlorn – like a spouse indeed!

A kitchen fixture
So long, its demise made me
Rudderless: how now
To heat that half cup of soup,
Or that sausage roll at speed?

Happening hot on
My seventy-fifth birthday
It seemed portent of
Another death, escapeless
And nastily conclusive.

For think: at that death,
The mental enmesh which forged
Meaning – home to both –
Will void: soon, others’ recall
Of each will be illusive.

====================
© November 2024

Three Chestnut Tree Poems

Not far from where I live is a huge mature chestnut tree. These three poems were written independently but I thought they worked well gathered together. In "Utterly Stark..." it may be worth noting the internal rhyme in line 6 which chimes with the rhymes at the end of lines 5 and 6. This applies in each stanza. In the second stanza there are also serendipitous rhymes in lines 2 and 4 which rhyme with those in lines 5 and 6. In "The Chestnut Tree Now..." there is an internal rhyme in line 3 of each stanza. "Jigwarra" is a nonce word developed from Porthgwarra, a tiny cove at the far south-western tip of West Cornwall and a place visitors fall in love with not knowing what it's like to live there when the weather (frequently!) turns bad.

   An earlier poem to take a close look at a tree is "The Sycamore Tree," written in December 2014, posted on 28 January 2019 and linked here. And another earlier poem, this time taking a look at a single bough, is "A Fallen Bough," written in November 2013, posted on 6 June 2016 and linked here.

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1. "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree"

Under the spreading chestnut tree
   With leaves gone autumn-brown,
The fallen chestnuts mush the ground,
   The year swaps smile for frown.

I swept my mind through days of old,
   Their jaunts and jibs now gone,
But all I found were shrivelled hopes
   And promises not done.

(What yellows, reds, what sickly pales,
   Have smutched the chestnut’s leaves,
They zig-zag-fall from branch to earth
   Like splotches brushed from sleeves.)

Always this lust to stew in self,
   That sly-glanced foul “I will!”
Neighbour or loved one, both are blanked
   That appetite might swill.

(Fissured and knolled, a scaly-grey,
   The tree’s trunk sags with age,
Its baring branches jag the sky,
   Stiff with an old man’s rage.)

Who tells? Can there be settlement
   Of years and self’s excess?
For truth, these hates and lusts still burn,
   Aching for cheap success.

And like the spreading chestnut tree
   One day I’ll rot and fall,
Then rain’s caress and earth’s warm loam
   Will soothe its final sprawl;
But I, driven and wraithed, will flail
   In the wind’s caterwaul.

(October 2024)

2. "Utterly Stark Is the Chestnut Tree"

Utterly stark is the chestnut tree
   As January frosts flash white,
And crazed as a sheet of splintered ice
   Its branches clutch the light;
For dank is the day and dark is the night
When none might dream or beg respite,
   And snow slumped in its lee
   Writhes in the wind like lice.

Its trunk now bent like a crook’d knee
   And grained as a gaffer’s hand,
Is froze half-sided with brittle frost
   And by the weather tanned.
What hope or dream that’s summer-bland
Can live when fanned by winter’s wand?
   Yet soon hunched buds will spree,
   Shrugging off cold’s accost.

(January 2025)

Months: The Sea: July

In 2012-13 I wrote a series of shorter poems on the months of the year using a similar form for each poem. I posted the complete set of "Months" on 6 February 2015 and it is linked here.  In 2014-15 I wrote a series of lyrics on the year's months, called "Months: Lyrics" and that series was posted on 11 March 2016. It is linked here. Between 2019 and 2024 I wrote a third "Months" series, this time concentrating on the sea and littoral and using a wide range of forms. The poems were also much longer and much more discursive. I am now posting them as I revise them. I will put some notes about each poem's form and references at the end of each post. The first poem in this sea series (for March) was posted on Friday 25 May 2025, link to it here; the poem for April was posted on 28 July 2025, link to it here; that for May, posted 20 September 2025, is linked here; that for June, posted on Monday 27 April 2026, here . 

   There are four epigraphs for the entire "Months: The Sea" sequence and they are posted at the head of the March poem.

   Each poem carries an ascription of the liturgical importance of the month. These ascriptions were widely used in the pre-Vatican II Church: they were yet another casualty of the destructive consequences of that foolish Council.

   I do not seem specifically to have written much of substance about July. One ancient poem, from July 1980, is "July Days," posted on this blogsite on 14 July 2012. It is linked here. Two more recent poems are "July Woods," written in July 2013 and posted on 1 June 2015 (linked here) and "Late July Morning," written in July 2014 and posted on 10 May 2018 (linked here).

