Caught Unawares

Everything was in the right place:

That morning blind routine

Requiring minimal conscious thought

I mean, the toothbrush and paste

We’re waiting, parked neatly - check

Second finger found the kettle switch – no problem

Fridge door opens, chilly jam and marmalade jars

Casually thrown up with right hand and caught in the left

No milk, no matter

Shoes on, front door unlocked

It’s a two minute walk shuffling through the autumnal leaf shower

A comforting orange red stillness

So quiet as if the pavements have stopped breathing

Or the trees have witnessed a rapture

I press on, disregarding the silence

There’s the shop, lights on

Checking my jacket pocket for the wallet I occasionally forget

I extend my hand to the door

It doesn’t open

It is difficult to convey just how deep

Is the shockwave that is travelling

In and out of my mind, my grip on normality,

Like some untold tide

For twenty years, maybe twice a week

The door, often left slightly open, yielded

But not this early unassuming Friday morning

I push again, my brain and my sense disconnecting

Cleaving into non-identical twins: wisdom and will

The one locked into a fierce debate with the other

One, calm, the other incapable of reading the runes

As ever committed to hopeless causes trying the handle once more

It is then that I’m shaken awake

The lesson once again makes me laugh quietly

As I turn, no milk in hand

And kick the leaves into another random pattern

Knowing again there is no right place

For things to be held

Like time itself, caught unawares

In it own spider’s web

Awaiting an unknowable fate:

The order of things is to be shaken

Before the final things to come

Yes, it’s good to be reminded

And walk back to where the cup of black tea

Is calling forlornly for what is missing

A Tale of Two Pubs

These two pubs, unpaired
Not by compass and meridians
But by a subterranean,
Inexpressible knowing,
Where words are crude
Instruments failing to
Distinguish differing
Smiles of satisfaction

On a Saturday, for lunch,
Lynch and I and others
Traipse through slate-grey
Winter wind and drizzle
Like intent pilgrims
Discomforts disdained
To the Ruby Lounge
A meeting place for toothless old men

The real Ruby Lounge was far rougher and more dilapidated

And us, barely shaving
But young and old shuffle their way
Across the sawdust-strewn floor
To an altar rail, for communion
The priest, taking our offerings
Clasped with tattooed hands the tap
And poured forth the weekly libation
A pint of Youngs

Eyes meet, publican priest
With his latest converts,
Silenced initiates,
Their inexperienced hands
Still tracing the bevels
Of their fathers’ jugs
Embarrassed to show
Too much satisfaction

Smiles concealed,
We return,
Across the sawdust
To the wobbly table
Sticky with yesterday’s beer
And spoil the moment with
Mundane talk of Monty Python
And Parmesan cheese on toast

Maybe a bath and some spray later
And a trench coat if cold and dark
A collection of poorly paid pilgrims
Stomping their feet against the cold
Nudge away from minor village roads
To find the path across fields
Illuminated by a watching moon
Towards the waiting lights

Sadly, the Share & Coulter in no more…this pub has a similar feel if a bit busier

The Share and Coulter
There, eight animated souls,
Bums on wooden seats
With tied-on cushions,
A polished table and dry beer mats,
And a roaring fire just beyond…
Clueless to how daringly close
To heaven they’ve come, huddle

Pictures of long-dead Shires
And their barrelled drays
Looking on from the walls
Witness my blaspheming
And Christ’s secret agent asking
‘Why did you say that?’
Unseen angels lean in
Licking their lips

The Moon is Watching

This last week
The Moon has perched herself
Above the fir tree opposite
Tapping me on the shoulder
Each morning
So I don’t forget
To say Good Morning

The moon perched above the fir tree opposite

Normally the Moon stays hidden
And like some nocturnal beast
Shyly puts on her cloak
Of misty white light
Before perching -
Up there

But this Moon
Maybe a different one
Is a breakfast feast
A pre-running sight
Been waiting
With some impatience
For someone to see her
Importance, significance

Like the Christmas story
But unlike the Magi
With their Eastern wisdom
My mind is blank…
If there is a baby in the fir tree
It would seem untimely
Unlikely…

