Bard's life

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On a recent trip to Brussels I visited the Musee des Beaux-Arts and saw Pieter Bruegel's Landscape with the Fal l of Icarus , a truly impressive p ainting by one of my favourite Old Masters.   The Icarus s tory is one we can all re late to : a tale of a young man whose ambition overrode his judgement. Which of us has not, at one  time or another , aimed impossibly high and consequently been brought crashing to earth when reality shone its fearsome rays on our ludicrous aspirations.  ICARUS I am falling from high but they do not notice. The air, through wings that promised much, keens like a mourner. Creeping ants below evolve to shepherd, ploughman, angler. I fall unseen. Someone will dream it later. I have no time to scream. The water is hard as stone.

I'm a great admirer of the work of Engl ish film director, the late David Lean, whose cinematic triumphs ranged from the wonderful low-budget classic, Hobson's Choice , to epics such as D octor Zhivag o and Lawrence of Arabia , the latter of which launched actor Peter O'Toole to stardom.   In 1945 Lean directed a film version of a Noel Cow a rd play , Still Life , a poignant love story about a couple who meet in a railway station : the sort of film that my mother's generation would have referred to as 'a weepie'. The film was ent i tled Brief Encounter. My story 's title is obviously a play on the film's name and is also about an encounter in a railway station but there the similarity ends, except, as a few film buffs may note, both my protagonist and the male lead in David Lean's film are named Harve y. Briefcase Encounter was recently placed third in the Guernsey Writers Flash Fiction competition.       BRIEFCASE ENCOUNTER Eurostar d...

In my seventy-fifth year, I regard each day as a gift and marvel that most of me is still in working order. A daily inventory of aches and pains tends to turn up something new every now and again but, to date, it's all been minor stuff, nothing sinister.  Granted the choice, which would you prefer to surrender first: body or brain?    IN GRACE The present is arcane and strange and any recollection left of what has happened in the past is vague and liable to change.         Of future plans, he is bereft,           for nothing now is hard and fast.   They give him multicoloured pens and paper, as one might a child. Familiar voices interweave. He sees, through a distorting lens, people who wept, people who smiled, that, one by one, stood up to leave. He is content. He lives in grace. What matter if the moments blur, if his nocturnal thoughts are grim? He has escaped himself: ...

Poetry shouldn't be a competitive business but we humans are a competitive species so there's a tendency at live poetry events to want to be the best . SMALL CHANGE                                                                  When words are called for, verse or poetry, I rummage in my pocket for small change and promptly offer up a handful:  See, here are my poems, these sundry coins ... It’s strange to see them there,  so lacklustre and dead, those dull ten-pees, those drab pathetic twos, that shone so very brightly in my head. My hard-earned verses, rhymes, opinions, views, have not much sterling value, so it seems, while othe r , bolder people’s money scre...

The rainbow is an important symbol in the Bible, representing a promise of protection from God to Noah and to future generations. In modern times it has been appropriated by various groups so that its Biblical significance has been obscured, if not lost. This poem seeks to reclaim the rainbow’s original symbolism.    RAINBOW A dappled frog croaks a prayer for rain. Rain falls.   We set out walking in the afternoon with small provisions and light waterproofs in sturdy boots because the ground was rough. We climbed uphill, below we saw red roofs, and stopped to eat when it was opportune, then off again when we had had enough. As we walked on, the rain was left behind:  a rainbow spread before us like an arc. The day grew bright, I felt my spirits rise. the air was charged by some elusive spark. We clung together, fingers intertwined. The world seemed new. We viewed it with surprise. 

I read this poem at an open-air venue beside beautiful Lake Orta in Italy several years ago when Jane and I attended the Poetry On The Lake Festival , a prestigious annual event  attended by leading figures from the world of contemporary poetry. I t has proved an enduring favourite. SUITCASES Crouching in attic gloom, where skylight beams illuminate their pool of silver dust, old leather suitcases doze like alligators dreaming their prehistoric dreams. They sleep soundly having eaten up my father’s life ... the photographs, the hearing-aid and collar studs, the safety-razor with its rusted blade, the letters and the wallet with the ticket stubs ...     yet I am so afraid that when I kneel beneath the skylight to prise apart those sagging, alligator jaws, the life that I will find compressed within will be too small to match my memories of him.