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(Month of the Precious Blood)

      It slows and crawls into the station:
   The train’s “hump–hump” on points in work-like fashion
   Calls journey’s end, and doors along its length
      Vomit this year’s luggaged hordes.
   July pours burning heat and dense blue skies
   On them; soon, crimsoned flopping flesh like gourds
Will splay the hot-stoned beach. All month the stalls and kiosks
   Affording food and beach ware work long hours;
   Hotel and pension terraces are full,
   And tots’ cries, arcade tunes, disturb the lovers.
The slapping sea churns human flotsam, laughing, thrashing,
      Jet skis roar in thumped-chest passion;
   Embayed, a bloated cruise boat frees its launches
   For two hours’ feeding – water ice or whelks;
   Bemused, surfboarded lifeguards crouch on haunches
      And chaperone these foolish folks.

      “Off-piste,” and life proceeds untouched,
   Raw children in their gardens play unwatched;
   Shopping and washing done, there’s coffee with
      Flames – old, new – and thrill of footing:
   Life’s settlement, as always, finely edged.
   At harbour, the white fish auction closed, and gutting
And packing underway, a trawler’s beached for prop work;
   Come lunch, men will make tryst with tabled pints.
   And always halyards chatter, stench of crab
   And fish rot sours the streets, noised with the chants
Of gulls at swirl. It’s full tide at the rocks, and terns
      Plunge for prey – many times botched,
   Then winging, fry in beak. An egret stalks
   The rock line, its beak a halberd, stabbing death
   For fish and shrimp. Eyeless, a dead gull rucks
      In the surf, ignored like a torn cloth.

      All’s heartless! Yes: the breeding gulls
   On roofs do duty as a hormone pulls,
   Feeding their begging fledge reluctantly.
      Toppling, screeching, brownly-downed,
   The fledglings prance the copings, keen to fly –
   Unbalanced, some, wing-thrashing, plunge to ground,
Their parents yapping from a wall as feet or cars
   Chivvy the young to a puzzled kerb-edge cower.
   Then morning, evening, maelstromed, all erupt
   In screaming flight – a disputing, staking blather;
Settled, night long they’ll call, fly, rest, though sleeping little.
      Three a.m. a dog-fox prowls;
   Spotted, they roar alarm; folk yawn, disturbed.
   Next day, adults rebonding quiver in frenzy,
   Beaks clashing, chattering; they cease, unverbed.
      Language, unfelt, grew from this motley.

      Language is structure bred by structure,
   By organisms bound by social gesture –
   The rat-faced herring gulls example this.
      Topping all is Man whose brain,
   Protein-engorged, has burst brute physics’ grip,
   Creating mind, disbodied, ever keen
To structure further. Thus, a paddle on a log
   Becomes a week’s regatta: high-tech yachts
   Compete a close-thought course to testing rules,
   The winner self-formed by work against those boats.
Hegel, blade-faced, thought this the crux of man’s fulfilment,
      Mind’s self-knowledge making contour
   Of what’s the case; mind only was what’s real,
   Its absolute; but what completion’s that?
   Mind presumes data, an existent mell,
      Which lacking being must be kept.

Opened Earth

Way back in the 1970s, walking along a railway path (between Raynes Park and Wimbledon in southwest London) on a wet autumn day I was struck by the rich and pungent odour seeping from a newly-dug hole which someone had gouged beside the path for some reason. The phrase, "the pungent smell of opened earth" came immediately to mind and I thought it would make a good start for a poem. That phrase has been in my mind all these decades and finally - finally! - in 2024 I used it to create the poem below. The larger nine-line stanzas are written using a loose blank verse. The "Addendum" was an afterthought to use up lines one and five which originally were meant to be part of the main poem but did not survive to the final draft.

   An earlier poem (written in July 1979) and based on close looking is "The Old Stone Wall, Honey-Red." I posted it on 25 April 2012 and it is linked here 

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      The pungent smell of opened earth,
         Freshly turned and churned,
      It stings the nose like smoke from the hearth
         Or furzes newly burned.

Walking the railway path in autumn-tide
I found a fresh-dug hole some worm collector
Had turned in the damp black leafy loam banking
The path. That tart-aroma’d rotting, fecund
Of ooze and seep, trickled a sheen of wet
Which puddled the gouge. That reek, that sour and sweet
Unripeness, dank and tingling like an acid,
Yet hinted bitingly at a rich fulfilment
Next year in spring’s resistless bloating-forth.