As if she hears my absence
She turns, flees, and fades
But has one last trick
As she sinks and sinks
What was a bright sixpence in the sky
Is now a translucent sovereign
Her reign extending ever larger
Just beyond the horizon

Dirt under our fingernails

This is why I believe in Jesus
Not because of carefully constructed choirs
Or the booming bass of a Pentecostal party
Or priests pressing you for pounds and pence
Or the frocks, the bishop’s staff
The dog-collars demarcating You from Me

                                                                                                               With Lazarus

No, I believe in Jesus because
He who believed in me believes in you
He who kicked a can down the road
With Lazarus, his mate, the one who died temporarily
I believe in Jesus because he wept
At the tomb - it was not all miracles – and
Over Jerusalem like our mothers’ weep over us

And because he loved Mary
Magdalene
A woman so pained,
So disfigured by her demons
In so much…poo
Then he came and wiped it away…the poo
Her sufferings, her tears
And made her love life and love again
And to linger in the garden
When Jesus outdid Lazarus

And, posing as a gardener
Gave us all
All of us with dirt under our fingernails
A taste of resurrection

Yes, I believe in Jesus

October 7th 2023 Remembrance

Not once have I
Been caught in the careful
Eye-beam of a ravenous wolf

Foxes, cunning as ever,
Stand and stare before
The shadows take them

And dogs, tongues lolling,
Trot undangerously
Learning only to love

But it was the pack
That hunted their prey
Eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart

In a murderous pact
Slaying the unguarded
In civilian slaughter

Biden’s shock: photos of
A baby riddled with bullets,
A soldier beheaded

Supernovans burned alive
In cars and hideaways
Trapped in a hatred

A sink hole
In the world’s morality
Legitimacy to govern

Torn to shreds
We weep until
The wolves’ eyes dim

Today we remember
The unforgotten, the 97
Yet to return home

But we will remember
In wrath to remember mercy
We who have been wolves

We, called to be Samaritans,
Let healing come
From unlikely places

Let war be undone like
Untied laces dragging
Along the ground

Singing songs
Of miracle
And wonder

He makes wars cease
He shatters the spear, be still
And know that I am God

Cold, Day 5, 6 a.m.

Friday:
Monoclonal
Antibodies launch
An autumn offensive at
The expense of my limp arms
Heavy as I drag myself up the stairs,
Shuffling, sniffling, spluttering, coughing
In search of yet more tissues and an empty bin
Before shutting down under a blanket in the lounge
Now 7.45 a.m. I sleep for an hour, deep dive into nothing
Somehow it works. My eyes feel more like optical instruments
Not banging balls of pain, engaging in the world of fallen leaves
I put a coat on and venture out, aware that matted hair is not
A wholesome sight. Grunt-conversation at the shop is the
Most I can envisage, politely. The autumn offensive is
Underway but victory is a weekend wish. Milk and
Paracetamol packets in hand I scowl inwardly
At the RNA enemy and nod encouragingly
At my lymphocyte army as they engulf
Titchy coronaviruses before they
Hitch yet more rides on my
Ever-unzipping DNA
10.30. Poem
Tea.

Holy Fire

This year, Anna Chegwith
Took hold of organising
Lower Banford’s Guy Fawkes Night
Beyond the boundary
Opposite the oak tree
Far from the pavilion

Anna, Catholic on a Sunday,
Firefighter by Monday,
Had two loves: order and disorder
White-shirt-buttons-neat-Chegwith
And anarchic-Anna, depatterned,
Chaotic, randomly romantic, Anna

Committee-meeting-Chegwith reigned
Precise distances to the rope
Fire station - informed
Weather reports - updated
Decision timelines – strict
Traffic lights on amber

At home, Anna put the word out:
Invite the blind, the deaf, the crippled
The autistic, anosmians, dysgeusians
And ‘Primary children to bring wood’
Written on a to do list, sat on the loo
Flushed before Chegwith could find it

