It’s 9pm, Bristol

A cigar tip glows red in the dusk
As a puff of smoke exhales
Into the trees -
Whisky in hand he watches
As the rough and aromatic
Scents disperse.

Above, the trees seem to
Breathe the wind, in, out
And send creatures to
Fill the cooling air:
First a lone wood pigeon
Maybe the last of its kind

It’s plaintive echoes
Receiving no reply
A solitary Robin, out late,
Like the next thought,
Unexpectedly lands
Closer than a brother

The biters arrive:
Invisible flesh nibblers
Then silent, swift, skilful
Insect-hungry bats swarm
The Battle of Britain
Renewed in the sky above.

The cigar stub
Damp and dulled
Calls time.
Inner contentment
Seeps in like the
Rasping warmth

Of the golden measure.
Fingers exploring familiar
Ridges of the cut-glass
Unconscious of the
Gift just given:

May the peace of the Lord
Be always with you.

Bluebells on the Beach

In a blue-violet trumpet, and,
From aeons past,
In each pebble
Is the thought that thought of you
Is the light that gave you light
Is the temporary
And the unchangeable
You

In the one;
Colour and light,
Swaying in the breeze, there
For one deceptive purpose:
Seduction.
Your honey sap
The future trap.

In the other, granite grey,
Hard yet smooth
In your palm
A missile in the hand
Of God
Picked up and launched
Through my defences

The bluebell on the beach
Swept there by tides and
The four winds
Nestled against each other
Trampled by strangers
The congruent parts
Of a woman
Of a man

Rabboni

Why come so vulnerable
Covered in straw?
You make everyone suffer
Your arrival took its toll
On Joseph, on Mary, and children
Extinguished by a king

 Why a mere carpenter’s son
Out of the way, up North
In Nazareth?
Why wait so long
An inert Messiah, watching
The blind lead the blind?

Jesus, why shun the limelight?
Why refuse the crown?
Those willing to honour the
King of glory?
Why relinquish riches, not knowing
Where to lay your head?

After all said and done
Why set your face to Jerusalem?
You stilled the storm, my storm,
Yet offered your wrists to nails
Your head to thorns
Your cheeks to spittle

And, risen, in dawn dark
Avoiding adulation
You dressed as a gardener
Trowel in hand,
Earth under your fingernails
And spoke my name

The beach…2 “Paddle Faster”

Closing my eyes I lift the paddle high
Above my head
A push sends me scuttling
Down the steep pebble incline
The sound like a waterfall
Hard round pebbles scraping the keel
Five seconds of acceleration and…
Into the wash
Into the lapping waves
Orange nose cutting through the surf
I paddle faster

Eyes open, blinking away the salt and Sun
Looking back at the hundred or so
Souls, large, small,
Young, old
Spiritual and secular
Clothed and almost unclothed
The distinct sound of a summer’s day
The beach, a playground for all…
Moments pass…then, turning
Away from the shore
I paddle faster

My fibre-glass capsule,
Skeg rope pulled tight
Water falling along the paddle
The only sound now, thumps
Of sides on wave, wave on sides
An exchange just beyond me
Not known
Until you permit yourself to be
Baptized in the ocean.
Paddling faster, deep and strong

Out here, away from voices,
One hears a Voice
Calling you onward, not back
Calling you home perhaps
‘Slip between the harbour arms’
The urgent voice, strong now,
‘Paddle faster!’
Has time come to lift my paddle
High above my head
To the light?

No. Not yet. It’s not time.
I’m headed East
With the tide and current
The wind making the sea alive
A fearsome fight
Five miles or so
Until, surfing, I ram into
Shingle, sand, and slopes
My interim home
Of a friend calling to me
‘Paddle faster!’

The Beach…i

Turquoise and white the waves roll in
crashing at shallow angles
along the shoreline.

Wandering among the shingle,
the seaweeds and beached wood,
a man, absent-mindedly,

smooth pebble in hand, is at home.
Quiet, lost in thought,
surrounded by the wet roar

Aaron’s Rod

Winter’s lost its hold:
Yielding, exhausted,
Blackened branches held up
In wordless surrender.
Even death must sleep
Naked trees, stripped annually
Of leaves and blossom and fruit
Unable to hide far-off horizons
From prying eyes

The birds, though, know
A different story
Twigs, flying mission on mission,
Clamped and carried in beaks
Of hope
Nests appear before
The camouflage of Spring
Spares them, covers them
They know, the birds

Eruption from death
The first buds, a day away.
Like Aaron’s rod,
As unstoppable as unlikely,
Dead as we are Eden’s nightmare,
I am the Life, like a heavenly parasite,
Displaces our winters
With His orchards;
Trees of life once more.