      All’s closing, crumpling; comes a sleep
         Uneased, deprived, diseased:
      Winter’s a time when the creatures weep,
         Neeps with snow are fleeced.

Winds needle through the bare boles of frosted trees.
Climbing the combe, couch-grass beneath foot crunches
Like plastic sheeting. Clouds, leaden as gangrene,
Compress this cliffside gash, so that plant, creature,
Must starve in a freezing death-daze, grubbing shreds,
Day-long, within winter’s blackened, snow-smeared grip.
At combe’s top, smallholding man, denuded of work,
Stirs roots in his cookpot, brooding on his land-toil
Once earth’s year’s-end ice crust has thinned and split.

      Water and chiffchaff prattle joyly –
         Here’s cakes and mating, maidens!
      What plant or creature foots it coyly
         When sun’s restored their Edens?

As if a womb disgorged its groping bairns
A’sudden, spring’s a shouting, swollen fact;
There’s shoots, leaves, buds, all’s wetly warm, and lust
Of coupling frictions the agog woods and fields.
Already, thought of summer’s fleshpot months,
Of corn and beef, juices the mouth; and evenings,
Delighting in hum and stir, open like hands.
Hasten to live! gulping sun’s feeding, for soon
His prime’s decayed; autumn’s first leaf will fall.

Addendum

Winter’s a roar of gale and sodden snow,
Sobered, I question everything I know.

Then spring comes dancing with a primrose tint,
Its meaning’s hidden, readable as flint.

Through summer’s golden months the corn grows fat,
At last I found the truth, then smelt a rat.

And now in autumn’s damp and chill decay,
I mourn we live alone and end as clay.

====================
© October 2024

Lyric: Autumn to Summer

I have always greatly liked Sir Walter Scott's little poem "Proud Maisie." I thought I would give young Maisie a happier outcome, albeit inclusive of the pains of childbirth. Also, I wanted to try and write a lyric with something of the lightness but also depth of felt experience in Shakespeare's unmatchable lyrics. I'd be astonished if I succeeded. 

   "Bake first fruits loaves" is a reference to Lammas day (Loaf Mass day) on 1 August, when Mass was offered using the first bread baked from the wheat harvest of the year.

   A more stately (syllabic) lyric is "Though the Weekday Go," written in 1976 and posted on 5 July 2013. It is linked here.

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What’s this! The oozy reek of rained-on earth,
      It sets my nose a-twitch,
   And autumn’s apples, girl’s-cheek red,
      Make lusts and loins to itch!
   So grab your girl – here’s tease, here’s mirth!
   For winter’s freezings kill all pleasings,
      And that’s a truth well said!

What’s winter? Maisie’s window piled with snow,
      And spring’s her sleepy yawn,
   But sun’s months urge the wheat to swell –
      And Maisie swells with spawn!
   Bake first fruits loaves, dance fast, dance slow,
   For summer’s breezings force womb’s easings –
      Lord, Maisie’s lungful yell!

====================
© September 2024

The Days of Old

Technical details: a shared rhyme links the penultimate line of each stanza with the first line of the following stanza. To round things off, the last two lines of the final stanza share a half-rhyme.

   A much earlier poem on the "what's it all about?" theme is "The Hedgehog in the Garden," written in July 1980. As such it is not a "summation" or a "looking back" because it was written by a much younger man; it's more of a speculation. It was posted on 14 July 2012 and is linked here.

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   The days of old were never cold,
      The sun shone on and on,
And heat haze simmered on both coast and wold
   In glassy light glints never done.
   Thoughtless we are of days as lived:
You never know they’re good until they’re gone.

   What’s left when age has closely sieved
      All loves and memories
Are glows like sun’s warm shafts in leafage weaved
   (But aches at hands we failed to seize):
   Days are like fruit now fresh, now bruised,
You never know they’re good until they’re gone.

   Ruses and lusts, perhaps excused
      For that’s what lovers do,
Enjoined a trysted life of bodies fused,
   Of whelps and duties, laughings too:
   Like rueful scarecrows are our days,
You never know they’re good until they’re gone.

   Even ill-luck, a smash, a blaze,
      Much worse, a dear one’s death,
In time will cultivate our coping ways,
   For breath is better than no breath:
   Our days can soothe the pain they cause,
You never know they’re good until they’re gone.

   Seek what’s intense then, licking sores,
      Live as the creatures live,
Hourly aware of chance’s gifts and claws,
   The “now” which only Time can give;
   For soon days’ truths will sink to one:
You never know they’re good until they’re gone.