As May a dvances and the island's weather warms, I've noticed one or two hardy souls braving the waters at Bordeaux B ay . I'm not a keen sea-bather myself and tend to confine my aquatic adventures to swimming pools, preferably heated ones, and even then only with great reluctance. The sea itself is far too cold for me. Early exposure to the much-vaunted pleasures of outdoor pools, notably dear old Pickie in Bangor, County Down, left me with strong reservations about that type of rash outdoor activity.   HIGH BOARD Beneath his feet the board seems live, responsive to his weight, his step, and looking down, so far beneath, the water, like a massive eye, ice-cold, unblinking, ocean-blue, stares back at him, so small, so high: a diver, fragile as a bird, fast-breathing, poised, to fall or fly into an eagerness of air that courses through his wayward hair. He pivots on the high board then and launches out in salty wind, through years of childhood flown away like voices callin...

Jane and I have spent many hours visiting galleries and museums in Europe over the past few months and, amidst a profusion of great art, I find myself drawn to portraiture in preference to landscape subjects.  There's something about the human face and its expression, as captured by the artist, that I find beguiling.  I've used this splendid portrait by John Singer Sargent purely to illustrate the following poem a bout a mysterious lady an d a jobbing portraitist . The picture currently hangs in the Scottish Nat ional G allery and I'd love to see it in the flesh, as it were , so per haps we'll have to add a visit to Edinburgh to our itinerary .   LADY Such a pensive face, I hear you whisper, and yes, the lady has a thoughtful look. We stand together, marvel at the artist’s skill and brush-technique while you, with smartphone, take a picture of her portrait so that her image travels further yet in space and time from Exeter, two centuries ago, with snow beyond the...

Back in the days when youngsters played outdoors unsupervised and war-game consoles were the stuff of science fiction, we learned some fundamental lessons about the reality of life and death. As my late father frequently remarked, "Experience is the best school but the fees are often high." 


   BLACKBIRD

 With catapult, once school was finished,
 I went to hunt in woodland, high
 above Belfast, in summer light
 and heard, among leafed branches spread,
 a blackbird, singing like a bell.
 I took aim, shot; the missile flew
 ... ... unerringly, my aim was true.
 With awful suddenness it fell,
 all broken. Exultation fled, to be replaced by sickly fright. I knelt to watch it slowly die.
 Within me somewhere, light diminished.

I find Philip Larkin's poem Mr Bleaney a haunting one, particularly as I grow older and become increasingly aware of the isolation and consequent loneliness t hat so many fall prey to . My own poem, The Landlady's T ale , taps into the anxiety that many older people feel as t ime slips steadily away .   THE LANDLADY’S TALE These were the only things he had. I put them in a cardboard box. Just what he wore. I thought it sad. Apart from extra pants and socks. A good innings at e ighty- o ne. We never knew he had a son. He always was a quiet chap: no trouble, liked his mugs of tea. He’d come down to my door and tap, Fancy a cuppa, Mrs P? Before you go, forgive my cheek, he didn’t pay his rent last week.

The unseasonably warm weather, more June-like than April , puts me in mind of summer days in the garden at home in Belfast long ago and the fun we had when father watered the flower-beds.  HOSEPIPE We scattered, screaming, laughing too, not really wanting to escape the chill, refreshing water spray, like dazzling rain, the hosepipe threw. My brother giggled like an ape: in bathing togs, we danced away, then, panting, watched the water spew. With Father, we would laugh and jape while summer days drifted away and we, like watered lupins, grew.

Beachcombing, whilst generally pleasurable, sometimes has its sad moments. One such is recorded in this poem. Photo by Peter Kenny    DEAD SEAGULL A gull dead on the old slipway, its whiteness shabby, neck snapped, pale eyes expressionless, remote. A gull stone-dead at Bordeaux bay: a length of fishing line has trapped both its legs. Debris from a boat. Gulls live short lives, brutal and grim. It’s hard to mourn something like that, or care; to not be disdainful. Dying entangled limb with limb, helpless, starved, is a cruel way. That its death would have been painful beyond belief, makes the heart bleed. A piteous and pathetic end, here on the slip where I found it, moves me to, gently, lay seaweed over it, like a wreath, and bend to gather stones to place around it.