The parents set to compete as ever

Anna subverting Ghegwith
Chegwith suppressing Anna

November the 5th arrives
Dusk is gathering, damp air cooling
A rope is in place, a matrix of fireworks
50 yards downwind from the pyre
Its wigwam of standard tree trunks
Chegwith’s firm foundation

Pressed into the ground by odd offerings
Old tables, bookcases, broken rocking horses
Uprooted trees, an old brown piano
Rising to meet the stars, trembling and creaking.
The crowd now hushed,
Waiting for Anna to kneel, and

Lit taper in hand to ignite the bonfire
A wild conflagration feeds the night sky
Tasted in the air, its roar heard,
The heat so real it could be held
Red raging flames compensating
The disabled, first behind the rope

Guy Fawkes Night, an enhancer, for all ages
Battling with burgers and dripping ketchup.
Yes, it had a guy, a nod to Parliament
And on Sunday Anna Chegwith,
Smelling sweet from the smoke, still,
Knelt again, as we all do before holy fire

PoW

Like flowing water
Broadcast on our soil of fear
Seeds of courage sown

Written a few days after the Princess of Wales’ broadcast a video update of her post-chemotherapy recovery

Apalachee

When the grey bullets fly
And life ruptured, stilled, and
Stripped from the living
Joins the unbreathing
Caught in unblinking grief
We all die.

Centuries of constitutional
Misadventure, deep-rooted
A torpor state of mind
A dream that spells
Freedom in another’s blood
Red raw, delusional.

Remove the rifle
Silent words in pleading eyes
What anguish sent a message
Brain to finger to pull?
And in our heart-recoil?
Agony. Mourning. A soft reprisal

Too weak to be heard
But exhaustion will have her way
Jericho walls, stiff with pride
Will loosen, will collapse
Second amendment amended
No longer deferred

Leaning on a hoe

The sun, bleary-eyed as I
Barely peering above the horizontal,
Pours down its slow post-dawn light
On a muggy morning, August,
Dew rising, humid and still
The muffled commute underway

Eight men arrayed
In orange jackets and legs
Swap cigarettes and light up
The prelude to an attack
In slow motion on a
Weed-infested dockside kerb

I join the runners old and not so
Immunised against joint pain
With earbuds full of
Marley or Madness
Or, in my case,
Berry, the Black Country poet

The sun rises; the sweat falls
In great drops, my shirt
Monsoon damp, a testimony
To efforts that will not trouble
Or terrify
Any records known to man

The end, and I walk the perimeter
Of Cumberland Basin to cool
At the far end, under the Sun
The same eight in orange
Stand prodding at the enemy
With dedicated timidity

One, leaning on his hoe,
A hoe that mimics
The angle of lazy urination,
Fails to move, fearing defeat,
‘The weeds will win’ it’s
Beneath him to bend

The others shuffle, smoke, and scrape
Towards their first tea break
As I head home
To put the kettle on
And break sweat once again:
Pen in hand

General Synopsis

Wild, wet, and windy
Coke can rattles down the street
Drunk singing God save the King

Cromarty Forth Tyne
Dogger Fisher German Bight
Thames Humber Dover

Low pressure rising
Riot on the Isle of Wight?
Flag flies at half-mast

Fading in the sun
Union Jack red, white and blue
Coke can, still at last

The Emptying

At number 4, grass grew from June to August
The solid oak front door obscuring
Bills unpaid, takeaway vouchers,
And a postcard from the Sun.
The body was well-dressed and mostly absent
A monocle, a mould-infested bow tie
Dark brown shoe polish, can open,
Brush gripped tight in his bent
Rigor mortis fist, bones only.
He’d choked, it would seem

Long-distant family members
Attracted by duty and pecuniary matters
Like flies to the body
Sifted, binned, sold, and removed
Nearly a century of accumulated
Memories needed no more.
Every object passed through
Their executor-digestive system
And eliminated as is the way
Along the legal path

Across the road at number 13
The front lawn is mown regularly
And a new door affixed last week
The old one, also oak, broken up
Stored in the shed,
Ready, one day, to feed the fire-pit
Its red flame energy
To be faced one last time
Its ashes to be taken by the wind
To the wild north