Father Across the River

It is not for me to question
Your soul, encased in history
Put to the sword, not once,
Barely to survive.
Deep-set priestly eyes
And heavy Orthodox voices
Filling Cathedrals
With more than sound
Grieving over your sons
And daughters drift away,
Enticed like the Prodigal

It is not for me to question
Your soul; sad anger
Consuming many
But hear this song
Deep calling to deep:
Your son will return
If you let him go
If you let him inherit
If you let your enemy
Feed him scraps
Only to discard him

It is not for me to question
Your soul; precious to me
But turned inward
It rots.
Unburden yourself
Of all I have given you
Let the chanted Psalms
Run backwards through you
Or your sorrowful tears
Will drown many
In the Dnipro

Tides

Those watch-free zones
The coastal towns
Collections of people:
All ages who,
Glancing at the sea,
Or the cool inland breeze, or
The shadow on a summer’s day
Unerringly
Know the time

It’s early morning
Long shadows retreating
And wide busy crab-lands
The mud-flat home where
Lugworms, destined for
An angler’s hook, abide.
Seagulls black, and dawn pink,
Patrol like constables on a beat
Jabbing at the weaker shells

Or the evening low-tide
And children and trouser-rolled
Fathers and mothers
Grandparents, aunts,
The well and the unwell
Melded into one lump of joy:
Soft cool mud
Squelching between
Willing toes

And in the storms
The lashings at hightide
Seaweed cast up to the wind
And the same seagulls
Driven to a standstill
Eye-watering thundering
Gales ripping
At the tops of the waves
White horses galloping

And, all the while
The locals know the time
The harbour disgorging its hunters
On the tide
And gathering its children
Weighed down with catch
Escorted by
Inexhaustible seagulls and
Lamps swinging in the dusk

It’s a watch-free zone
The sloshing of an
Untethered will
Eruptions of romance
The collapse of wealth
Erosion of a coastline
And baptisms of
Overwhelming joy
The divine order of things

You and I

We’re all coastland people
You and I
We know the signs, the time
Sudden tide-turning breezes
Heralding a peristalsis
Of irreversible change
Storm time has caught us
Once again, we are unmoored
Blown by a fierce wild wind

Flamenco

Three wooden chairs
Backs to the rough-painted wall
Taut, like guitar strings
Ready to exhale their staccato notes
Far into the crossbeams
Frames now creaking with
Slow muscular sorrow
Resonating with each eruption
Shaken with each clap clap
The fiery vibrations coursing
Through the lignin; knots
Moved as they have never moved

Four legs thrown into confusion
By the stamping snorting bull
Boiling in terror at the whirling
Red dress and piercing stare
Forcing the wailing and weeping
Into the grain, along the grain
And across the entranced grain
The back of the chairs now
Pressed hard against the world

Three chairs made animate
With Promethean fire
The dancer, every pore of her
Exporting life, a reverse baptism
Deluging the transfixed onlookers
With the man’s plaintive tones
And the woman’s sinuous dance
Her black shoes invisible
In speed and the hot dust

There is no escape
We are all buried
The flamenco has ended
All individuality
And pooled the life of us all
Into its font
It is our complete selves
That was sung into one flame
Until that defiant shout of silence
Cools the three chairs
And we are returned to this world:

Where we were taken
No one will ever know.

One Raised Eyebrow

‘Brian and I have made a List’
‘You have? And Brian the rabbit?’
‘Yes’
And mother, one eyebrow raised,
Said:
‘Really? It’s not your birthday
Or Brian’s?’
‘You know Brian’s birthday?’
‘Of course’

At that revelation, George was further
Puzzled at the cunning of adults
And almost forgot the List
Screwed up in his right hand, and
The pencil balanced behind his ear,
But it fell to the floor.
Then he remembered
‘Well…you make lists’
‘Yes’
‘And so does Daddy’

‘He does?’
Up went the eyebrow once more.
Ignoring that question,
Which somehow
Didn’t feel like a question,
He handed over the List.
Glasses on for close inspection,
His mother read it out loud.
Some of the letters were
The wrong way round…