On a visit to Dorset early last summer we came upon a swing beneath a tree in a meadow of the sort you only find in England: a yellow and pink counterpane of wild flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. I treated myself to a few moments rocking back and forth in a relatively sedate manner as befits a member of the older generation and thought back fondly to the headstrong way I rode swings when I was fearless and young.       THE SWING   As we launch out, the air feels clean, the wooden swing, a pendulum divining or recording time, as sunlight stabs, pure platinum, through woodland chestnut, cedar, lime, into our playground, softly green. It takes our joint weight on taut ropes as we, in tandem, drive it on, gathering momentum, we rise: you grip the seat I brace upon with boots, knees, adolescent thighs and boundless, adolescent hopes. The swing is like a storm-tossed boat, the wood’s a bold kaleidoscope of light, leaf patterns, soaring dreams. I shou...

Guernsey's s pring seems already well advanced, with daffodils and primroses abundant in every lane . Soon the trees will be in leaf.        SPRING Green mariners, young leaves soft as skin, are gathering before a tall tree’s mast. A bright, fresh crew, they have a season’s voyage ahead to learn the ropes. They will return, old salts: brown-parchment-skinned, rum-soaked, no wiser than before.

In today's fast-paced world, there's a temptation to take others at face value, swiftly categorise then dismiss them, rarely taking time to learn their history or background.  REFUGEE Overhead lights, bright in a white room; a masked regiment around me at my command. In timeless hush, I work: my steady hand and shining blade make neat incisions, cut out tumours, like blind, destructive moles. It’s done. Eyes, above masks, are joyful. The patient lives. That was before... Today, I wear a white coat in a bright room. Around me, pale unmasked faces, that have not witnessed war, ignore my requests. In harsh, obliterating noise, I work steadily with shining blade. My practiced hand cuts pizzas into segments that do not bleed.

I'm an admirer of the work of Cornwall's greatest poet, the late Charles Causley , and have recently finished reading an excellent biography about him by Laurence Green. When Jane and I spent several weeks in Cornwall last year, we visited the town of Launceston, where Causley was born, and the cemetery where he is buried. I wrote this poem, Blackberries , having just returned one morning from walking a friend's dog on the coastal path above Port Isaac.   BLACKBERRIES                                          Carrying home, in cupped hands, a clutch of blackberries, freshly picked, I marvel at the morning light, high-circling gulls, the puzzled stares of cattle at a gate. Beneath a Causley-Cornish sky I struggle to complete this poem and wonder would that placid man (schoolmaster, p...

Here's a lighthearted, short story for the #Me Too era . KARM A When he was born, Maurice’s worst fears were realised. Reincarnation wasn’t a myth after all.  Maurice had been reincarnated. As a dog. It wasn’t bad at first. Being a puppy was a heady tumble of warmth, fun and sweet milk.   But all that was rudely whipped away. An elderly woman bought him and started imposing RULES.  Maurice had to wee on newspaper. He liked that. It was the Guardian not the Telegraph, Maurice’s newspaper of choice in his former life.  When he forgot and wee-d on rugs and carpets, the woman shrieked like a banshee and chased Maurice, now renamed Boo-Boo, round the kitchen. Servility was not to Boo-Boo’s liking. When he’d been Maurice, people had cowered at his feet. An alpha-male, he’d been a swaggering bully, intoxicated by power. He’d made enemies: men he’d destroyed; women he’d crushed. From youth until horny old age, Maurice had taken what he wanted and damn the consequences....

Jane and I have recently returned from Switzerland which was unseasonably warm, so we had the dual pleasure of sunshine and snow when we ventured out for forest walks.  On arrival in Guernsey it was apparent that the island too is experiencing an early Spring, unarguably its most beautiful season.    HIBERNATION

 Hibernation over, they wake hungry. Then swiftly re-engage with animal things: so the cycle begins again. We understand that. Is it fanciful to wonder if they dream? Or is their slumber incomprehensible, like death, devoid of sense of anything?