Bard's life

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...