‘A list of body noises?’
She said, removing her glasses.
‘Anthony can roll his Rs, but he can’t do the woodpigeon
Murray makes fart noises with his armpit - like this…’
But it didn’t work.
But when his mother did it, it did!
George’s mouth failed to close
For at least a week
But open as it was, he practiced
Popping with his forefinger

The week passed with
Failure upon failure upon failure
But at tea on Thursday
His mother had invited Murray
And Anthony.
It was an unusual evening
And not all noises had been
Mastered
But when his father,
The one with the secret lists,

Arrived sounding like
A horse, his shaking cheeks
Flapping in an invisible wind,
Pudding was postponed.
Priorities are priorities,
After all
And a List has to be
Recognised for what it is
A heart written in words
With unstoppable fire

“If I keep digging…”

Owen and his rituals.
Shoelaces may be undone
Hair unbrushed
And shirt buttons rarely level
But it was at breakfast
He would strike
Like a coiled adder

Owen the philosopher,
Amidst the clinking of spoons
The careful scraping of butter
On hot toast
The smell of marmalade
And the ruffle of a newspaper
The busyness of a mother

Sat readying himself to ask
Awkward Questions
With his errant shoes banging
Against the crossbeam
Of his chair, it started:
‘Da’ad?’ and the initial reply
A barely audible grunted ‘Yes?’

‘If I keep digging…’
‘Australia.’
A one-word-answer.
As if, like a suitcase,
It contained all the images,
Scents, music, art,
And accents of a far-off land

For six-year-old Owen,
A four-syllable answer
At seven a.m. the pips telling him
What he already knew,
Was a triumph. ‘Australia’
Wriggled down his ear canal
Into his imagination…

Father, discarded and transported
To ‘work’, whatever that meant,
And mother distracted with
Hair and dressing for coffee,
Or, when granny came,
With trainers, bibs, knee supports,
Bending and stretching

The time had come
For today’s importance -
He would not appreciate the
Free rein until old enough
To rebel against any benevolence
Or love’s demands -
Owen found his red boots

And, jacket thrown on,
Like his considered frown,
He sauntered old Labrador style
To the shed to retrieve
A spade, trowel,
And Dad’s oversized gloves.
Selecting his spot, he looked round…

…Mother, from the kitchen window
Returning his frown
Blew a kiss;
The starting pistol:
Drawing himself up
To full height and strength,
Boot on spade; it begun.

Visitors arrived. Someone
Left bread pudding
Parcelled in greaseproof paper
And a tall glass of lemonade
On the rocks.
Speaking of rocks, a
Semi-circle of soil and stone

Like a clockface
Told the time
Until his full bladder
Drove him from the task.
Noon: shadows and
Owen disappeared
Towards Ngunnawal County

The Visitor found him at four
Lying on the burnt orange
Soil of his quest
Looking up with closed eyes
At where the Sun had been.
Dreamtime achieving what
Spade and trowel had not

Or maybe they had…
…over half a milky tea
And buttered scones
Owen introduced his mother
To Kuparr with whom
He had found a worm
As long as his arm

Two breakfasts later
His face emerged
Finally washed and tanned
And, on the table, tea,
Beetroot and tumeric
Stained, lay a freshly carved
Boomerang. ‘Da’ad?’

Daddy, where do tears come from?

Floored and reduced
Once more
My ignorance on show
Knowing, yet not knowing
Wondering about my words

I look at my child
With a sigh

Through eyes
Like dams holding back
The knowing
The deep waters
Surge tides of grief
Thunderstorms of love
And of the last straws
Before the breaking

Bent double with pain
Stomach cramping
Unbreathing sobs
Forehead pressed into the floor
Fist-pounding sorrow
Loss poured out

With a deep breath
I am ready to say little

But she is after facts
That’s all
Like lego pieces
To click together, or collect
Like sweets in a jar
Or the funny words inside her head
She’s after Daddy
To help her with the lego
That’s all

But we know different:

Tears are manufactured:
An instant recipe
A dash of salt, some oils
Antiseptic mucins
Lacrimal glands responding
Double time
Desperately crying ‘Yes Chef!’
To the voice cursing and urging
Defeated by beauty or rage
Or touch;
Gentleness breaking every man

Plated up. Poured.

That’s where tears come from

I look at my child
She’s two now
Will be three in the summer
So I tell her everything
She likes ‘lacrimal’
And ‘Yes Chef!’
And shouts Yes Chef!
All through the day
Not a tear in sight.

A Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement

A Ted Hughes poem…he seemed to have an affinity with crows…A Flayed Crow has foothills, then up, then the summit

All darkness comes together, rounding an egg.
Darkness in which there is now nothing.

A blot has knocked me down. It clogs me.
A globe of blot, a drop of unbeing.

Nothingness came close and breathed on me – a frost
A shawl of annihilation curls me up like a shrimpsfish foetus

Am I the self of some spore?

I rise beyond height -I fall past falling
I float on a nowhere
As mist-balls float, and as stars

A condensation, a gleam simplification
Of all that pertained
This cry alone struggles in its tissues.

Where am I going? What will come of me here?
Is this everlasting? Is it
Stoppage and the start of nothing?

Or am I under attention?
Do purposeful cares incubate me?
Am I the self of some spore?

What feathers shall I have?

Is this the white of death blackness,
This yoke of afterlife?
What feathers shall I have? What is my weakness

Good for? Great fear
Rests on the thing I am, as a feather on a hand.

I shall not fight
Against whatever is allotted to me.

My soul skinned, ad my soul-skin pinned out
A mat for my judges.

 Ted Hughes, Cave Birds

Epiphany

Old enough, they said
To wear shorts to school
Scant protection from
Arctic blasts, gnats, and grazes
Old enough though. Six.

Old enough too
To be weighed down:
Fears of the Foad gang
And dislike of Gypsy Tart
Or four-syllable words

That curious cigarette paper
On which lay black
Hymns, Psalms, and prayers
And ‘Epiphany’
I’d just learnt ph = eff

So, in secret
I sounded out my first
Four syllable
Uninterested in its meaning
Eee-piph-phanee
Eee-piph-anee

Later, years piling on
It became a date
The Magi have come
But somehow still
Shrouded in mystery

Later still, shaving
And loving,
Weighed down once more
I climbed inside the word
And the word inside me

In a moment
Extended for minutes
Standing in the dark
Face upended to the stars
The shroud fell away…

The Pilates Instructor

Unclipping vertebrae, one at a time
A slow, continuous curve
A staircase really, not a wave
Bones and shock-absorbers
Worn from life and living
Unclipping, one at a time

To fold like a rag doll
My low red face restraining,
Like a dam, my innermost,
From tumbling to the floor
Ten whole, lovely long seconds.
An interlude. Hanging there.

Winding down, I lie still
Letting a train of ladybirds
Crawl under my taut abs.
Or is it my glutes?
I flap like a fish, a hundred times.
Only wingless ladybirds remain

Unaligned body meets
Unaligned soul
They rarely talk, but today
With deepening breaths
Their awkward exchanges
Match my graceless moves

Sweeping the floor now
With my extended ballet foot
Drawing anything but smooth
Supple or serene circles…
But, to my surprise,
My soul looks on gently amused

Smiling, in fact, eyes laughing,
A random collision
A friend found inside a moment
Someone, it seems
You’ve always known:
Someone, plugged into Peace

And now, a new voice speaks,
Unclipping sore and stiff spines
And your tension-twisted torso
And your long-neglected heart
Enfin, you’ve become your own
Instructor. Peace.

Six Counties Wide

Normally some wretched
Inner engine-room coughs and splutters its
Rhymeless blood, the national pulse,
Evicting its poetic tenants
Long before dawn. Not today.
Amnesia? No. Whispers of anxiety
‘Not qualified’. Humbled by six counties,
Defeat hangs heavy on my Yuletide shoulders

Sore Afraid

the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid

Don’t open your lips, please
Don’t extend your hand
Nor even end my fear
I’m clinging on
Can’t you see?
To my staff, to this world

No, don’t sing
Don’t bring the glory down
Heaven can’t fit inside me
I am lost now
Shorn like my sheep
Naked to your
All baptising love

I cannot fully return
To the world
Of tousled sheep
And scraggy babes
Surrounded as I am
By this thin disguise

My staff a reminder:
Then a conductor’s baton
Of heavenly choirs.
More than wood
Infused as I am with
Joy inexpressible

A Sense of England

I’m unsure I can feel you, England
So many winds have blown
And waters brought us ashore
Do we find ourselves
Still, in Ælfred’s skirts?

What is your scent? Your signal?
A dysentery rotting
Army in Azincourt,
A weak autumnal leaf
Certain to die?