To the wild north

The emptying
A peristalsis of sorrow
An unavoidable appointment
With life in its fulness
A compulsory education
One that Christ knew
Emptying Himself
Of all that got in the way
Of Him touching rotten flesh
Or healing the broken-hearted

Slack Jaw at War

‘Ackney Slack Jaw
That’s my name
Not black no blame
I’m a white rhyming jackdaw
Not wild, not tame

Some rules in East
Don’t look at me in my eyes
Stay lowly, be cool as ice
Not hostile, I don’t smile
Safe with me, not deceased

No conformity, no truce

I flatten my vowels
Let my jaw hang loose
My I, so sly
My words so smooth
No conformity, no truce

I carry a grammar hammer
Your e’s and your a’s
Rebuilt in Slack Jaw ways
Your o’s and your u’s
No stranger to abuse

I carry a grammar hammer

I’m a white rhyming jackdaw
Not wild, not tame
Not black, no blame
‘Ackney Slack Jaw
That’s my name

Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner: The Song of the Bow

I woke up this morning aware at some point that I didn’t have a poem to share for Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner. That’s OK as it has always wanted to live up to its name – Irregular.

So, to my breakfast routine: Malted wheats + homemade muesli + cuppa tea, milk no sugar, and a bible reading. This morning’s reading was 2 Samuel chapter 1 which includes David’s lament, The Song of the Bow, a poem, a pouring out of grief over the death of King Saul and his son Jonathan in battle.

I offer selected verses from The Song of the Bow in the form of tercets. The phrase How the Mighty have Fallen is often attributed to Shakespeare or Churchill but borrowed, in fact, from David shortly before he became King David.

The battle has extraordinary resonance today. The Philistines, victorious in this battle with Israel in which their archers wounded Saul and Jonathan, occupied the same region we know today as the Gaza Strip: the ancient rivalry continues.

Maybe let this poem open our ears to hear the laments poured out by Jews and Gazans as the days of suffering continue nearly 10 months after the despicable attack against unarmed Jews by Hamas in October 2023 and the hostages taken.

The Song of the Bow

The beauty of Israel is slain on your high places
How the mighty have fallen
Tell it not in Gath

O mountains of Gilboa
Let there be no dew nor rain upon you
For the shield of the mighty is defiled

Saul and Jonathan were beloved and pleasant in their lives
And in their death they were not divided
They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions

O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul
Who clothed you in scarlet with luxury
Who put ornaments of gold on your apparel

How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle
I am distressed for you, my brother, Jonathan
Your love to me…surpassing the love of women

How the mighty have fallen
And the weapons of war
Perished!

In some unknown way, a lament can do what victory and/or defeat in battle cannot. There is an unseen limit to suffering, a Stop sign, and a lament is a prelude, I suggest, to the deep cry of Enough! uttered in the final seconds before peace reigns.

Guest poet: Harry Baker - Impossible

Impossible - by Harry Baker

Thank You

Descending from Tryfan
In an early morning autumnal mist
Three nights of hill-bound
Body odour to prove our ordeal
The welcome end in sight
And my joy is eclipsed
By sudden uncalled-for
Patella pain

A decade passes
And I, unable to run
And reduced often to
Less than a child’s pace
A young man no longer young
Stoic I, sad at heart
But head held high
Push on with private prayers

After-dawn rituals continue
There’s cereal, toast, tea
Bible readings, and tie-tying
All with variable success
A pre-work regularity but
Interrupted on this day
By one unbidden word:

‘Run!’