====================
© September 2024

Months: The Sea: June

In 2012-13 I wrote a series of shorter poems on the months of the year using a similar form for each poem. I posted the complete set of "Months" on 6 February 2015 and it is linked here.  In 2014-15 I wrote a series of lyrics on the year's months, called "Months: Lyrics" and that series was posted on 11 March 2016. It is linked here. Between 2019 and 2024 I wrote a third "Months" series, this time concentrating on the sea and littoral and using a wide range of forms. The poems were also much longer and much more discursive. I am now posting them as I revise them. I will put some notes about each poem's form and references at the end of each post. The first poem in this sea series (for March) was posted on Friday 25 May 2025, link to it here; the poem for April was posted on 28 July 2025, link to it here; that for May, posted 20 September 2025, is linked here.

   There are four epigraphs for the entire "Months: The Sea" sequence and they are posted at the head of the March poem.

   Each poem carries an ascription of the liturgical importance of the month. These ascriptions were widely used in the pre-Vatican II Church: they were yet another casualty of the destructive consequences of that foolish Council.

   I do not seem specifically to have written many poems about June. One such is "A Blackbird in June," written in June 2013 and posted on this blogsite on 2 March 2015. It is linked here. A much earlier poem which is "June-ish" is "Epigraph on Rome," written in 1979 (and which I have always been fond of) and posted on this site on 31 October 2012. It is linked here.

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(Month of the Sacred Heart)

   My God! Hades’ gates roared, and shelves of rock screamed
Into a battering skip: a thunder-shriek seized the town,
   Quaking the granite streets; clefts of lightning cracked
From cloud to sea, boned and crook like a hag’s claws, and flash glared
   A shocked second, dowsing dawn’s twilight. The beached
Worm-glutting gulls leapt to wing instantly, howling a’group
   In tight-turned circles, wing feathers clapping as
Raging, gabbling, they swung like thrashed souls driven through hell’s
   Gloomy bolges. In a gasping moment, rain’s
Avalanche drenched the town as wide-footed thunderheads,
   Anvil-tall from sea to high sky, crept mollusc-like
Across coast and village, braun and convulsed, liver-dark,
   Purposed as locusts blackly gulfing the fields.
The rain, solid as chain-mail, clashed in the streets – the gulls
   Forced to ground; it fried like fat on the beige sands
And clattered hoarsely a shine of spume on the lead-puce
   Beaten sea. In town on walls and roofs, herring gulls
Hunched and suffered, glum in the pounding soak, feathers glued
   To points, their wing quills rutted, their beaks adrip:
The tart whiff of the plumb downpour, chilling the air, belied
   The hoped-for heat of a smack June day. To some – most? – 
A pious plea such times, urged to the Sacred Heart, might seem
   Inane, the world shrunk to flexing panes, iron-grey,
Of water, the flumes gushed by the beach’s storm drains, grimed
   With town dirt, gouging fanned Mississippis through
The slathered sands; but friend whether Megiddo’s endgame
   Is bodied by these false-mirrored drapes, or they’re
But a passing puff, that shrined Heart, consoling as a hand
   Proffered, gifts a gritted patience portioned to
The pleader’s disastered state – oh Horn of Goods, replete
   Of Blood and Water, Trove Box of pity, Vault
Of refuge for the blight and perplexed! It’s a fraught truth
   For strandsmen that gulfed offshore in a storm force
Blether, or skewered on a cliff by a ton’s weight of wind,
   All atheists go AWOL, (none ever turned a trick
Trundling the nay-sayers’ naff bookstall across battlefields).
   The day a washout, the next – June’s longest – was fine.
By four, dawn’s tones – lime-olive rosined with jade-pink sheens –
   Had lotioned the attic-wide sky; a slivered moon,
Vague as a slopped clam of bread in rose-milk, wasted away.
   By chimneys, on gables, nested hatchlings squealed,
The parent gulls off-hand; a breeze scattered the sea’s hiss
   Through the lanes, and night-out cats nosed the cracked shells
Dumped by the gulls like rind. Come eight, the beach having warmed,
   Morning forage done, blackbacks and herrings rest
In flocks, distrustful and jump: glared eyes, thrust beaks, insist
   On lifetime social distance. The cirrused sky
Is ruthless blue, the sands hemp- and umber-stained, the sea,
   Full-ebbed and flat, is emulsioned greeny-pale.
Unstopped, the heat piles and the strand’s hours amble to afternoon;