But we are a miracle nation
With two fingers thrust to the sky
And knees bent, battle breath
Exhaling ‘We few, we happy few,
We band of brothers’

What is your sound? Your voice?
It is not the matchless
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Or the fearsome Tartan drone
Of kilts and pipes

No, it is simply the crack
Of a hard-red-ball on willow
Of stumps and white boundaries
The sigh of a pig’s bladder
And the boot of a mob

Foreigner. What do you see?
Is it not a small place
An island
Armed to the teeth
With Trident and tea and scones at four?

It is an uncertain people
Tentatively sharing their King
With the neighbours
Who may soon be blown
And washed away

And yet, there is that
Unmistakable taste of history
The suppurating wounds
Of wars to make peace
And foreign fayre on the menu

Beef Wellington, Sir?
Served with irony:
Pâté de foie gras
As English as Spotted Dick
À l’Alexis Benoît Sayer

Winds will blow
And waters threaten
The house Ælfred
But her rivers may yet
Run deeper than blood

Salmo Salar

The Moon lying large
Its milky disc of light
Drawing down
Into the blush of dawn
Its last beams crossing
Shallow bends of the Tay
Into the shadow of Schiehallion

Somehow a cold sun
Rises without noise,
Pomp or ceremony
Glinting from surface ice
Swelling with the
Hidden waters writhing
Below, unknowing the night

And, caught in an unlit pool
An eye looks up
Salmo Salar,
Lying in wait
Patient to kill, to spawn
Encased in ice
Not yet undone

The journey home
Like the prodigal
Its ungrateful sins washed
In the oceans
And here, bedraggled
Wounded, and glorious
Lies Scotland, unfinished

This is no grave
This spawning ground
So easily misunderstood
This place of death
This tomb, a womb…
My eyes met her eye
I looked away

© John Stevens

The Ceilidh House

The peat fire crackles and burns with stories;
footsteps scurry through mist and mountain
to warm a Hebridean hearth with stories.

A figure crosses turf where St Columba
knelt long ago beside the Snizort;
the crofter’s creel is laden with stories.

He pauses to watch the snow-stars drifting
on the loch, with its kelp and pebbles;
hares in the lazy-bed leap with stories.

The crofter enters his neighbour’s parlour,
rests on the settle while divots smoulder;
a plaintive skirl fills the room with stories.

Shadows dance round the doleful piper,
whose music makes the embers tremble;
the single oil lamp flickers with stories.

A mother stirs her three-legged cauldron;
sisters spin, or weave at the handloom,
infusing a homemade plaid with stories.

Hailstone tears pound the snow-flecked Cuillin,
recalling the Clearances, emigration:
the Ceilidh House overflows with stories.

© Caroline Gill

www.carolinegillpoetry.com

From: Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press, 2021)

Caroline’s MacDonald grandfather and great-grandfather were born in Sydney. Her 3x great-grandfather had been a shepherd crofter in the Highlands. The poem was written after visits to the Skye Museum of Island Life and the Clan Donald Archives in Armadale. The poem is a Tercet Ghazal, a form developed by Robert Bly (d.2021) from the traditional Persian Ghazal, a complex form written in couplets and involving a pattern of refrain- and rhyme-words

The Bothy - Grwyne Fawr

Four by eight I suppose
And folded in fraying paper
Lying spread like a body
On the floor
Peered over, not by surgeons
But would be explorers
Unfamiliar with its world
Laid bare

Sinkholes, abandoned quarries
Ridges and sheepfolds
And contours and grid-lines
Point the way…but today
A small black ink square,
Silent, like a mistake,
Pulled and pulled again until
Laces tied, my boots were on

Descending a narrow path
The bothy took shape
A bothy of ones:
One door, one window,
One small log burner
One table, one old chair,
One candle, and one mezzanine
Space for one or for two

Home. A heaven of sorts.
At least for the night
Graffiti illuminated by a candle
Names of lovers, and dates
And a shelf of generosity
A tin of baked beans, firelighters,
Wood left by the burner
A spade, quite clean, and a rusty saw.

And a blessing, in brass, nailed
In honour of a Clive Roberts
Mwynhewch y fangre, hon, fel y Gwnaeth Yntau
‘May you enjoy this place as he did’
With the trickle of Gwyne Fawr,
The unsteady light of the moon,
Flickering flames of a candle and the fire:
The night is yours.