A command from Beyond
Authoritative, inescapable
Unharsh, inaudible
More than a word

So, crippled I
Locate my battered trainers
Old from lack of use
And find a gravel path
And obey, for a quarter of a mile
Then a mile the next day
Half-marathons follow on
Patella pain consigned
To the past

I run now on new fuel
Offerings of thanksgiving
To the One
Who interrupted my prayers
And made me an
Implausible parable
On two legs:

Therefore strengthen the hands
That hang down
And the feeble knees
And make straight paths for your feet
So that what is lame
May not be dislocated
But rather be healed…
…let us run the race

Still small voice

Beer beach. Almost July.
Even with the sun skulking
Behind lumpy grey clouds
And an onshore breeze
To cool the pebbles
It is warm enough

Warm enough to sit,
Read, remove a layer
And later, sandals on
Wander over to the beach café
For a flat white and a brie
And cranberry panini

 Lunch, and to listen
Until time itself disappears
And the world of thoughts
Recedes
And some aural centre
Draws you in

Not gravity, not to-do lists
Not worries, nor plans
Neither angels nor demons
Only the sound of the beach
Filling all, upholding all, as if
One can swim at any depth

Suspended inside sound:
Breaking waves crashing
Like thousands of crisps
Trodden underfoot
Forlorn seagulls crying
Searching for scraps

An irritating Pekinese angry
In its over-stretched skin
Hull grunts of a fishing smack
Hauled over the pebbles
And much silence, the silence
Of an uncrowded beach

Into which I hear
All I need to hear

Summer?

It’s a temporary fixture
Like one-summer ants
Accelerators down
Scampering around on
Sun-scorched paving slabs
All to collect a leaf,
And march triumphant

Before death,
Hoisting their green flags

It’s burning beach sand
Underfeet furnaces
Making flamenco dancers
Of even the most reserved
A staccato dancing
Desperate hunt for cool
Blades of green grass

Before the sand chills
So fast at the sunset hour

It’s inane music
Filling the void
No one permitted to dip,
Or speak of life in the raw,
Or grief-stricken hearts, but
We weep with those whose
Suntans are for next year

Before the sounds of
Our final goodbyes dissipate

It’s for removing shirts
Flouting flesh-covering rules
It’s beach cricket. Intense.
Annual family contests
Fiercely fought, bat and ball,
Battling like warring hippos,
Unto death…well, loss anyway

Before stumps are drawn
Chilled beers are sunk

And we carry one another
Across lengthening shadows

Juggling with water

In a dream as a child,
Creeping downstairs
In the dark, I sat
Composed, adjusting the
Ragged piano stool
And played Rachmaninov’s
2nd piano concerto in C minor
Faultlessly
Each finger and note
Plunging into an infinite pool
Of untrammelled light

It was so vivid
A copy of a reality
Evading this conscious realm
Early in the morning I followed
My dream to the same stool
But my fingers turned to butter
And the notes and chords
Evaporated never to return
Like a juggler whose sticks
Had turned to water
I sighed

And now? Years piled upon years?
Here I am. And there you are.
Do we prefer the dream world
Of realised hopes, like miracles
Grace-gifts from elsewhere?
Or,
Do we reconcile ourselves
To the world of cuts and bruises
Of hoped-for solidity
Slipping through our fingers
Like water into sand?

Jazz-jamming bum notes flow on,
Unashamed stepping stones

On the subject of water,
I stumbled across
An unlooked-for treasure
Tucked away in an ancient psalm
You keep my tears in a bottle
You have recorded each one
In Your book
Now? Now, with eyes closed
Jazz-jamming bum notes flow on,
Unashamed stepping stones
Sounding like spring rain

Jumping from the sea wall

I think I was four
When my tongue wrapped itself
Round a new word:
Subtract
It may, of course, have been
Take away, or minus
But I added it to my arsenal
Of ideas of having less

At four, I knew
I had less height, less strength
Less girth, less stamina
Than the grown-ups
The urge to close the gap
A burning fire: how oddly
We strive for the things
That will overtake us

But even at four, or five, or six
Our secret comparisons
Invisible and inward,
Bristle with life:
Elizabeth is beautiful
Somehow Carol is not
Love, added and subtracted
Rushes in like the tide, and away

My friend, arms raised, yelling
Jumped off the sea wall
Into the waves…I held back
Washington never lied…but I?
Whoever dealt the cards
Gave some to all, not all to one
What we lack others have
That’s the arithmetic

Freely you have received
Freely give
Oh! this somersaulting universe
Under a tutelage of grace!
Having less is a baptism,
A plunging into a vast ocean
I lack courage…but only in me
It comes as a gift…to share